'Daniel. Psst Daniel' Alice whispered a hint of caution in her soft gentle calming voice, she was trying her best to quietly attract my attention, anything to draw me away from being a hostage to the shine of the two gloss white up rights of the door frame, the right side of my profile highlighted from the sheet of stark white light reaching out into the hallway, the pitch black shadow of two stick thin legs casting a trail behind me across the floor, before bursting into an over sized torso and head as the projection invades the yellow and white light on the wall, with its mishapen look as it falls onto each grove and curve of the anaglypta, with its perimeter of white and yellow, the border of darkness on the offensive, attacking from all sides. Alice was aware I was on borrowed time and that it wouldn’t be long till he saw me standing there. The delicate sound of her voice tickling my eardrums, my breathing shallow, my brain deprived of oxygen, but I couldn’t look away, I was transfixed, my vision contaminated with the level of violence that had just played out before me and was still going on. They had both fallen silent; his thin lips arched upward in a menacing smile, with deep folds of his marionette lines arching down from his nose, the intense stare of his distant, blank emotionless eyes, following the rhythmic movements of the glinting blade, the twisted, pivoting path of pale red behind it that indicated were it had been, before it vanished beneath the polyester and cotton blend of her pyjama top cutting cleanly through it like paper and started to slowly reveal her pale white flesh and the dull white of a bra strap. She offered up no resistance anymore as she lay there face down, waiting.
I read somewhere when I got older, that to an extent our actions are hereditary, and that for the most part we all step into are parents shoes in one way or another. I remember thinking to myself as my eyes passed over this sentence, will I become like him, will I become a monster and hurt the people you are supposed to love. Not just hurt them but seeming to take pleasure in violence like he is now.
Alice of course had heard and seen some of this before over the 11 years she had been on this planet, and remained calm and unfazed, like what was happening was a normal everyday occurrence, which of course it wasn’t, he was like a secret Santa and not in a good way, as you didn’t know what version of him you were going to get, sometimes when he had been drinking he would be a delight, laughing and joking and being generous and others, well you know how that is playing out. I knew he had hit mum before but I never witnessed it until now, but Alice had.
Ok she was never spoken to like I had been; but don’t get me wrong she had been on the wrong end of a few of his nasty tongue lashings and this could sometimes have a bigger, damaging longer lasting effect on you than being hit, but she never suffered at his hands like I did, the beatings that I got, but she was witness to them on occasion. I think this probably made me feel a little resentful towards her if I am honest. I would sometimes wish that it would be her curled up like a ball in a compact corner of a room, crying, shaking, and cradling a blanket, watching the slow motion of the dominating shadow approaching between splayed fingers until it engulfs her. Seeing his towering figure above her as she uses her arms as a barricade to shield her face and head, anything to deflect his tightly clenched fist, why couldn’t it be her for a change instead of me, closing her eyes to darkness, stifling a cry and turning in to the wall, her foot slipping out from under her as it loses friction on the carpet and snatching it back, using it for leverage and pushing her body into the wall as hard as she could like you were trying to get to reach a far away dimension. Anything so you don’t have to watch the bulging white knuckles coming in for first contact, her whole body would go stiff, her skin pulling tight as every muscle becomes tense as it ready’s itself for impact, pain hits you like fire, exploding blinding whiteness as bone becomes acquainted with flesh, the dizziness of the room spinning from your brain rolling around and knocking against your skull, let’s see you smile then I’d think. But now it’s what if he did take some of this out on her, and he hit her, dragged her down the stairs by her hair, she would have lost everything that made her, well her, the innocence the kindness, the smile and I would become disgusted with myself for having those thoughts and it was so selfish of me to think that way.
You see Alice was the kindest person you could meet; she would do anything for anyone, which I always found a bit odd considering the toxic surroundings, not just in the house but were we grew up.
We lived in a council house in a not so nice area of a small gloomy industrial town. An estate that most people now, would perceive as a council estate was like back in the eighties. The dirty grey concrete of the block square houses, some of which seemed to be in ruins, each with their own front gardens, some have a nice wooden fence marking their territory, others thought it would be better to use chicken wire that would have a border of long brown dead grass that becomes a trap for empty crisp packets and chocolate wrappers with rusting bikes and kitchen appliances running along the fragile walls, behind the pavement of overcrowded dog shit and fag ends, the brown of the rusted corrugated metal waste bin next to the front door that may or may not have a matching lid. The empty milk and pop bottles on the door step waiting for the milk and pop man in the morning. It was a rough, run down and generally an unpleasant place to live, a stray dog would walk among the tall brown grass, running its nose along the ground and its tail pointing high up in the sky, normally stopping on the front garden of the Stevens. I mean take the Stevens for instance, the police were always knocking on the door, stolen goods, drug dealing, burglary you name it they have their fingers in it. People shouting and kids were playing till all hours, with no respect or concern for others in the street, anyway, I’ve digressed.
Alice was always there for mum and that gave them a special bond, which I am not ashamed to say I was jealous of. Anything she could do to help around the house, anything she could do that might help to stop him from kicking off in to a blind rage after one of his all day drinking binges. She would clean up after herself, wash and dry the dishes, ensuring her bedroom was always clean and everything was in its rightful place, anything she could do to help take the burden, to offer a little respite for mum she would. She believed it was unfair that mum had to do all the work around the house on her own, and she knew that there was no way he was going to get his hands dirty and even from a young age she would shoulder as much of the burden as she could. I would hear her sometimes, not so much when she got older but when she was younger late at night crying in her bedroom when things got too much for her, and she thought everyone was sleeping, the sobs would penetrate through the paper thin walls, but she knew she couldn’t tell anyone how she was feeling, especially not mum she would have enough on her plate and it wouldn’t be fair to add her problems as well. The love and kindness oozed out of her, the confidence she had for a girl so young was mesmerising to other people, intoxicating you could say.
To look at Alice you wouldn’t think that someone so dainty could have so much courage and to be so brave. Her hair was straight and long, a similar colour to mine although hers was a couple of shades darker, it would spend most of its time in either a intricate design of a French braid or two arching pigtails, not like know it was currently hanging lose over Eve’ face like a pair of curtains as they were both peering around the corner by the stairs. The dim yellow light from the landing above them being manipulated by the dark of the hallway below, casting two imposing shadows on the far wall, making that corner of the hallway darker than the rest, as the light couldn’t penetrate their bodies and becoming trapped behind them, Alice’s fast beckoning motion with her left hand, a look of desperation in her big circular bright blue eyes, the prominent black limbal rings framing and accentuating how blue the iris was, light reflecting off the moisture that was coating her cornea making them look like marbles.
Her thin frame tented in her night wear or during the day by a long flowing floral dress. Even with everything that was happening now; her main priority was to get me away from any danger especially if he saw me there, she knew I would be a new target for his aggression.
Alice was very much a girly girl in the sense that she liked anything flowery and pink, would always insist on wearing a dress or skirt. Mum would sometimes help her with a little makeup every now and again, nice and subtle she would say as she applied it to her pale white skin that was the shade of milk and made her look a little like snow white, but she would only allow her to wear it when Dad had left for work and it had to be washed off before he got home. Sometimes she would have to run like an Olympic sprinter and go straight to the bathroom after school cause he’d come home early, her two feet thudding up the fragile wood of the staircase, pretending she really need to go to the toilet and scrub frantically at her face to get it off as quick as she could, leaving a little rash on her cheek if she scrubbed a bit too hard. He had seen her wearing it once and told her ‘what the fuck is that on your face? get your arse up them stairs and wash that shit off right now, if I want to see a clown I would go to the circus, don’t let me catch you wearing it again’ and violently thrusting his index finger back and forth in the general direction on the bathroom, that was one of the few times that I can remember her crying at something he had said to her.
'Daniel please come here, Daniel come here quickly’ her voice rang out again, instruction was absolutely clear as the sound waves travelled along the hallway.
With no sudden movements I slowly rotated my head on it axis and met her voice, l changed the direction of my gaze. The explosion of my pupils as they moved from the white light of the kitchen to eerie dark of the hallway, I could see them out the corner of my eye, the two little floating faces. The soft lines of Eve’s face being covered with a sheet of brown hair coming from above and obstructing her view, the subtle pout of her lips as she tries to shoe it away with a sharp breath, the fine hairs tangle as they fall back into place, her little button nose just breaking through the surface. Alice above her with a big hesitant smile on her face, her gentle fearless eyes looked onto mine, that gave the impression everything was going to be alright, the two little indents of skin forming dimples on her cheeks, the way she curled the corners of her mouth to show her radiant smile, the bright red flesh of her lips parting in the middle showing her straight white porcelain teeth, a smile that would light up any room. You couldn’t help but like Alice or be drawn to her in some way or another. Her smile would make you feel warm and welcome.
‘Come here’
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move my legs were heavy like my bone marrow had been replaced with cold hard concrete, my feet stitched into the nylon carpet. I didn’t want to stand there and watch what this animal was doing. The way he seemed to be enjoying himself. I disobeyed her instruction and shook my head; no I wasn’t going to move I couldn’t.
“Daniel please come here” she pleaded a unlined hint of irritation in her soft voice.
I shook my head again not wanting to make a sound, a hand full of stray hairs swept across my brow, I turned my head back in to face the kitchen.