Inanimate (6 page)

“
It’s in your genes” she
slurred
,
words lined with malice.

“
Y
our dad is weak and you are too you little
prick. Aren’t you too old to be playing with dolls?”

L
aughing, she pointed at Betsy.

Connor seethed
“My mom gave that to
me.”

“
Well mommy aint here
is she? I am. Tell
you what kiddo; I’m going to help you become a man!”

Beth stumbled over and
grabbed
Betsy.

Reaction kicked
in. Connor grabbed
her arm and fought back.

“
Let go! That’s mine!” he
screamed at the top of his lungs.

The drunk Beth however
was double his
weight (triple while drunk) and was able to dust his arm off hers
with ease. Laughing as Connor sobbed on the floor she headed back
to the doorway to get a better look of the broken child in front of
her. Connor’s tears were hot. Anger fighting it’s way to the
surface quickened his breathing. She stood swigging her gin, proud
of what she had accomplished. Downstairs, a key turned in the door
as Andy came in from work. Hearing Connor crying upstairs he
dropped his stuff and headed upstairs. Beth was too drunk to hear
him coming allowing him to unintentionally catch her off
guard.

“
What’s going on?”
Andy asked, as he
swiftly went to his son’s side.

“
She took
Betsy
!”

Andy shot
a look at Beth as he held his
son. Andy seemed genuinely angry Beth would turn her attention to
his son which made Connor a little happier, suddenly thinking maybe
his father was not aware of their previous encounters.

“
What do you think you’re doing
Beth? He’s
just a boy! Put the doll down!”

Connor slowly
stopped crying,
feeling his father would actually stand up for him.

“
What the fuck ever!”
Retorted
Beth
casually.

T
hat kid needs to man up and
this
isn’t going to
help.”

Beth drunkenly tossed
the doll over the
bannister to the wooden floor below. Only a dull thud indicated its
heavy landing. Connor held his breath. Betsy was his mom’s doll and
if it was broken he would be devastated, furious even. Connor
pressed his face against Andy’s chest and shut his eyes tight. Pent
up rage was fighting to get out but instead only a few words
quietly escaped.

“
I miss mom.
”

“
I know you do son, but
mom’s
gone.
She had an accident and she’s in heaven now.”

“
What?” said Beth chortling drunk
from the doorway.

An accident?
Is that what you told
him?”

For the first time in years Andy spoke to
Beth in a tone that would not resolve any argument.

“
Beth, don’t!”

Beth
grinned.

“
Connor
…”

…
Your mom did
not
have an accident…”

“
Beth shuttup!”

“
She was
murdered
! She was raped and murdered down there in
the hall where your dolly is now.”

Do you know what raped
means?”

Connor world shut down, his mind
collapsed in on itself and he was silent. Furious but composed Andy
leapt to his feet and slammed the door in Beth’s face as if the
door would be his revenge for months of torment. The backdraft blew
his hair gently but Beth didn’t flinch.

“
He
had to find out sometime” came the voice
from behind the door.

Andy rushed
over and put his arms around his
son. Appalled by what Beth did he held him tight, wondering if he
would ever be able to express into words how sorry he was. He
tried, poorly he thought.

“
Son, I’m so sorry she said
that.”

Connor
was mute. Something inside him had
snapped. He had heard the term “rape” on one of the police shows
Beth was watching and he was smart enough to figure out what it
meant. His little body was stiff and his brain was numb. For the
first time in his life Connor felt rage. But his brain was trying
and failing to contain that rage, instead it jammed up his mind and
closed it down. An image of Beth’s grinning face as she spoke those
terrible words was trying to show itself but another part of him
tried to choke it down, knowing what happen if it surfaced. Tears
felt like they should be coming out but they didn’t. He wanted to
scream but he couldn’t. He felt this incredible urge to be
destructive but his body wouldn’t move. He knelt, staring at the
closed door while his father quietly embraced him. Feeling like he
was actually consoling his son Andy held him tight, trying to
shoosh away the anguish. Connor’s didn’t know it but his brain was
writing new scripts for itself which would recreate him. A
destructive force was being born in the depths of his mind,
overruling intelligence and rational thought patterns his mother
and father had instilled in him.

The only image he could see in his mind
when he went to bed that night was Beth’s mocking face. And her
words; he did not hear them out loud again, he couldn’t, but some
deep part of him was hearing them. Connor did not dream that night;
instead his brain added the final touches to its rewrite, the coup
de grace, changing his personality forever.

Connor’s routine started out as usual the
next morning. Out of bed, he bath robe and slippers on then headed
to the bathroom to shower after his father did. Andy still
remembered the events of the previous night, it had weighed on him
all night. Straight after coming out of the shower Andy saw Connor
standing in the doorway of his bedroom looking particularly somber.
Dressed only in a towel Andy knelt down beside his son for a
moment.

“
How you feeling today
champ?”

Connor replied
emotionlessly “I’m
ok”

Andy squinted into
h
is son’s
eyes, searching for the truth.

“
You’re sure?”

Connor simply nodded and
although Andy didn’t believe he was telling the truth he didn’t
really have time to talk about it, he had work to go to.
No
father could have
seen what was about to happen.

“
Ok, we can talk more when I get
home then.
”

Taking one more
lo
ok into his
son’s eyes Andy got up and headed down the stairs, leaving Connor
to disappear into the bathroom. Lifting his briefcase from the
living room he wanted to yell up to his son to say goodbye one last
time but he knew that if he woke up Beth he would get an earful
when he got home for sure. Andy did love Connor but the truth was
he didn’t really want to stand up for him. Selfish motives always
took over. He believed Connor would eventually get over the trauma
of being told the truth of his mother and so, he never felt he had
to say much more about it. Part of Connor’s newly developed psyche
came from this constant “shock and ignorance” way of life where
something would happen within the household that was detrimental to
Connor’s mindset but essentially nobody cared. Beth sure didn’t.
Her twisted mind would constantly put her own “illness” above
anything else, particularly the feelings of others. Andy cared but
his attitude was always to ignore it as best as possible, hoping it
would all go away. He reasoned that if he never asked Connor how he
felt about Beth then he wouldn’t know the truth. And, if he didn’t
know the truth then he certainly wouldn’t have to act upon it. Andy
closed the front door behind him, plunging the house into quiet.
The shower had not been turned on. Instead, the bathroom door
slowly opened and Connor emerged dressed in his pajamas. His eyes
were dark, he felt nothing. Drifting down the wooden staircase he
heard Beth snoring behind him, her breathing was heavy through her
fat nasal passages. The kitchen was not as neat as it used to be,
not like when his mother would clean it. Connor easily unhinged the
child-safety lock on the top drawer by the sink. His mother had
installed them years ago but Connor wasn’t an child any longer.
They simply
remained
because it was on no-one’s priority list to remove them.
Staring down for a moment at the metallic menagerie in front of him
he was confronted by options. Had he not been nearly catatonic he
would have realized the sadness in the fact that the kitchen had
all the tools a gourmet chef would need to create sumptuous dishes
but he and his father never ate more than oven pizza, tinned goods
and microwave meals. This depressing fact was due to the lack of a
maternal presence, with the drunken drug-addled Beth being the
furthest thing from that. Surrounded by the “Easy Blend” blender,
the “Coffee Boy” bean grinder/brewer and the hanging selection of
ladles, spatulas, pronged forks and pastry brushes he felt a gentle
comfort attempting to creep into him and change his thoughts.
Although he had never used any of these tools, he remembered this
was his mother’s domain and it was where she was happiest. Without
any notion towards sexism Martha was simply a passionate cook. She
always believed in fresh ingredients and loved slow cooking. Some
days Connor would watch her for hours on end buzzing around making
meals for dinner parties. Dinner parties had long been a dead
tradition though, along with fresh ingredients. Looking down at the
glimmering selection in front of him he made his choice.

His mother
had always told him she chose a
knife by the weight of it, how it felt in her hand. So he carefully
lifted his tool and flicked it up and down, feeling it out like a
pro tennis player feeling out a racket. After a long minute of
careful testing he confirmed his choice was the right one. Leaning
forward he looked into the blade. The shiny stainless steel
reflected an image of a dark haired child, his once angelic eyes
now overcast. Locking eyes with his reflection he watched a smile
form that was truly his own and slammed the drawer shut.

Standing at the
bottom of the
staircase he heard the snoring again. Every noise she made
irritated him further and further, driving him to push on up the
stairs to his goal. The knife by his side glided effortlessly
through the air as he neared the top. The stairs squeaked as if
sending out a warning that someone was coming. He got to the top
and opened the bedroom door. There she was. For a long moment he
watched her lie sleeping under her tacky pink blankets like some
great slumbering marshmallow. Her stunning laziness was just one
more reason Connor hated her. Moving round the side of the bed to
see her face, he remembered her words the night before.

“
She was
raped,
”

Do you know what that means?”

Stari
ng at her face, he felt no anger, no
purpose, he felt nothing, this to him was as natural as breathing
now. His face cracked into a scowl as he stared at her
contemptuously, the weight of the decision he had already made
wrapped him up tight but he tried to hold off a little longer. A
twisted side he never knew he had before urged him to savor the
moment before it was gone forever. He had been standing over her
for minutes simply watching; waiting to make his move. Beth stirs
slothlike, opening her eyes slightly she saw him standing there.
Unable to see the knife from her lying position she sneered at him
with a tongue laced with disdain.

“
What do you want?”
she
hissed.

The unapologetic, resentful
tone
was the
final ingredient in Connors pot. With a twitch in his eye he raised
the knife above his head and sandwiched it in his small palms. The
sudden look of terror in Beth’s eyes only served to motivate the
boy further. Driving the blade down hard into her flesh, his aim
was off, slicing through the shoulder of the fetal sleeper,
stopping only an inch into her breast tissue. Reloading, he yanked
the steel out and went in for another plunge. This time lower,
through the ribcage, puncturing the base of her lungs and mincing
up other organs. Her cries were not for help but for pain, no-one
would hear her on the quiet street outside. Again Connor thrusted,
changing aim again, this time higher, unintentionally cutting into
her larynx. Later Connor would think back to this moment and this
specific stab. He wondered if he did it to stop her screaming or
not. He could not remember any noise that day. He remembered
everything in detail; except if there was volume on his attacks, as
if someone pressed a mute button to make the whole event easier to
deal with. He remembered Beth doing this while watching scary
films. She would mute the volume, as if that would make the
horrifying scenes easier to view. Stabbing her again and again,
each thrust represented a painful moment in his life, with much of
the thrusting because of the loss of his mother. With no organized
stabbing pattern, by the time was arms were sore he had managed
thirty-four wounds to the torso and groin, fourteen to the arms and
legs and eight to the face over a span of four minutes. The grisly
scene in his mother’s old bedroom put a smile on a young boys face.
Standing proudly, spattered in a crimson spray he wiped the knife
on Beth’s pink dressing gown. In his mind, the day started out
perfectly.