Father's Day

[dedra.livejournal.com]

Title: Father's Day
Author: spikespetslayer
Rating: Mature for subject matter, death
Pairing: None
Warnings: Incest, death, violence, child abuse.




Father’s Day

In our house, every day was Father’s Day.

Daddy Jim ruled our lives with an iron fist in a steel glove. We ate when Daddy Jim was hungry, we slept when Daddy Jim was tired, and we danced when Daddy Jim wanted entertaining. When the house was dirty, Daddy Jim was the overseer, pointing out the tasks that needed doing and expecting them to be done.

He was the center of our lives. He was our brain, our conscience, our inner voice, and our greatest fear rolled into one ball of humanity that could never be denied.

My mother, poor raggedy thing, could never compete with Daddy Jim. She was pale and colorless against his larger-than-life personality, washed out from years of hard work and childbirth and never able to stand up to the man. She tried, God bless her she did, but after being beat down for so many years she just couldn’t get up any more. Hobbies were discarded as ‘frivolous nonsense’ and an outside job was out of the question. Her job, as she was told, was to take care of the children and the house; she did as she was told, pushing out children until the doctor told her that one more would kill her and cleaning until her hands bled, literally.

My grandparents were no buffer against him either. If there was discipline to be given, he would lock them in their room and dole it out as he saw fit. Too many times they would transport the receiver to the hospital, dodging the infinite questions and the strange looks from the ER staff. In the seventies, child abuse and domestic violence did not exist. They were the dirty secret that you made up lies to cover, the screams in the night that you tried to ignore.

Daddy Jim took my virginity on the night that I turned thirteen. He came into my room, a darker shadow in the total darkness that we were forced to sleep in, and stood over me, looking at me with those piercing eyes that I can still see in my dreams.

He watched me for what seemed like hours, and then I felt his heavy weight covering me and his hand over my mouth. “You’ll thank me someday,” were the only words he said before he pushed himself into my innocent body and took my childhood away forever.

After that fateful night, it seemed that everyone could see I was a woman. A neighbor fondled me in his garage, one of the boys from school exposed himself to me, and there were still visits from Daddy Jim, at least once a week and sometimes more.

At least, until I turned sixteen.

When I turned sixteen, he caught me with a boy in our back yard, kissing innocently under the harvest moon on Halloween night. After he thrashed the boy, he beat me as well, then sent me to my room. Bloody, broken, bleeding from my mouth and nose, I grabbed what I could fit into a paper sack and climbed out of the window, escaping into the night. It took them three days to find me, but by the time that they did I already had aborted the seed that Daddy Jim had planted and planned my final escape.

Every day was Father’s day in our house, but Christmas was a special day that year.

Daddy Jim would lay in bed until noon. We weren’t allowed to open our gifts until he deigned to grace us with his presence, then we gratefully tore into the brightly wrapped packages and gave profuse thanks to the giver—Daddy Jim. He would go out hunting that afternoon, usually bringing back rabbits or squirrels out of season most years.

While he was gone and the others were occupied, I slipped silently into the hallowed sanctuary of my parents’ room. He kept a handgun in there; a forty-five that gleamed malignantly in the sunlight that glinted off the snow outside, calling out to me for justice. I needed that justice, more than life, more than the freedom it offered. I needed to get away from the living hell that was my life at the time.

I slid the gun under my shirt after I looked to see if it was loaded (and it was), then sneaked off to my room, hiding it under my pillow. If today were like any other holiday, Daddy Jim would pay me a visit after bedtime and give me my special Christmas present.

True to form, he returned triumphant, a fistful of dead carcasses in his hand and a huge grin on his face. He thrust the animals at my mother and told her to skin and cook them for dinner, then went up to bathe in his usual nonchalant fashion.

We ate his ill-gotten squirrels, then watched Christmas shows until he stretched and told us it was time for bed. Bathing, dressing, kissing him goodnight like automatons, we went to our rooms and I laid in the dark awake, waiting.

He was like a black hole, sucking all the joy and love out of our lives. Life cannot thrive in a vacuum nor can anything good and this had festered long enough. I knew that he had been looking at my little sister that turned thirteen next week on New Year’s Eve and wondered if she would receive a special birthday gift from him as well. Not if I had any say she wouldn’t, that was for sure.

He came inside my room and stood there over me, looking down on me with the eyes that seemed to see through all subterfuge to the sins inside. He covered my body with his large one, then put his hand over my mouth to keep me silent and still like he always did. I pretended that it was a normal Christmas for only a second, then slid my hand under my pillow for the hard, cold metal of the gun.

I bit his hand and he pulled away from me, drawing back his bleeding fist to strike while the ire was hot. Instead of lying there passively like I was supposed to, I pressed the barrel against his chest and pulled the trigger quickly, not caring who heard the noise this time. He fell forward, his hand still fisted and his mouth open in shock, and bled to death on my chest.

The police came with their flashing red lights along with the ambulance crew, but it was futility on their part. He was dead the minute he fell on me, his cock still buried inside me and his fist readied to hit me. They didn’t take me away, although they should have, but the facts were too vividly portrayed for them to fault me for my actions.

Yes, every day was Father’s Day in our house, but this Christmas was my day. My day for justice.


A/N: Some of the subjects in this story are true. Others are not. I won't tell you which, except I'm not in jail and never have been.

Comments

[lilithbint.livejournal.com]

that was heartrending and bleak, but utterly compelling,
*hugs*

[dedra.livejournal.com]

Thank you.