Pearson (577 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 1 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Fleet Marshall Badass (View user info) at 2004-05-27 05:15:09 EDT
I ran. I ran until I threw up, but I didn't stop for that. I didn't look behind me, I kept my head and eyes front and just pelted on and on. I could feel the pain coming on, and my steps growing weaker, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was running away. I had gotten out onto the highway and my home was far away now. I just kept on running for what had seemed like an eternity. Turns out it was only about forty minutes.
But I kept on running away.
I realised quickly that I couldn't run at full speed for much longer, but I just made myself run until I collapsed. I couldn't stop. My mind wouldn't allow my legs to stop moving and my arms to stop pumping. So on I pressed, until I hit uneven ground and stumbled forward, desperately trying to straighten up.
I quickly realised that desperation couldn't overcome gravity.
I landed on my face and slid for about three feet. I just lay there. I was already so far away from home that from here, going further wouldn't mean as much, and since going back wasn't an option, I stayed there, lying in the service lane, tears and blood all over my face. I must have looked an abomination, but I couldn't have looked as bad as I felt.
I felt scared, I felt angry, but most of all, I felt cowardly.
I thought more, and more, about what I'd just done for the last forty minutes. I'd run as fast and as far as I could. I'd run for fear. I'd run to escape from him, to escape from what he could do to me.
But what could he really do to me?
He couldn't really hurt me anymore. I'd grown to be as tall as he was, and I'd worked hard every day chopping his pine trees on the weekends and getting in fights at school, but no matter how strong I got, and no matter how well I could fight, he was still the thing I feared the most.
So what did I fear?
As I got up, and walked home, I thought about one night back when I was about 14. I'd come home from swim training and saw him, sitting in his chair, drinking his whiskey. My mother wasn't home from work yet, but my twin sister hadn't gone to training that night, and the house was deathly silent. I went to her room and knocked on her door.
"W-Who is it?"
"It's me. Can I come in?"
That second, the door flung open and she dragged me inside, the door slamming behind her. She wrapped her arms around my waist and buried her face in my chest, crying uncontrollably. On the bed I saw a large patch of blood, and as she moved away from me and went to sit on the edge of the bed, I noticed her face was bruised, her lip was swollen, and there were stains of blood on her skirt.
"What... did... he... do?" I was furious. I couldn't think, and she couldn't bring herself to answer, so I went for him. I remember nearly ripping the door of its hinges as I flung it open, and running at him, leaping at him from about four metres away as he got up to stop me.
I managed to knock him over, but that was as far as I could get. Back then I was no match for him. He overpowered me, put his knee on my sternum and punched me all over my face and body for about five minutes. I remembered every punch for days as I chopped trees, walked to school, and smacked a kid in the face because he had the nerve to give me shit about finally losing a fight.
I remember that so vividly, and I'd feared that day ever happening again. Tina was taken to a foster family. The next time I saw her was when I knocked on her new family's door one night at about 11 pm. She's doing far better now than I could ever have imagined. She left, but I stayed, claiming that I wasn't being abused, but in reality I could never have left. I stayed for Mum's sake. I couldn't leave her with that man, and she couldn't divorce him; he would've beaten her every day he saw her, which would be almost every day.
For the rest of her life.
I'd been walking for a couple of hours now, replaying the scenes in my head: that night when I came home to find my sister had been raped; that day she was taken; the next day, when my father simply picked up and left, and didn't come back for a fortnight. I remember that time as the happiest I'd ever seen my mother. I remember the day he came back, and sent her to hospital with broken ribs and a fractured hip from being thrown down a flight of stairs. I remember wishing he'd never come back, every single day, up until that day I ran away, the day I made a choice.
He'll never come back.
He never will, I thought. Not after all that. He came home early from work, and when I arrived home about ten minutes after he did, I could smell the liquor hanging off him, like a swarm of flies. Things were beginning to settle down at home, in as much as he'd drink himself to the point where he'd come home and just go to sleep. He hadn't laid a finger on anybody for about two months, and my mother and I were grateful for that. But he'd been fired that day... fired for drinking on the job it seemed, so not only was he drunk, but also he was ready to take it out on anybody in his path.
That's where Mum came in.
I wasn't home at this stage, but I heard the wails and screams "STOP!! PLEASE... STOP!!" fifty metres from my front door, and then I heard it stop as abruptly as it had begun. I ran the rest of the street as fast as I could, and flung the door open to see my mother lying face-down on the floor, blood rushing from her head, and my father holding my axe that I chopped his fucking trees with... the blood dripping of the blunt edge combined with the pure hatred in his eyes has etched itself in my memory... I ran to my mother's side and turned her over. There was nothing anyone could do for her now. My father was a strong man, and blunt side or not, that axe had taken a good chunk from my mother's head, and her neck had snapped from the force of being hit across the head.
"You're next, you little fucker!" I heard, and the next thing I felt was the cold, blunt steel connect with my face with more ferocity than I'd ever unleashed upon a tree with the sharp end. I hit the deck hard, but I was conscious, and for the second time in my life, I didn't think before running, but this time it was the wrong way; it was away.
I never ran away again.
By the time I'd played through the last three years, I was immersed in a sea of rage, and all I wanted to do was crash upon the cause for all this torment. I considered myself to have a strong advantage against the man: for years he had been taking out all his anger on us on a pretty regular basis, and the only time I ever tried anything was the night I described earlier. I had three years of pain coursing through my veins, and all I could think of doing with it was bringing it down in one swing on that bastard, as soon as possible.
There's no point serving revenge cold... it's bitter as fuck.
We lived on a rather large property, with a lot of pine trees, so my father had gone into the plantation and threw my mother's body into an old well amongst the trees. My father always told us that he'd grown the trees around it for a purpose: if ever he wanted to kill us, that well was extraordinarily well hidden from view, and even if you walked through the large acreage, you wouldn't see it unless you knew exactly where it is, and only if you were looking for it exclusively. I'd also run through the plantation during my escape four hours ago, so I knew that dragging a body up the hill, bottle of shitty scotch in hand, and then dragging that body through the plantation, as you got drunker and drunker, would mean that as soon as you got the deed done, you wouldn't have the energy, nor the inclination to go anywhere for a while, so you'd probably stay there for a while. I knew I wouldn't have to drag a body very far at all.
That felt oddly comforting.
I left at about 4:00 pm. It was now about 8:30. I feared I'd have missed him, and he'd be on his way back down the hill, but fortunately, I knew the fucker too well, and sure enough, he was sitting there, asleep, with his back against the well, and a bottle of Black Douglas spilling out and soaking into the dirt. Something I didn't bank on was seeing the axe. Perhaps he thought I'd hide in the plantation, and he'd come and find me. In any event, it made things easier, a lot easier.
It was time to start crashing down.
Axe in hand, I kicked him in the ribs as hard as I could to wake him up, and the anger of that first movement was rewarded by an audible crack.
"Aarrrgh! Whathefuck? WhatyoudoinereyoulilFUCK?" He was so shit-faced that not only could I barely understand what he was saying, I wouldn't get the satisfaction of him fully experiencing the pain that we had all felt over the years. But I didn't really care at that point. He tried to get up, but could barely lift himself off the ground due to sheer drunkenness. All I cared about was that he'd never hurt anybody again. I swung the axe down so hard and so fast that the pain ripped through my body more than the forty-minute sprint I'd just experienced, and fell through his head with a sickening crunch. As I looked into his eyes, they kept their glazed stare, even after he'd had a twenty-five pound axe head put through his skull. I left the axe in there and picked him up, pushing him over the edge of the well, and listening as he fell...
And fell... and fell... and finally landed after what seemed like forever.
I headed down to the house and had a shower. I sat in there for about thirty minutes, crying for my mother, for my sister, and for anybody who knew my father. I don't remember feeling sorry for myself at all. I'd been beaten, but I'd escaped. He couldn't hurt me, or my sister anymore.
A smile trickled over my face... then it turned to laughter.
I laughed harder and louder than I'd ever laughed before. I didn't recall laughing for such a long time, and so I just let myself go. I got out of the shower, hoarse in the throat, and put on some fresh clothes. Then I put some wood in the fireplace and lit a fire so nice and warm that the house actually felt like a home. I turned the gas stove on, grabbed the keys and took the car. I drove out to Belmore, and knocked on the door of Tina's foster home. I wasn't allowed to meet Tina's foster parents or see Tina for all that time, in case Dad had found out that I knew where she lived, but I remember an empty envelope sent to the school, with my name and a return address on it. She wouldn't dare writing anything else, just in case I hadn't opened it until I got home.
Clever girl... she knew I'd find her one of these days...
I didn't know what I was going to say when I got to that door, and as I waited for someone to answer, I hoped that they wouldn't be freaked out by my broken face and a voice muffled by my swollen lips. Thankfully, it was Tina who opened, the door, and she still remembered my face, broken and bloody as it may have been. She hugged me, and it hurt, but I didn't mind. Nothing could hurt that bad now that I was away from all of that. Her foster father was a doctor, and he treated me in his home so I wouldn't have to explain anything to the police. They took me in as their son, and Tina and I were a family again. I transferred to her school, changed my name on my 18th birthday, and the most I ever had to do with the investigation of the missing Pearson family was being found, and asked where my parents were.
They still haven't looked in that well.
User Reviews
Submitted by WRECKER (user info) at 2004-05-27 11:57:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by FearBenzene (user info) at 2004-05-27 09:44:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by Death_Metal_Dude (user info) at 2004-05-27 06:57:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Fleet_Marshall_Badass (user info) at 2004-05-27 06:25:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm not sure what to make of it either. I just decided to write the first bit, about a guy running, and then think of why he was running, and it sort of went from there. I don't do a lot of fiction - this is my second fictional - so I'm trying to get some advice on style more than anything.
Badass.
Submitted by indigogecko (user info) at 2004-05-27 06:08:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
um.. don't know what to make of this. Held my interest, but not sure if I liked it. Kinda grisly.
Submitted by DraconianKing (user info) at 2004-05-27 05:49:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
i got bored
Submitted by Orla (user info) at 2004-05-27 05:46:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Disappointing, I thought it was going to be about Lester B. Pearson.
You more than made up for that initial let down.
+2
Submitted by kakhuis (user info) at 2004-05-27 05:44:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
what is this shitt??
Submitted by Ainkara (user info) at 2004-05-27 05:36:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow....