"Nobody asked," Granny admitted.
"I'd be interested in knowing how a baby could survive without milk, but I don't believe she'll tell you."
Doc was usually accurate in his readings of people. He was this time too.
# # # # # # # #
Speaking of reading... By the third week of January, Maddy felt safe enough to sit beside Pissy on the sofa and listen to her read from the picture books. Maddy pointed at words that she didn't know and Pissy sounded them out and explained what they meant. Pissy hadn't yelled at Maddy after that one time in the bedroom.
Except at nighttime, Maddy could go anywhere she wanted inside the house without supervision. Just like she had been able to do in the Big House. On one such exploration, she snuck into Brute and Pissy's bedroom and saw the chains and metal bracelets on the bed. Those things had been on the whipping post in Ranch #4's yard. She concluded that Pissy was a slave, like Pililiani had been. On that, Maddy was right. Pissy was a slave, but not to Brute. Maddy believed that another slave wouldn't hurt her, so that's why she had gone to Pissy with books in her hands. On that, she was wrong. Maddy still wasn't talking, but she could point and make Pissy understand what she wanted.
Pissy was a good mom – when she was in her happy place. Brute himself never paid much attention to Maddy. He heard how happy Pissy had been when Maddy showed up in the kitchen one day, pulled a peeler out of a drawer, and climbed up onto a chair ready to work. "She's a nice little girl," Pissy exclaimed.
"Humpph," Brute replied. He didn't much care what Maddy was like so long as she didn't cry. If she did cry, he'd have to report another dead blonde and he was sure that Safe Haven wouldn't be providing another replacement this time. As far as Brute was concerned, his god had provided the last one, not Safe Haven's personnel officer. After the first blonde had died, Brute was sure that he and Pissy would be fired. But Brute had prayed to his god for help and his god had provided a new blonde-girl that Safe Haven didn't know about. Brute was quite a religious zealot. He prayed to his god a lot. His god's name was Coors. Brute enjoyed what people might say was a fluid religion.
Speaking of Safe Haven, they had sent along some bots to be played daily into the little girl's mind. Safe Haven also told them the name that she should be trained to use. Maddy would take the place of a little girl that had gone missing around Christmas. From now on, Brute and Pissy had to call Maddy Karita. The god that was involved in that decision must have had an ironic sense of humour. Perhaps he was the god of metals.
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Chapter 17
Brute wasn't always known as Brute. In his pre-school years, he was known as Brutus, the only child of two Latin scholars. Back in the time of the Romans, Brutus was the man that Julius Caesar turned to and said, Et tu, Brute after Brutus plunged his knife into Caesar’s back. For the non-Latin aficionados among my readers, and there probably are a lot, that translates loosely to – Even you, Brutus? Brutus was Caesar's best friend before Caesar was assassinated by a whole lot of knife wielding enemies. Brutus' participation in the assassination plot probably cooled Caesar’s affection towards him.
The modern day Brutus was raised by his parents in the only Latin college in the continental United States at the time. This was in the town of Augustus Georgia, situated in the Chattahoochee National Forest, the only part of modern day Georgia that was above water at the time. The citizens founding that town in 2037 thought that they were naming it after the drowned city of Augusta, Georgia. But the old maps were hard to read and nobody could spell back then anyway. They named it Augustus instead. When the town's citizens realized their mistake, it would have been too embarrassing to admit that their town fathers didn't know how to spell, so they created the popular fiction that the town had been named after Augustus, a famous Roman emperor. They invited Latin scholars to come to the town and study Latin. Scholars across the land flocked to Augustus. All four of them. All four came to see what a chattahoochee was. Two stayed. Brutus' mother and father.
I'm sure my readers are curious to know what a chattahoochee is too. The Chattahoochee National Forest obtained its name from the Chattahoochee River that starts in that area. Chattahoochee is a word in a famous song from the 1990s that refers to the area being hotter than a hoochie coochie. This hoochie coochie item was a belly dance and yes, you're right – the ancients had some very weird words. ChattanoogaChooChoo is a similar sounding word from the time of the ancients and it referred to a railroad. The reason that I mention this to you is because of what happens when the ChattanoogaChooChoo railroad crosses the Chattahoochee River. At this point, it is referred to as the Chattahoochee-ChattanoogaChooChoo crossing. Seeing this on a road sign is worth a trip all on its own.
Since they were Latin scholars, Brutus' parents would be considered different. For example, when they were preparing for their weekly conjugal visit, (from a Latin word for having sex), Robertus (Brutus' dad) would bring a wreath of dandelions that he had picked for his wife's enjoyment. (Chattahoochee didn't have a lot of arable land in the vicinity.) Cleareta (Brutus' mom) would declare: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. This is Latin for I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts. This saying was unknown before the Greeks whipped Troy in battle by hiding their army inside a big wooden horse and letting the citizens of Troy drag it inside their fort so that it wouldn't get wet in the rain. The phrase became very well known afterwards, but that was too late for the people of Troy.
At the end of the conjugal visit with his wife, Robertus would declare: Veni, Vidi, Vici, which is what Julius Caesar said after defeating the Gauls in battle. It translates roughly to I visited, I saw, I conquered. Nobody likes a braggart but Cleareta didn't mind Robertus bragging about his sexual prowess because she was already asleep. Truth be told, she had fallen asleep several minutes earlier. Latinos are known as lovers; Latin scholars are known as bores.
This was the family environment in which Brutus grew up.
When the Latin college failed (no students showed up), Robertus and Cleareta moved to Rome, New York, believing that they'd find Latin scholars there. They were wrong about that. Brutus reacted to his classmates teasing him about his name by becoming exactly what they were calling him. A brute. In psychological terms, he became a sadist. A person who enjoys inflicting pain on others, especially during sex.
Pissy now, she grew up in a normal family environment. Sort of. Her parents had named her Priscilla. The family was wealthy for the time and they lived in a fancy house in Syracuse, New York. Priscilla's mother, Honoré, gave her daughter frilly little gifts. She also dressed her in cute little clothes and gave her lessons in ballet. Priscilla grew up believing herself better than everybody else in her school. It wasn't much of a leap for Priscilla's schoolmates to start calling her Prissy. The word Prissy would fit a person who cares too much about dressing and behaving properly and is easily upset by other people's behaviour. That's what Priscilla was. Prissy. She wouldn't be called that for long.
Priscilla didn't like the name. She didn't like it at all! She told her classmates that she didn't like it! She told them they had to stop! The teasing increased. Since Priscilla's mom had always showered her with affection, Prissy expected it from everybody. Her dad reacted to his daughter getting teased by buying her expensive gifts. Her own copter at the age of 10 was one attempt to deflect Priscilla's attention from the teasing. It didn't work; it made her classmates even angrier with her. The increased teasing caused her body to react uncontrollably in a way that embarrassed Priscilla thoroughly. You could say this reaction to her teasing pissed-off her classmates no end.
At that point, Prissy became Pissy. She moved around inside the school in a cloud of urine smell. She left school at the age of 16 and her dad bought her a husband. Pissy produced a child one year into the marriage. It was a beautiful little girl. Unfortunately, the little girl peed in her diaper. Several times a day even. Pissy managed to handle the distress of changing diapers – she had become used to it
in her own life. But when the little girl cried and cried and cried, and peed and peed and peed, Pissy couldn't cope. You might say that she made a piss-poor job of coping. The baby had a fatal accident. Dad paid for it to be covered up.
(Narrator: Not to belabour this reference to a mildly offensive word... Do any of my readers know where the term piss-poor came from? Hands? Nobody? OK, I'll tell you what Granny told me. Way back in time, when people worked on the land and used animal skins to clothe themselves, they'd create leather from animal hides. Tanning these skins required a mild acid. Those families that couldn't pay for this acid would bring a pot of urine to the tannery instead. These people became known as piss poor. Some peasants were so poor that they couldn't even bring a vessel containing urine to the tannery. That's where we get the expression: They were so poor that they didn't have a pot to pee in. You can now go to your parents and impress them with how much you know about urine, piss, and pee. They'll be happy that you did. Let's go back to Pissy's story now.)
A second child was produced a year later. A boy. Boy babies cry as often as girl babies; they pee too. He didn't live as long as his sister. This time, there was no covering it up. Pissy was sent to an expensive rest home in Rome, New York. They tried to cure her, but all Pissy learned was that she was sick, sick, sick. She couldn't live with the guilt of killing her two babies. She decided to end it all.
Pissy slipped out of the rest home one dark night. Crying and distraught, she bumped into a man on the street. He hauled off and hit her. It was love at first blow. Brute provided her with the punishment she craved for killing her own children; Pissy provided Brute with the willing punching bag that he needed. Psychologists would define her as a masochist. A person who needs physical pain to be happy. She became a slave to her need to be punished. She implored Brute to beat her as often as he wanted, especially during sex, which became even more satisfying than either could have imagined. Safe Haven knew their background. Ideal temporary parents were hard to find. They'd take whatever they could get.
Karita was now living with a violent sadist and an unstable masochist. So long as she didn't cry, and so long as her pretend parents didn't scare her so badly that she'd wet her pants, Karita would live.
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Chapter 18
It was the second week of February and Wolf was reporting for the group who had conducted the TiTr research on the judge. The adults back at the home compound were listening in. The research had taken much longer than anybody had expected.
"The judge's name is Foster Lewis," Wolf started. "We have confirmed some things about him, but we're also making some guesses. Foster was the youngest child of six in the Lewis family. His mother's name was May and his father's name was Burt. They named their children Annie May, Betsy May, Christy May, Doreen May, Eldreadth May, and Foster."
"Not Foster May?" Yollie asked.
"Foster had no middle name that we could determine. Notice that the children's names are in alphabetical order. We don't know what that tells us about the parents. Foster is six years younger than his sister Eldreadth and thirteen years younger than the oldest sister Annie. He's currently about 52."
"The family was dirt poor. They lived outside a tiny village named Cobourg that is on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario. They had a one-room shack on the lake itself. The father was a labourer and hired himself out to do jobs that nobody else would accept; the mother sewed and took in laundry that she washed in the lake. The girls would help. Foster was always considered too young to help with any family chore."
"Once a week, the family would wash their clothes in the lake and then bathe in it themselves. None of them were body shy. With a one room shack and six kids living in it, the Mom and Dad used the distraction of the family bath to slip around a bend in the lake and try to make a 7th baby. On this they were unsuccessful, but not for lack of effort. The children knew what their parents were doing. The oldest peeked first and then gradually brought the others to watch as they became curious about sex. They giggled and went back to their bathing area. Foster also watched. We have a clip of him as a 4-year-old boy staring intently at his parents, going back to the bathing area, sneaking up on Eldreadth, and trying to duplicate what his dad was doing. She pushed him away and told her sisters what he did. They all thought that he was being cute. Over the years, Foster watched his sisters as they grew into their women's bodies. He watched intently. Every bathing day, after his mother and father had slipped away, Foster would do what any normal family would consider creepy. There were many inappropriate touches. The girls didn't mind. It was like getting an advance look at what their boyfriends would be doing. We heard them saying those exact words. No sister discouraged him; the parents didn't know."
"For years, this pattern of family bathing continued every week. At night, the family slept together in the single room on straw pads. It was too dark to be sure, but we believe Foster would wait for a sister to fall asleep, crawl inside her bedding, and sleep with her. She'd wake up in the morning and push him away, but said nothing to her parents and didn't seem overly concerned. He was far too young to be having sex, but we believe that the expectation was well established that some sister would wake up each morning to find Foster sleeping with her, skin on skin."
"Annie was the first to leave the family at the age of 23 in 2045. Foster was 10 at the time. By then, he was definitely sexually active in some fashion. We have a clip of Annie threatening to tell her mother what he had done to her. Forest responded with, Go ahead. I'll tell mom you told me to do it. She'll punish you, not me."
"Annie was extremely good looking and smart. All of the Lewis girls were beautiful and smart except Eldreadth. Annie attracted a young man who took her away to Toronto, established a business, and was successful. We did not follow the sisters after they married."
"The girls left the family home to a marriage in birth order. Some of them more hurriedly than they might have otherwise. They did this because of Foster who was enjoying each of them in turn from the time he turned 14. He was able to do this because his Mom and Dad had died when Foster was 13. Only Eldreadth remained with Foster at the lakeside shack after Doreen left. Eldreadth didn't seem to mind Foster's attentions. She saw herself as having little chance of finding a husband and Foster encouraged her belief in that. After Foster left the cottage at 18 in 2053, she must have found a man because she had a daughter in 2055. She named that daughter Helen. To hide the fact that there was no father in Helen's life, Eldreadth gave her a fictional surname. Masters."
"Oh no!" Dreamer interrupted. "Helen Masters. That was Basher's mom. But she was having an affair with Doctor Sandman."
"No she wasn't, Dreamer," TG said gently. "She was having an affair with the judge. She'd walk into Dr. Sandman's suite and go straight through an adjoining door into the judge's suite. One of us watched them have sex. Doctor Sandman was fronting for the judge and staying the night in his own suite with his wife. We don't know why he did that. We don't know why his wife would agree to it."
Silence.
"I messed up," Dreamer said. "I didn't want to watch people have sex. I told Lucas that Dr. Sandman was Sparkle's boyfriend. Lucas accused the wrong man."
"It wouldn't have made any difference," Lucas tried to set her at ease.
"I almost got Lucas killed," Dreamer said. She was pale and her hands were shaking. "Just because I didn't want to watch Sparkle have sex." Melissa stood behind her, put her arms around her shoulders, and whispered something in her ear. Yollie also got up to provide support.
"You didn't attract attention to Lucas, Dreamer." TG added more support. "The judge had already decided to kill him. Helen Masters was not the judge's niece. We can't find the proof yet, but we're confident that it was Foster who got Eldreadth pregnant, making Helen Masters...
"... his own daughter," Melissa emphasized for Dreamer. "The judge had sex with his own daughter and he had to have known who she was. You weren't the reason the judge lured Luca
s into the trial. The judge had to kill him before anybody, even his own people, found out about his incest. That's why Lucas was given the poison to stop him from saying anything at all in the trial."
"We have way more to research," William said.
"Weeks more at least," Wolf said.
"I'll be joining the research team," Mac said.
"The judge is mine, Mac" Yolanda said from the home compound.
"I'll hold him down," Mac offered.
"Hoo boy," Wanda exclaimed. "Can I be at the surprise party?"
# # # # # # # #
Back in Watertown, Brute and Pissy told Karita that they were going to take her outside the house for the first time and give her a surprise. Brute blindfolded Karita and Pissy pulled her up into her arms and carried her into the middle of a colony of snakes sleeping on some rocks near the front door. Brute kicked some of the snakes aside to make room for Karita while Pissy put her down on the rocks. Then they both stepped away.
"Karita, you can take your blindfold off now," Brute said. He had been looking forward to this for a week. Pissy wouldn't let him beat Karita, but this would be the next best thing.
Karita took the blindfold off and looked around. She saw the outside of the house, the lake, the trees...
"Look down, Karita," Brute said.
She did.
"Don't move," Brute advised. "Those snakes are poisonous. They'll kill you." (Surprise!)
Karita shrieked and peed herself immediately. She stood there, petrified with fear, shrieking and howling, the pee running down her legs. That didn't sit too well with Pissy, and as Brute had anticipated, she stepped into the circle of sleeping snakes and started whaling at Karita's face and body. Just because Brute couldn't beat the little girl didn't mean that he couldn't enjoy watching Pissy do it.
And he did exactly that as Pissy swung and swung, and Karita covered up as best she could, too frightened to move her feet. Somehow, her body made more pee and that made Pissy even madder. When she put her hands on Karita's shoulders and started shaking her, Brute stepped in. To protect his investment.