Page 20 of Needing Your Love
One breath, one blink.
Tearing my gaze off the house, I focused on the fake rock beside the stoop and the key that Gram had assured me still rested inside it.
My fingers shook terribly, and it was a solid two minutes before I managed to retrieve the key from its hiding spot. Blowing out a slow exhale, I forced my feet to lift toward each tread until I reached the landing.
I jolted at the loudness of the key sliding into the lock. The click caused another flinch, and my muscles jerked.
The door creaked open beneath my firm shove, and I gripped the metal teeth digging into my palm, the slight pain giving me something to focus on.
Closure, I reminded myself of why I stood on the edge of possible insanity. Pull up those bootstraps, as Gram would say, and face the shit head on.
I stepped inside, the scent of stale cigarette and rancid grease assaulting my nose.
My entire being froze as the blood drained from my face and left me lightheaded. Lungs attempting to instinctively draw breath, I struggled, blinking flashes of memories, loud and vivid, ripping through my mind.
Smacking face-first into the doorjamb.
The stained, filthy couch Dad had bent me over while whipping my ass and back red with his belt.
A single corner of the room without furniture where I’d knelt, nose against the wall, having to hide my ugly face from him when he couldn’t bear the sight of me. More often than not, dry rice had been beneath my knees, digging into tender skin.
Worthless worm.
I blinked hard at the voice in my head that had gone to more of a whisper than scream over the years, but I cringed all the same.
On wooden legs, I passed through the mess of trash, piles of newspapers, and clothing. Detouring past the kitchen entrance, I headed back the hallway I’d crawled dozens of times in attempts to escape that damned leather belt he had wielded like a whip.
I stumbled to a halt at the open bathroom door, the stained tub bringing even more flashes of beatings on my bare skin, a constant rain of hurtful words that tore me down until I had nosense of self outside being a waste of sperm, the cause of my mother’s death and of Dad’s heartache.
Two more steps landed me in front of the door I’d silently shut the night I’d turned eighteen.
Dad had passed out in his bedroom across the hall, his drunken snores assuring me he wouldn’t have heard me slam through the house as I left him behind.
I twisted the handle, pushing the flimsy particle board door inward, and scratched absently at my forearm.
The room had been turned inside out. Mattress flipped against the wall riddled with holes that looked like fists had punched through drywall. The few personal belongings I’d left behind scattered over the floor along with the clothing I hadn’t taken with me.
My gaze drifted toward the right—a discoloration of the flooring smashed into me like the memory of Dad’s fist into my temple, and I staggered on my feet, a whimper slipping past my lips as it’d done the night I’d finally become a man.
I’d lain there, my mind fuzzy and eyesight bleary as he’d stood over me, kicking me where my oversized sweatshirt would cover whatever bruising he inflicted on my body. It was the first time I’d begged whatever supernatural being or possible god might exist to end my life. Not even the plans I had set, the freedom I would soon experience, made the beating bearable. If Dad had hated me as much as he’d claimed to, why not just end me with a bullet to my brain then his? Put us both out of our misery?
I never fooled myself into believing that at some deep level he cared for the only son he’d created with the woman he’d loved more than anything on earth. The man had been a coward through and through, unable to cope with his brokenness over losing my mom. He’d turned to alcohol, and I’d paid the price for being the cause of her death.
“Never should have been born.”He’d spat on me that night, eventually leaving me more alone than I’d ever felt in my eighteen years.
Other similar sentiments whispered on the heels of Dad’s final words to me like ghosts from the grave, tearing me down as effectively as they had done years earlier when spewed from his hateful lips.
Worthless.
Stupid.
Ugly.
Unwanted.
Would I never be free of the man I’d tried so hard to please?
Fingernails digging into my left forearm, I stared at the bloodstained evidence of what I had endured. I hadn’t grown, hadn’t escaped the horrors I’d faced every day as a powerless child when all I’d wanted to do was give my dad back some of the happiness I’d stolen from him by being born.
