Who Is the Real Monster Part 4
Xavier opened his eyes again and couldn’t see a thing. He did remember where his last location was before passing out. He remembered getting smacked…
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Xavier opened his eyes again and couldn’t see a thing. He did remember where his last location was before passing out. He remembered getting smacked…
I can’t stand the pop music that bounces around the walls like invisible demons. I see a group of girls that look friendly, they are…
Inspired by a Facebook Group Prompt! Please also read the series as well! 🙂 It was a busy Saturday night at the Darkwood club. I…
“What the hell is going on?” “Cassie-” “Shut the fuck up, Jen! You’re aiding a traitor, both of you have to die,” The gray-haired woman…
Xavier stared at his apartment door for what felt like hours, he was kissing the most beautiful woman he had ever met and he also…
My eyes scan the door of the club from my car, searching for any danger. I saw nothing but a steel door covered in posters…
I started going to the river when I first moved to this house a year ago, mainly it was because of the lovely weeping willow…
I started going to the river when I first moved to this house a year ago, mainly it was because of the lovely weeping willow that sat next to the water. I would sit under that tree and look out into the river as it flowed, I would admire the beautiful branches and leaves that acted like a veil. On a good season, the branches would be low enough to touch the surface of the water. The river always gave me the most soothing feelings both when I watch it and when I swim in it, and with the water being so clear I can watch the fish and other creatures below the surface without intruding. The water feels like another world that I have yet to explore fully.
The house was a lovely little dark green cottage with violets and bluebells along the side of it. The deck had beautifully desiI started doing my daily meditations near the river when I first moved to my mother’s house a year ago, mainly it was because of the lovely weeping willow that sat next to the water. I would sit under that tree and look out into the river as it flowed, and would admire the beautiful branches and leaves that acted like a veil. On a good season, the branches would be low enough to touch the surface of the water. The river always gave me the most soothing feelings both when I watch it and when I swim in it. With the water being so clear I can watch the fish and other creatures below the surface without intruding. The water feels like another world that I have yet to explore fully.
The house was a lovely little dark green cottage with violets and bluebells along the side of it. The deck had beautifully designed white pillars with green vines painted on them, and always had enough lounge chairs for the visitors that stopped by. The inside of the house was as homely as the outside world, with the right number of modern appliances that did not make it feel out of place. Me and my siblings loved everything about this place when we were small, climbing on every tree imaginable, including the tallest ones. The ever-expanding fields and hills looked like paintings that were completed by the hands of an omnipotent being. We were happy children and even when both mother and father fought on occasion, it wasn’t a massive sticking point to us. There have been nights where my mother would disappear after hours but she would return like nothing happened.
The house used to be my mother’s before she passed away suddenly. I remember that night. That loud thud in the kitchen was like an earth-shattering rumble to my psyche. The pool of blood that flowed under her, a cascade that would paint my past forever. I was 7 at the time but that age would soon be a time that would haunt me. The doctors said that she died of a head injury but the doctor also found drugs in her system. My father, the always cheerful extrovert, was dead quiet. He could not, nor me or my siblings, explain why my mother would have drugs in her system. She was never really one to take such substances. Our last goodbyes to mother were solemn with me sobbing the most out of all of them. I felt like I was closest to my mother, I certainly spent more time with her than my other siblings.
Mother had always talked about how she was treated differently than other girls; she would tell stories about her classmates staring at her, muttering about her outfits and her appearance. She did not care one bit about those words. She told stories about the nights she spent in the woods near her home, how the fireflies seemed to come to her when she called for them. The many four-legged animals that would come to greet her in those woods; she had often said that she would run through the woods like a four-legged creature. I believed all of those stories because it was clear that me and her were a lot alike. The night she died, I felt that strong link to my true identity turn into an old, broken twig. I try to hang onto the stories that she told me about the woods, about her colorful outfits, and how she kept her head high through it all.
There are only fragments of those stories left now, 20 years later. I do not have any children, but if I do have children, I would try with every fiber to recount the feeling of freedom from the cold stone walls of her school when she returned home. I would tell my children that she still had that inner child who still ran through the woods until her death. The sound of crunching gravel pulled me out of the beautiful watery world and into the dark reality that was rolling up my driveway. I brushed some grass from my pants and walked up the hill toward the cottage; as I got closer, I saw the dirty and rusty 1976 Ford standing in the driveway like a quiet but feral beast. It’s teeth and claws just waiting to taste flesh and draw blood. My father stumbled out of his truck; I am not sure if he twisted his leg again or if he was drunk. Probably both of those things at the same time. He turned to me and, with a crooked expression, opened his arms up to me. I was but a few feet away but never wanted to be so far away from him.
“My little Becky,” he shouted as if I was hard-of-hearing. “Feels like forever since I last saw you!”
“We just saw each other two weeks ago, for Jessie’s birthday,” I retorted. I begrudgingly accepted his embrace more out of fear and I could smell the whiskey on him. The smell coated me like the dread every child feels when seeing their parents drunk. Jessie was the youngest and the sweetest one, who had never been one to confront our father about his drinking. The elder siblings were getting more than tired of our father’s drunk antics, with Carissa making a snide comment about his blood being more alcohol than blood. My father only gave her the most disturbing glare and ran off in his truck. We all stood in silence wondering if that night would be the night he gets in an accident, that night our father got lucky again and wasn’t caught behind the wheel. Such things have become almost like clockwork in our family.
My father finally let go of me, and looked over the house like it was a former friend he did not want to see for a million years.
“When are you gonna sell the blasted house?” He slurred out, “It’s a devil house!”
“I am not selling the house,” I said plainly. “This house is the only thing I have that reminds me of mom.”
My father brushed that comment away and gracelessly ambled to the porch. “Well, is there dinner ready?” He said behind his shoulder as he nearly missed the last step to the porch. I looked at him standing near the doorway, it all but reminded me of how it all used to be. My mother and father would be standing in the doorway waiting for all of us to come home after an exciting day outside. Their smiles were just one of the many great things about the summer but those looks of happiness were replaced with the image of a boozed-up shadow of my father, a miserable old man who has said more than several times how he actually hated our mother after her death.
I walked up to meet my father because there would be no point in standing outside waiting for the other to move. I moved past him and into the house where the pot roast was sitting in the slow-cooker, waiting for me, and my father, to eat. We ate at the table in the most uncomfortable dinner that I have experienced with him. When the fork finally hit the plate, I sighed in relief hoping that this would mean that he is leaving. My father decided that tonight would be the night that he stayed in the house. I went upstairs to set up the spare room for him on the main floor since I did not trust my father’s ability to climb up stairs while drunk. As much as I felt unsafe around him, I did not want to find him in the middle of the night bleeding at the bottom of the stairs. My father fell asleep fairly quickly, and I climbed up the stairs with careful steps, hoping that my father does not wake up suddenly and come barreling toward me. One would say that my behaviors around him were a trauma response to all of the alcohol abuse after our mother’s death.
I crawled into my warm bed, wanting to fall asleep. However, I couldn’t help but toss and turn at night thinking about all the days my father would rage through the house. Those days were filled with so many bottles that one would walk in and think that our home was a bar. Those days where we all tried to have our father up and ready to take us to school but, we all ended up walking to school and back by ourselves. The distance wasn’t too great but we all had too many close calls with strangers, and those who claimed to be our father’s friend, who saw children walking by themselves and thought of the evillest things. The memories felt too suffocating, too real. I heard some loud crashing the sound of my backdoor being slammed open, hoping all of the noise was just a dream, I fell back asleep with my back to my window.
When I open my eyes again, the wall in front of me is tinged with orange. I roll over to face my bedroom window and see a huge fire towering into the air. I immediately jump out of my bed; I can barely recall if I ran down the stairs or flew. It didn’t matter to me as I grabbed the nearest pair of slippers and bolted down the hill, making sure not to trip over a hole on the way down. My father stood in front of the burning willow tree, empty gas can on one hand, and what looked like a book of matches in the other. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, the tree that the entire family had grown up with for years, with the tree being but a sapling when I was born.
Gone in a burst of flames. Gone were the peaceful days where the wind and branches sang me a song, where the tree and the water embraced each other in an intimate dance. The laughter and the stories that were shared under the shade. All gone. At first, there was nothing inside of me. I was just a hollow shell standing in a daze at the fire that was consuming one of the many links to my childhood. But then I look back at my father standing there like he won a war with the devil himself, and I start to seethe with rage. There is my father, a man who I thought was the pillar of our family but was bent of destroying everything, including our memories. Everything started flooding back at once, the tears came first. Then I remembered that one night after my mother came home from her nightly runs in the woods.
I was hearing some of the shouting, and thought to sneak quietly around the corner to the kitchen door to spy. My father confronted her and started demanding that she stop going into those woods, that the neighbors would think she was some mental patient. My mother would refuse to hear one word about it, and my father became so enraged that he slapped her across the face. That night, my mother nearly missed the edge of the counter. I stifled the gasp that I elicited. The image of my mother holding her cheek while laying on the floor was something I tried to bury within the cracks of my mind. That image used to stir fear and dread within me but now, it stirred rage.
“Dad! What the hell are you doing?!?” I finally shouted at him after a few moments of stunned silence.
“I burned the damn tree,” He stated coldly, not moving to even look at me. “That tree and those woods was what was making all of you into wild animals.” He pointed to the left of him, “I wanted all of you and your mother to be civilized, clean, and obedient. But your mother was a stubborn bitch when I met her and she was just as stubborn the day she died.” He turned toward me but not before he nearly fell trying to turn. “She should’ve learned her lesson the first time, everyone was saying how your mother was insane, how she couldn’t give a shit about what other people thought. I didn’t listen to them, I thought I could change her until she birthed all of you. I couldn’t believe it. I have barely touched her during our marriage. How the fuck could she have children!? She was clearly……seeing someone in those woods, behind my back. So, I had enough of her going out into those woods, and put a stop to it at last.”
I stood still, not believing any of the nonsense that was coming out of his mouth. My mother was a stubborn woman but this was never a bad thing as she always was willing to change for her children. Nothing he said was at all the truth but he still spoke like he was revealing some ugly truths. He may view all of these traits as bad: Allowing us the freedom of movement, disregarding the thoughts of neighbors, the conformists, being in touch with your own spirit and self but every one of us loved her for her loving, charitable spirit and her warmth toward the underdogs, those who were left behind by everyone else. That was why I felt the closest to her.
I was still boiling with rage but I could not let it get out of control. He will just use it as an excuse to disregard me, like usual.
“Dad, I think you have done more than enough. You need to leave NOW!” I said through gritted teeth.
“I am not finished with this damned place yet.” A sinister look crossed over my father’s features. He stumbles toward me and I try to decide the best outcome whether I should shove him away or run. I decide on the latter and take off toward the house but not before my father lunges at me, grabbing both of my ankles and dragging me to him. I quickly turn to face him and try to land a few punches on his swollen face. It doesn’t seem to phase him one bit. I thrash at him with complete abandon hoping that I would either hit him or overwhelm him. Neither worked and I found myself being crushed by the weight of an angry drunk man in his 50’s. I try with every last bit of energy to bat away at him but he already had his hands around my throat.
I felt my life slipping away and darkness taking over me, the peace that was violently taken from me by my own father in every way possible. My mother was gone, and so was the tree. My siblings were too far away to come save me and so was the closest neighbor. I felt so hopeless. What soon came after that hopelessness was anger. How dare this man come to my property and speak ill of the woman he married, who gave birth to his children, the woman who promised to be his companion and remained so until her death!
I turn my head and I see my hand turning into a dog’s paw, it honestly felt painful, alien but so familiar. Like I was in this form before. My father must have noticed me changing shape because I saw a look of fear over his face and him jumping off me. He cowered while trying to back away from me toward the river. He must have assumed that I would not follow him into the river.
He was wrong. I knew that this man would come after my siblings next if he was left to live. I had no choice but to attack him, I lunged at him with all of my strength. We both tumbled into the river, our limbs and water getting entangled in the confusion of this fight. I felt his flesh and blood tickle my tongue as I sank my teeth into him. I cannot see exactly where but the amount of blood that was spilling was a clear sign that I must have bit into an artery. As quickly as the fight began, it ended. With bits of my father still hanging on my teeth, the rest of him floated away down the river with a trail of blood following not too far behind.
The realization finally sank in that I turned into a wolf.
I turned into a creature and killed my father. I finally understood why my mother was running in those woods every night. It explained all of the strange hairs and giant footprints that we would find on the path when we played outside, she was also a wolf. How she came to be, I do not know. Maybe my father knew but I would never trust his drunk ramblings and his hateful nature. I know my mother to also be loyal. When she made a promise, she kept it.
I tried to sort all of my feelings of grief, anger, despair and fear. How would I explain to my siblings, and everyone else, about my father’s mangled body when they find it further downstream? Do I tell them that I turned into a wolf and killed him to protect them and our home?
They will not understand, they will not believe me.
I look toward the full moon in the sky, and let out a solemn howl. Making that decision to simply lie about my father’s death. My whole family was built on lies, fakery, and fraud.
What is another lie compared to the ones that are the foundation?
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