was screaming out in terror.
His father’s hand hovered over the sheet, ready to
grasp it and fling it back and Michael took a deep breath and held it, not
wanting to breathe in the dead thing’s air, not wanting to scream.
“Time for you to grow up, boy,” his father said, his voice cold and hard.
“You need to come face to face with what death ‘really’ looks like.”
When his father ripped the sheet away, Michael’s body jerked and spasmed as his
mind screamed for him to get away, but his father’s grip on his hair tightened
and twisted hard, forcing him to stare directly into the mutilated face of what
was once a man.
“Car crash,” his father spoke matter-of-factly. “For all of our
technological achievements, for all of our great cities, for all of our
towering libraries filled with knowledge, when all is said and done, we are all
nothing more than fragile little sacks of blood and bone. Even Goliath
was felled with the tiniest stone. Look hard into that face, boy, and see
your own reflection, ‘see’ what you will one day become – just another pile of
dead flesh on a slab like your mother!”
He growled the last word, as though he were filled
with fury that she had passed away and left them alone – alone with the dead.
Michael twitched and shook, and no matter how hard he clenched shut his
eyelids, the tears found a way through and the corpse mere inches away from his
face shone in what little light that penetrated the gloom, glistening with his
tears.
It was just like his dreams, cold dead eyes, staring
through him as if they were seeing him, ‘wanting’ him. His own eyes
stared into the vacant and blood rimmed eyes of the eternally grimacing man
with the right side of his head caved inward. Slowly, Michael left the moment,
and went inside. He’d been beaten enough in his twelve years on this
earth, and when he could, he’d do whatever it took to avoid another beating
even if that meant retreating deep inside his psyche, where the corridors were
dark and swallowed him up, reality fading away.
Over and over he would will himself to his tree
house, the one he had built high up in the old sycamore by the river on the
edge of their property, just out of eyeshot of the crematorium.
Over the months of constant abuse suffered at the
rough hands of his father he had discovered that if he focused hard enough, he
could go to his tree house – in his mind. There he could switch off from the
pain and the constant insults thrown at him by his father, a man he no longer
recognized.
It was as if the crematorium had sucked the soul out
of him, leaving him an empty shell just like the corpses he burnt daily, only
there was more a little more than an empty shell – just a little.
He never told his father that he’d build that little tree house. His
father had no time for childish things, and since Michael had turned twelve,
his father had made a point to burn every single reminder that his son had of
being a child.
Toys, comic books, even old photos, all
incinerated.
His father had changed. Before he’d started drinking every day, before
the beatings drew blood, before the burnings, his father had a reason to
smile. They had been a family and although he had always ruled with an
iron fist, he had still been a fair man who allowed Michael to express his
youthful exuberance for life however he wanted. They had gone fishing together,
camping and his father often took him into town with him to pick up supplies,
treating him to a meal once in a while.
Yes, they had been a family. That was all gone.
It all changed after his mother died. She had some form of cancer, but
his father had never said what kind. It ate her alive from the inside out
like a worm eats and apple and left her no different to the corpses that were
delivered to their property for cremation.
By the end, she was nothing more than a living
corpse.
She simply sat there, motionless, blank-eyed,
His father’s hand hovered over the sheet, ready to
grasp it and fling it back and Michael took a deep breath and held it, not
wanting to breathe in the dead thing’s air, not wanting to scream.
“Time for you to grow up, boy,” his father said, his voice cold and hard.
“You need to come face to face with what death ‘really’ looks like.”
When his father ripped the sheet away, Michael’s body jerked and spasmed as his
mind screamed for him to get away, but his father’s grip on his hair tightened
and twisted hard, forcing him to stare directly into the mutilated face of what
was once a man.
“Car crash,” his father spoke matter-of-factly. “For all of our
technological achievements, for all of our great cities, for all of our
towering libraries filled with knowledge, when all is said and done, we are all
nothing more than fragile little sacks of blood and bone. Even Goliath
was felled with the tiniest stone. Look hard into that face, boy, and see
your own reflection, ‘see’ what you will one day become – just another pile of
dead flesh on a slab like your mother!”
He growled the last word, as though he were filled
with fury that she had passed away and left them alone – alone with the dead.
Michael twitched and shook, and no matter how hard he clenched shut his
eyelids, the tears found a way through and the corpse mere inches away from his
face shone in what little light that penetrated the gloom, glistening with his
tears.
It was just like his dreams, cold dead eyes, staring
through him as if they were seeing him, ‘wanting’ him. His own eyes
stared into the vacant and blood rimmed eyes of the eternally grimacing man
with the right side of his head caved inward. Slowly, Michael left the moment,
and went inside. He’d been beaten enough in his twelve years on this
earth, and when he could, he’d do whatever it took to avoid another beating
even if that meant retreating deep inside his psyche, where the corridors were
dark and swallowed him up, reality fading away.
Over and over he would will himself to his tree
house, the one he had built high up in the old sycamore by the river on the
edge of their property, just out of eyeshot of the crematorium.
Over the months of constant abuse suffered at the
rough hands of his father he had discovered that if he focused hard enough, he
could go to his tree house – in his mind. There he could switch off from the
pain and the constant insults thrown at him by his father, a man he no longer
recognized.
It was as if the crematorium had sucked the soul out
of him, leaving him an empty shell just like the corpses he burnt daily, only
there was more a little more than an empty shell – just a little.
He never told his father that he’d build that little tree house. His
father had no time for childish things, and since Michael had turned twelve,
his father had made a point to burn every single reminder that his son had of
being a child.
Toys, comic books, even old photos, all
incinerated.
His father had changed. Before he’d started drinking every day, before
the beatings drew blood, before the burnings, his father had a reason to
smile. They had been a family and although he had always ruled with an
iron fist, he had still been a fair man who allowed Michael to express his
youthful exuberance for life however he wanted. They had gone fishing together,
camping and his father often took him into town with him to pick up supplies,
treating him to a meal once in a while.
Yes, they had been a family. That was all gone.
It all changed after his mother died. She had some form of cancer, but
his father had never said what kind. It ate her alive from the inside out
like a worm eats and apple and left her no different to the corpses that were
delivered to their property for cremation.
By the end, she was nothing more than a living
corpse.
She simply sat there, motionless, blank-eyed,
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