My name is Justin Hancock, and I always favored the light over the dark. The dark has very scary things contained within it that will assault the five senses to almost non-existence. It has menacing shadows, spooky creepy sounds, nauseating foul odors that penetrate the tongue and slimy ooze that runs through your fingers. I am so afraid of the dark that I refuse to sleep at night, instead choosing to sleep in the day. I hold my breath from the time the sun goes down, until its glorious golden brilliance rises over the horizon, bringing me serene relief.
I suffer for my unnatural affliction and because of my fear I cannot attend all the social events and activities that kids my age partake in. I have no friends.
I have survived the experiences of being a high school senior alone, tormented and scared. I am bullied not for my secret affliction, but for my mere presence as a human being.
Well, maybe a human being is too optimistic a description for what I am.
I hate myself and pray each night that whoever created me would just end my life and get it over with.
At least, that is what the voice kept telling me.
The only bright spot in this dreary existence is my Golden Retriever, Pal, who has been by my side since I was six years old when my mother gave him to me as a birthday present.
It is Pal who lies on the bed next to me at night as I curl up under a blanket fighting the drooping of my eyelids with my brain screaming at the rest of me to stay awake, stay alert!
Pal lets me rest my head on his soft furry back as I stroke his silky head and scratch behind his ears, daydreaming of a day where I can be just normal and sleep when the fat moon rises and the earth is shrouded in black.
Where my five senses are not paralyzed by the shadows, and I can have a normal life filled with friends.
I hear my classmates make fool hearty wishes for silly things such as a new car, new clothes or the latest iPhone, but for me, all I wish for is to simply not be afraid.
I zip my hoodie up to my neck and pull the hood over my head to ward off the sudden sun shower before I silently and discreetly enter the school.
Today is a big day at Paradise High, it is the last day before the Winter Ball and the hallway is buzzing with conversations about dates, dresses and the crowning of the Winter Ball Snow Queen and King.
Keeping my hood over my head and my eyes straight ahead, I walked swiftly by the hovering and gossiping masses to my American History class, confident that for once in my entire school career, I am going to make it to a class without being harassed.
However, like most of my tiny dreams, this goes up in smoke when Clive Gibbons, the senior class president and captain of the track and field and swim teams, pushes me over the threshold, knocking me down on my hands and knees and onto some broken glass that someone purposely left there, cutting them.
I tried to ignore the fits of laughter as I struggled with my too heavy backpack and try to control the flow of blood running down my torn blue jeans and my hands. “Hey, looks like cocky here got his period! Do any of you girls have a pad?” The peals of laughter from my classmates almost drown out the arrogant booming cackle coming from Clive’s big priggish mouth. I tore out of the room with whatever speck of dignity I have left, almost bowling over Mr. Longhorn as he enters.
I barely heard him cursing and calling out to me as I ran as fast as I could to the boy’s washroom. I prayed that it was empty and breathed a sigh of relief as I discovered that it is. I was blessed with one small favor from the gods today.
I fill the sink with hot water and carefully and gently mend my wounds. I have become quite an expert at self-mending.
I have to be, considering that this was not the first, nor the last of my injuries.
Hell, I will probably receive at least one or two more confrontations before the three o’clock bell rings.
I received so many cuts and bruises over my short lifetime that I always have a fully stocked first aid kit in my backpack.
The warning bell shrilled in my ears, signaling me that the school day was about to start, but I ignore it. Leaning over the sink, filled with my blood, I pull my hood down and take one long look at myself.
The bruise I received from my last confrontation on my cheek was now fading to yellow and the angry red cut above on my right temple had begun to heal over, leaving a crusty scab.
My long thin nose is slightly crooked thanks to the many times I am used as a punching bag.
My light blue eyes are listless and have dark shadows from nights without sleep.
I push my forehead into the glass to press the growing headache deep into my head in the hope that the headache would squash the voice there.
I push myself off the mirror and slide down the bathroom stalls and wrap my arms around my waist, and rock back and forth, desperate to soothe away that voice.
A loud grumble interrupts the rocking motion for a moment.
I had forgotten to eat breakfast this morning, again.
But what did it matter? What is the point of eating when there are much more important things to worry about?
Like quieting the suicidal screaming in my head.
The voice howling in my ear manifested the same night my mother left me.
Anna Claire Smith found out she was pregnant with me during her senior year of high school.
My father is still unknown to me, the details, including his name has been kept from me. The only tidbit of information I heard through the murmurs of my Aunts and Grandmother was that I was the result of a one-night stand at her best friend’s birthday party.
A house full of 17 year olds without any parent supervision plus an endless supply of alcohol. You do the math.
For the first three years of my life, it was just my mother and me. I enjoyed my time with her, being the center of attention and the only male in her life.
Then at the age of four, Damian came along, and suddenly I had to share my mom with him. It took me a long time to warm up to this new person in my life, but by the time I entered kindergarten, I not only liked him, I grew to love him.
Damian became the father I never had.
At the age of 24, Damian had taken on a huge responsibility becoming involved with a woman with a kid, an instant family is not an easy thing to accept and deal with.
I knew he must really love my mother to not only move in and accept me as his own, but to deal with the tragedy that would soon follow their second wedding anniversary.
Mom had been suffering these awful headaches since the age of 16 that got worse over time. With some headaches so bad that she would not be able to function, staying in bed, in the dark, trying to sleep through the pain.
At first the doctors told my grandparents that it was simply migraines and prescribed her painkillers.
They worked for a while, and for a time my mother believed that they were gone for good.
However, when my mother suddenly collapsed and suffered a grand mal seizure, she was rushed to the ER where they discovered the source of those “migraines”.
My mother had a brain tumor that had gotten too big to operate, leaving her with only months to live.
Though Mom and I were both terrified and devastated about the news, my father was the picture of calm, seemingly unaffected by this horrific news.
Nonetheless, what I mistook for and cruel indifference was really Damian’s way of coping with the news of my mother’s pending death.
He kept it all bottled in in order to become our full time caregiver.
My mother declined rather rapidly.
In a matter of months my mother went from being a beautiful, strong and full of life to so thin and pale that she could barely keep her head up.
In her final days on this earth, I remember spending those last moments with her lying next to her in her bed, curled up in her arms, with my head on her chest and counting her heartbeats.
I stroked her smooth bald head that once had long, silky, sandy blond hair that tickled me whenever she held me or gave me
a kiss and hug, while she stroked my hair until we were both fast asleep.
Then on the eve of my 8th birthday, as I was curled up in her arms with my head on her breast, counting her heartbeats as they suddenly became fewer and fewer until I could count no more,
I knew my mother had left me to live with the angels.
So I hung onto her still warm body as her last breath caressed my cheek.
I closed my eyes to fight back the tears that had pooled behind my eyelids and before long, I fell off to sleep as I always did.
I sensed that I was floating on a cloud flying over the ocean, high in the sky and sitting on my mother’s lap.
Her arms were encircled around my arms and chest as I leaned into her scent of lilacs and baby powder.
Her long hair whipped around her in the wind as it periodically tickled me on the cheek.
She kept humming the tune of my favorite nursery rhyme as we flew over the vast sapphire ocean.
I was so happy, peaceful and serene that I felt no desire to come down from this cloud with my Mom.
This was the precise moment that despite my tranquil cheerful mood embracing the warm glow of my mother, something deep and dark inside me cut into my happiness turning it sour and ugly.
I was not deserving of such peace and love.
Out of nowhere, a dark black cloud as big as the sky bore down on my mother and me, swiftly swallowing us whole before we got a chance to fight it away.
I watched in terror as I was ripped from my angelic mother’s arms and thrown hard into the ocean below.
Agonizing pain made my eyes snap open as I looked up from my position on the floor into the blazing red eyes of my father.
“You little bastard! What did you do to your mother?” he accused, slurring his words.
“I-I did nothing, Daddy! Mommy is with the angels now!” I meekly protested. The tears that were pooled under my eyelids now burst forth, falling down my cheeks in a torrent.
My protest was met with a stinging slap across my face that made my head hit hard on the floor.
When my head hurt so bad that it brought more tears to my eyes, he hit me even harder, lifting me off the floor and shaking me.
“Stop that bawling you brat! A real man does not cry, he sucks it in and does not be a little pussy like you!” he raged, as the strong stench of beer and booze wafted into the air making me gag.
The more he shook me, the more upset I became and, combined with the foulness of his drunkenness, I could not help but vomit the bile that I been trying so hard to swallow, all over him.
This infuriated him all the more.
“You little bastard, look what you done!”
These were the last words I heard before he propelled me from his arms and into the wall.
I am shaken from my nightmarish reverie by the shrill of another bell signaling the end of another class.
I wipe the tears and snot with the back of my hand, slowly stand up and walk out of the washroom and make a beeline for home.
I am grateful for yet another blessing as I find that the house is still vacant and my father is still at the pub.
Before my mother became sick, my father was a certified workaholic climbing swiftly up the corporate ladder on his way to becoming his advertising firm’s youngest VP.
However, when she became sick, the burden of having to solely care for a terminally sick wife and young son became too much for him.
He turned to the bottle to soothe his frustrations and ease his burdens.
At first my father was a closet drinker, only taking sips of alcohol here and there, but very quickly those sips turned into full bottles and endless nights spent at the local pub.
Soon my father was a full time alcoholic who spent most of his wages on booze.
My father thought that he had his drinking under control, until Bill Simms, my father’s boss, fired my father for drinking on the job.
One would think that this would shake up his world a little, losing his job when he had a dying wife and young son at home, but my father did not operate that way.
He continued to drink heavily and by the time my mother died, he had become brutally abusive against the person who he believed caused his wife’s death-me.
After that night when my mother died with her arms around me, and my father so violently took out his grief and rage on me, the voice first visited me.
When I awoke from being knocked unconscious, I heard a strange new voice calling out to me.
The voice was deep, gentle and commanding.
It whispered in my ear in soothing tones that my mother’s death was not my fault, but how wonderful it would be if I would leave this cruel abusive world behind and join her.
There is nothing like a voice in your head that gets to the point.
That voice has never left me and becomes stronger the weaker I become.
When I pass by the kitchen my stomach rumbles again.
This time I do not ignore it so I open the fridge to find that there is no food or drink, save for the dozen beers sitting on the top shelf waiting for my father.
I search the cupboards to find something to sedate the hunger gnawing at me, finding nothing but a single pack of saltines and peanut butter.
This will have to do until I am able to sneak some money from my father’s pub fund to buy some groceries.
I have done this before without detection because my father is always too drunk to notice a few dollars missing.
I make sure to only take enough to buy a few essentials, leaving enough there for his rounds of drinks at his favorite pub.
I take my crackers and peanut butter and a glass of tap water and go to my bedroom and lie on my bed.
I join Pal on my bed as I share my crackers (minus the peanut butter) with him, and then lay my head on my pillow.
I reach under my pillow and pull out my favorite book and open the worn page to my favorite nursery rhyme.
The same rhyme that my mother read to me every night before I went to sleep.
Even to this day, this book never fails to put me to sleep.
With my hunger sedated, I read the poem over and over until I feel my eyelids droop, and before long I drift into sleep.
I sleep until I smell that all too familiar stale whisky odor turning at my almost empty insides and feel the blows of his rage all over my body, jarring me awake.
My father has violently pulled me from my bed by my wrist, lifting me high in the air and throwing me across the room, my head missing the wall by mere inches.
His blows no longer carry the sting of his words. Instead, the years have mellowed him to just needing to use his fists and feet.
Pal growls menacingly at my father as he leaps from the bed, clamping his sharp canine teeth into my father’s arm.
I knew that Pal had gotten my father good this time when he yelps out in pain.
Pal comes to my rescue every night when my father comes calling on me as an outlet for his pent up rage, but Pal rarely gets to bite my father because he always hits Pal hard enough to knock my dog unconscious.
But tonight, Pal has managed to make my father bleed, infuriating him.
My father retaliates by letting me go just for a moment so he can drop kick Pal into the wall, snapping his neck.
I let loose a cry of anguish as I watch my faithful companion and only friend and defender die such a brutal death.
“I told you to stop that blubbering you waste of space! All that snotting and wailing does is make you a wuss! Now shut up and stand up like a man and take your beating!” he seethed, steam practically coming from his ears.
I feel the fear thicken as I am treated to the first biting words my father has spoken to me in two years.
I thought I have been taking his beatings pretty well every night for the last ten years.
When I did not get up quick enough, he pulls me up by my arm, nearly dislocating my shoulder again and pulls me to my feet.
I am grateful t
hat he is holding me up because I would not be standing otherwise under my own will.
I had not looked my father in the eye since that night of my first beating, but something inside of me compels me to look him in the eye.
When his dull blood shot hazel eyes met my dead blue ones, he staggers back, almost losing his footing.
My father turns deathly white as I hold his stare, never turning away for a moment.
I could not understand what was happening, why my father was suddenly looking so frightened of me, when I heard a voice whispering in my ear.
This voice however, was not the same deep menacing voice encouraging my suicide, but a softer, gentler voice urging me to fight back, fight for my life.
It was time to stop the years of horrendous abuse and stand up to the man who instead of being my caretaker, my nurturer and guide through this harsh world, became the man that harassed and abused me worse than all my classmates combined.
This voice that told me to fight for my existence was my mother.
I did not hesitate this time as my angelic mother gave me the strength to fight back.
I continue to stare my father down as I summon all the strength I had in me to push my father off me.
He was caught off guard and at first did not know how to react to his son standing up to him and fighting back, but soon he recovers as he grabbed my arm, twisting it painfully behind my back and dragging me out the door to the top of the stairs.
“Mr. Big and Brave thinks that a little shove is going to stop me? You got to be kidding me, boy! I am far stronger than you are, so close your eyes and say your prayers; you are about to take your last breath. Say hello to that whore of a mother for me, will you?”
This was it, I thought. I am going to die tonight and I am going to welcome it.
I am welcoming my salvation from his hellish nightmare and I cannot wait for it to happen.
But not before I take care of one little chore.
“I will, but only if you say hello to Lucifer for me!”
My voice is cracked and weak from so little use over the years, but it still packs a punch as I distract my father long enough to give him one more shove.
He tumbles over the rail, taking me with him, landing hard on his back, his head hitting off the hardwood floor, snapping his neck like a twig.
His body does very little to cushion my fall as I land next to him, on my head.
I feel no pain as I watch my blood pool around me, only weightless peace as the spreading darkness turns into light.
I am no longer afraid of the dark.
THE END
RUTH
by Thomas Ryan
https://thomasryanwriter.com/