Chapter 1
The Stain.
I could feel the heat pressing against me coming from every direction. The air was somehow thick, heavy and hot all at once. The room in front of me dark, save for the piercing shard of light coming through the crack in the drapes, illuminating the dust particles in its path. The stillness of the moment complete. The house so old, not a move could be made without eliciting a loud piercing creak. Not a single right angle in the place. Door frames so crooked as to make a liar out of physics. So many times had I heard the bragging from her. “Built by John and Pricilla Alden.” “Our humble abode is in the history books” she’d tell anyone. How I hated the bragging. Yet it was true. The house was almost 200 years old, her boasts only bringing my anger. After all she’d stolen the house from my Mother hadn’t she? There I stood, barely breathing, stuck in place and yet I had to see her. I had to look, but those old fears, fears from 50 years ago. The fears of a scared little boy had me locked. PTSD its now called but I didn’t know I had it, not back in 2008. Shaking I felt frozen on the threshold to the bedroom. Drawn forward by some invisible force and glued in place by the same. The creaking of the floorboards, the musty smells, all flooding my brain with memories. Horrible, sad memories.
From my vantage point I could see where it had happened. Where she’d laid dying and decomposing on the bedroom floor. The place where she had taken her last breath. I could see where the stain had formed as the life had slowly leaked out of her. How many times had I wished her dead? Countless. I’d tried to kill her and failed, but that was when I was 11. After my second attempt, she had me sent to a place, a place that had the reputation of being a gladiator school /daycare. I had loved it there. Gone were her medieval punishments. Her drunken Screes always aimed at me. The cutting and ripping of my earlobes. Snatching tufts of hair growing just in front and above my ears, so sensitive and when yanked upwards extraordinarily painful. Gone were her fumbling drunken attempts to molest a child. I can still hear her laugh as she would tease me about my small juvenile penis. The genitalia of a child, betraying me with an unwanted erection when she would pull on it. Sometimes her touch eliciting confusing pleasure, sometimes with anger and violence she would bring pain. I can still smell the bourbon on her breath as she would try to push her tongue in my mouth. When they sent me away it was a reprieve. They’d thought it a punishment. That was a laugh, not to me, for me it was safe harbor. My second attempt, the fire I’d started, growing so quickly creating its own wind, pushing the heat of the flames towards me. The arson that had become so large so quickly, surely it would engulf the entire house. Then the strange luck that put it out just as quickly as it had grown. Put it out before it had burnt her and all that belonged to her. I can remember standing outside, matches in hand as the sudden RI storm had put an end to my revenge. I felt an abject failure. I stood there, crying , the tears careening down my cheeks, sobbing, first from excitement. The witch was going to burn, then shame. The flames guttering out as I could hear her drunkenly calling out to me, “ Get in here and make me a drink you little shit” she’d yell, and cackle. The sounds of her pleasure a prelude to mayhem. Hearing her strange laugh, I’d know the horrors would begin soon. As soon as she would drink her third bourbon, with her head cocked just slightly to the side she’d look at me from the corner of her eye and smile, more of a grimace really and I’d know her fun was just beginning. “Little shit” was her pet name for me and she’d say it over and over. only in private, no one else could know, but when we were alone She’d yell it, chanting Little Shitty Pig and she’s pull all my worldly possessions off the shelves in my bedroom, leaving my prizes heaped on the floor. “Little Shit” she’d say as she’d lock me in the dirt basement for a couple of days. Punishment for some imaginary crime. The basement perfectly dark, silent and ominous with no end of small creepy crawlers scurrying around the dirt floor in the dark. I’d lay there terrified and sobbing in fear and shame and I’d feel the warm comfortable wetness as urine uncontrollably escaped my body. To this day sometimes I wake up, in the middle of the night, feeling the spiders crawling over me. How she’d laugh when eventually I’d be let out and she’d say what a disgusting little shit I was for pissing my pants. Covered in dirt and tears, I’d exit, black from head to foot. She’d make me shower outside. allowed only to use the “beach shower” while her kids, my stepbrothers and stepsister, the favorites, the golden children, her blood, would watch and laugh at me with complete disdain.
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They were all three handsomer than any had a right to be. Tall and thin and elegant and arrogant as only the children of the wealthy could be. Their good looks an instant contrast to me. I was stocky and poorly dressed. Clothes always dirty. Always messy. I wanted to be them more than anything and hated them for it at the same time.
All these memories colliding with each other like bumper cars. Flooding back to me as I hesitated outside my stepmother’s bedroom 50 years after the facts. Some invisible force halting my foot from crossing the threshold. The fear and shame as real as the days they were formed crashing into me, these 50 years later.
I gathered up my courage and stepped through the door.
The smell that hit me was huge. It was crushing and filled my nose and even my pores. I walked into the room, and I embraced the smell of her death. Her fetid smell and black tarry stain all that was left, soaked into the carpet. My father had beaten her and left her dying on the floor for 5 days in the August RI heat. So said the medical examiner. She’d lay there slowly dying and rotting. Life escaping from her through various orifices and leaving her legacy, a black tarry sludge on the tan carpet. I stood over the stain, all that was left and breathed in the foul odor that had been her. I spit at what had been my hell, now become a corpulent sludge, a dank and foul memory and as the spit landed I was finally set free.
