With my mouth refusing to cooperate, my ears have no trouble picking up my dad’s faint murmur, “She doesn’t have your mother’s dark hair and molten eyes, but she is around the same age your mother was when I sliced you from her stomach.”
Her screams lit my dreams for the next three years, I mouth at the same time my father vocalizes it.
“Do you remember when I shared her with you, Dexter? It was only the quickest touch of her jiggling breast as she lay motionless next to you, but I’m certain you’ll never forget it. How old were you then?”
He says, “Four,” at the same time I say, “Three.”
“Three—four, close enough. One touch wasn’t sufficient though, was it? You wanted more. I could see it in your big, beady eyes when you watched me claim her.”
“It was enough. . .”Enough to spark a manic psychosis.
It was at summer camp when I was thirteen that I discovered not every child sleeps in their mother’s bed. To me, it was normal, almost as routine as being woken in the middle of the night by my father’s grunts of ecstasy. It didn’t matter if I was two or twelve, my father never fucked my mother unless I was lying beside her. It was the ultimate way to display the power he had over her. He could do anything to her, even in front of her son, and she would never say no.
Her submissiveness is one quality she and Megan share. The other is the fact they’re both orphans. My mother was a misfit runaway. Her foster parents’ wish that she abort me was what sent her to sunny California with a backpack full of clothes and a four-month rounded stomach.
My mother often preached that my father stole the light from her eyes, but over the years, my father exposed that wasn’t the truth. He saved her life, and in turn, he saved mine.
My mother’s foster parents wanted her to abort me so I wasn’t born addicted to drugs. After seeing how careless my mother was, my father made a decision to raise me as his own before I had even left my mother’s womb.
The rehabilitation methods he forced upon my mother were barbaric but effective. From the stories I heard, I only shook uncontrollably the first twelve days of my life.
Although my mother’s first few years as a parent were rocky, she stepped up to the plate when my father granted me permission to attend middle school. She didn’t wear a frilly apron, nor did she cut my sandwiches into heart-shaped designs. She just told anyone and everyone that my father was her abductor and that she was a prisoner in his luxury mansion in the hills of Malibu.
Everyone thought she was hilarious. Even I laughed along with them. Her story was utterly ridiculous. How could anyone be held “captive” in a multi-million dollar estate by a much-loved and revered member of society, be forced to wear clothes in excess of four figures per piece, and be draped in diamonds?
No wonder no one believed her. Her story didn’t make any sense. She was sick. Kind of like Megan. . .Kind of like me.
I was fortunate to have my father’s guidance to see me through my dark days. He thickened my skin and proved I wasn’t what was wrong with society. Society is the one with the issues.
I’m pulled from my thoughts when a drunken patron stumbles into me while navigating the eight foot-wide sidewalk. If I could look past my arrogance, I could take responsibility for some of our collision. My steps have never been so wobbly.
“Sorry, sugar,” she murmurs with a hiccup before her bare feet gallop across the cracked concrete to catch up to her friends a few paces up. She is lucky she is with company, or I would have passed on my dislike for drunken idiots.
Her slur doesn’t just break me from my thoughts; it halts my dad’s reminiscing mid-lecture as well. “Jeez, Moose, you let me get carried away again. See what happens when you get locked away for years at a time? I reminisce instead of discussing business.”
His last word should fill me with worry, but his use of my nickname keeps it at bay.
A chair creaks. He must be in his office. “I’ll send the taxidermist to Vicar’s playground. . .”
I wait, knowing there is more.
“But. . .”
Told you.
“You owe me. Vicar wasn’t just a member of my association. He was also a friend.”
“What do you want?” My voice is thick from lack of use.
My father sighs heavily, either pondering or hopeful. I realize it is the latter when he asks, “Was Scarlett present during extermination?”
“She was.” When his sign turns into a moan, I quickly add on, “But I doubt she is anymore.”
Glass smashing resonates down the line. “You let her go?! My god, what’s the matter with you?”
His sneer is delivered with a memory, a vision of being slapped over the head while hearing the same screamed words on repeat.
I shake my head, ridding the confusion. Usually, the vision is accompanied by my mother’s voice, but today it presented with my father’s. This is even more proof that I need to get Megan out of my head. She is fucking with me, making me an idiot who can’t see the entire picture.
