AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She chose her fate when she decided to take on the Kelly name. In this war, you’re either a Kelly or you’re a Doyle, and sadly for Cara, she chose the wrong side. And now, her death will be a warning for all future Kellys.
Cara continues to fight; she won’t surrender with ease. Her dancing partner doesn’t appreciate her insolence, so to subdue her, he punches her in the face. Blood pours from Cara’s broken nose, staining the white carpet red.
The bloodshed rouses the bloodlust.
“My turn,” one of the men says, dragging a screaming Cara into his arms.
Punky knows he made a promise, but he can’t watch his ma being treated this way. He lunges for the handle, but it doesn’t budge because the door is locked.
“Ma!” he screams, banging on the door until his fists begin to ache. But his cries are muted by Frank Sinatra playing loudly over the radio. “Mummy, open the door!”
The men take it in turns, passing Cara between them, her limp body nothing but a ragdoll as her spirit begins to wither and die.
Punky can’t see straight as his vision is blurred with tears, and when Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never” comes on the radio, Punky does what his ma asked—he becomes someone else. He pretends to be anywhere but here.
With trembling hands, he reaches for the white face paint and unscrews the lid. His mother’s pained shrieks have him dipping his fingers into the paint and circling his cheeks and forehead to coat his skin white.
When one of the men produces a hunting knife, intent on silencing Cara’s screams for good, Punky then swaps the white paint for the black. As his mother’s mouth gets slit from ear to ear, Punky repeats the same action with his black face paint, which is shaped as a crayon.
He runs the tip from the apple of his cheek to his mouth, where he draws lines across his lips, wishing to silence his screams, then repeats the action on the other side of his cheek. He now wears a grin as big as his ma’s. With precise strokes, he draws slashes downward along the line he just drew, emphasizing his grin as something sinister, something grotesque.
When one of the men bites down on Cara’s nose and her ear, Punky draws a messy black dot on his own nose, and with the black dye he squirts into his hand, he uses his fingers to flick paint onto his ear and down his neck so it resembles the blood splatter his ma wears.
Cara drops onto her stomach when the men let her go, but they’re not done, not yet. They lift her dress and tear off her knickers.
“Whatever ya see, whatever ya hear, I want ya to know it’s not real because yer not really here.”
Cara’s words play over and over in Punky’s head as he watches the men take turns mounting his ma, riding her like Punky saw the stray neighborhood dog do to his Border Collie before his dad shot it dead.
As the men holler, biting and fondling a near unconscious Cara, Punky paints black around his eyes, not wanting to bear witness to his ma being defiled over and over again. Once they’re done taking it in turns, the area around Punky’s eyes is coated in thick black paint.
But he can still see.
One of the men lifts her limp head by her snarled hair and bangs her head onto the carpet. A jagged gash forms on the left side of her forehead, so Punky draws a small line to replicate his ma’s wounds.
The men laugh, cheering and high-fiving one another, proud of their efforts. Punky hopes it’s over.
But it’s not.
One of the men, the man who danced with her first, stands over Cara’s broken body and seems to examine the mess he’s made.
“I never wanted this for ya, Cara. But ya didn’t listen.”
Punky doesn’t know what that means. But he knows his mother did something bad.
The man bends down and lifts Cara’s head back by her hair, exposing her neck. Cara moans, her face barely recognizable. Her bloodshot eyes focus on the wardrobe door where she knows Punky is watching. She reaches out with a quivering arm, wanting to touch him, to tell him it’ll be all right.
She wishes he never saw what he did.
The bright light catches the sharp silver of the blade which slits Cara’s throat. Blood pours from the wound as Cara wheezes for breath.
Punky’s eyes widen, but he reminds himself it’s not real. He’s not really here. He focuses on Cara’s favorite rose brooch. His ma loves flowers. She loves nature. But she’ll never be able to feel the sunshine on her skin ever again.
He snares the bottle of black paint and squirts it down his neck where he runs his fingers through it, smearing it across his throat. Everything his ma feels, he feels too.
The man lets Cara go, where she flops onto her face, bleeding out.
He wipes the bloody blade on the back of her dress before coming to a stand. Punky peers up and up as the man is tall. When one of the men begins to hunt through Cara’s jewelry box, Punky sees a crucifix tattooed on his left wrist.
