Have you ever had that experience, the feeling your life was about to be taken from you. Knowing there will be no tomorrow, not for you, you would no longer exist in the realm of the living, having the knowledge that the next breath you take could very well be your last, and your eyes would never grace the faces of your loved ones again, you will never see the things you hadn’t yet seen, or experience the things you hadn’t yet had the pleasure to experience. Being scared of what comes next, what comes with death, what happens when your heart no longer beats, and your brain starves of oxygen, your skin turns icy cold, and then you become one of the forgotten? Now imagine having had experienced that feeling at eight years old. Imagine for just one second what it would feel like to have a razor-sharp thin blade pressed against your larynx, the blade so sharp it could cut on first contact even with very little pressure, a blade that could inflict maximum damage with very little effort. All it would take is one gentle effortless movement of a hand to slice from ear to ear to separate your skin, introducing the inside mechanics of your throat to the outside world, severing the carotid artery and the warmth of the scarlet liquid of your life source cascading in every direction. The gasping panic as you try to draw in air, but you can’t, you will never fill your lungs again and they would empty for the last time and the escaping air would disappear into the atmosphere. The cramping pains in your tense jaw as you lift your head to the heavens, the vulture-like elongation of your neck. The hardening of your calf muscles, skin on the instep arch of your feet becoming tight, so tight it feels like it might tear as you push yourself up on to the very tips of your toes, as you hope it will put some distance between your skin and the hard carbon stainless steel. You can feel all the tiny little hairs that are all over your body stand erect, the sensation on your skin that you have been cut when something is razor-sharp, and the feeling of wetness. How you wouldn’t be able to swallow the saliva that would build up in your mouth as doing so would cause the blade to do its duty. You can feel the blood and adrenaline in every vein and artery of your body, the rapid beating of your heart akin to a newborn baby. The sound that the blade makes as it sinks into soft flesh, not going too deep, not breaking the surface; just enough that you wince with pain, the way your skin hugs the razor-sharp edge like they were meant to be together. You can feel the sound the blade makes with each microscopic movement. Every part of your being is screaming that you are going to die and the last thing you would see before your life was extinguished and you descend into the void of darkness would be a large window in a hallway with the shadowy figures of your two sisters and you mum begging for him to let you go. I have this experience and it will haunt me till my dying breath.
Everything seemed to be suspended in time as I was hunched upon to my tiptoes, like a ballerina as high as I could go, the back of my pyjama top entwined with the grey material of dads t-shirt, the solidness of his stomach, the hard belt buckle pressing into my skin just below my shoulder blades, his left hand pinching down into the trapezius muscle of my shoulder, his long fingers resting over my collarbone, his right forearm pressing tight
across my chest, his fingers had become one with the black handle as it morphed into the blade, 8 inches of cold steel pressed against the hypersensitivity of the thin skin that protects the innermost workings of my neck. My breathing had become shallow and erratic through tense nostrils as I didn’t want to open my mouth, my ivory white teeth push hard against each other, grinding, the muscles either side of my jaw becoming hard and flexed, sweat running down between my shoulder blades before being absorbed by the elasticated waistband of my matching bottoms. I could feel the rumble in his chest as the eruption of
sound left his mouth
‘You two get your arses down here now’ the smell of alcohol and tobacco on his breath as I stood under the shower of spit that left his mouth with each shouting word and it mixed with the perspiration on my brow.
The faint sound of footsteps from above as they scurried out of their bedroom and across the landing, their steps getting louder as they descended the staircase, their little heads poking from behind the wall like they had earlier Alice above Eve’s. The events of the evening finally taking their toll as they had red eyes and tears following the curve if their noses
‘Stand next to that wall and don’t fucking move’ I felt the blade move, but there was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t get any higher up on my toes, I had gone as far as I could, and I could feel my bladder fill as I thought that that was it he was going to sink it in and open my throat, and I took one final shallow breath of life and readied myself, the relief I felt when the blade moved away from my skin, and it was out in front of me, pointing toward Alice and Eve as he used the knife to usher them to the corner of the room. While I had the chance I sucked in a deep breath of cold air and swallowed the flood of saliva in my mouth, the dryness of my salivary glands followed the saliva and my throat became instantly dry like an African river bed, and I could finally let the muscles in my legs relax as I put the heels of my feet back on the floor. Could I pull away? I thought as his grip on my shoulder had slackened, but my legs wouldn’t function the lactic acid in my calves made them as hard as stone. Mums movements appeared to be in slow motion as she ran from the white glow of the kitchen light to the shade of the dull orange and placed herself in front of Alice and Eve, using her body as a human shield, her hands still frantically waving in front of her. They stood behind her erect with their arms by their sides. Alice had daggers in her red eyes as she stared at him; Eve’s mouth was wide open.
‘Please stop this I am begging you. Their only kids’ her voice was hoarse from crying.
‘No they need to understand, they have to understand and so do you, and the only way for you all to understand is to see this. So you all know what happens when you bastards don’t listen and do as you are told’ the orange glow of the blade as it waved in front of me like a snake charmer. Then it came to an abrupt stop before it disappeared from my line of sight. My head tilted back and I closed my eyes clamping them shut, and I could see flashes of green and speckles of white floating around in the dark, I felt the unforgiving steel back on my skin as I exhaled a nervous breath through my nose. I could feel the convulsions in my chest, the individual vibration on each rib as my heart thumped against my sternum. The tenderness of the lump on my head pushed into his stomach and a red hot pain shot between my skin and skull. It felt like it was as big as an orange.
‘You don’t need to do this we understand, don’t we’ she paused
and took a big fearful gulp and turned to Alice and Eve.
‘Ya…yes…yes dad we do’ their voice’s in synchronicity and the nodding motion of their heads synchronized, as they stood in the dark corner.
Mum had shifted her weight slightly to the right of them both and now had one arm outstretched toward me and the other as a barrier across the chests of my sisters.
‘Chris please he is just a little boy’ she said with a look of disbelief.
‘A little boy with a big fucking mouth’ I grimaced in pain from the pressure as he squeezed my shoulder and his fingers curled under my collar bone. I was still fighting the urge to cry, but I wouldn’t let him see me cry. I could feel the acid rush back into my muscle fibres, and the pain starting to build in my thighs. How much longer could I stay in this position? Then gravity started to get the better of me. I contorted my face in pain as the battle began, the battle to stay up on my toes, to ignore the pain. I could feel the blood rushing underneath the blade and the stinging of my skin as gravity started to win, as it was always going to win and it started to pull me down onto the steel. It wasn’t him that was going to cut me it was me under my own body weight.
‘Please Chris I will do anything, please just let him go’ Mum was standing back in front of Alice and Eve, she had backed them into the corner, her arms out but her side wrapping around them, their features turned dark as they were cocooned between the sharp angle of the walls and her arms. A sigh of relief when he moved the knife from my throat, my eyes fixated it as it was pointed back at them.
‘You make it sound like you have a choice’ he moved his hand from my shoulder and I could feel the blood pump back in my veins followed by the sensation of pins and needles, as I made compacted fists with my hand.
‘As for him, we were happy, weren’t we? before this came along’ his large left hand taking a big quantity of hair, and I no longer had to be concerned about losing the battle with gravity as he pulled me back up onto the very edge of my toes, pushing my toenails back in on themselves and it felt like there were tearing away and the sponge-like skin was replacing the hard shell of the nail. The knife followed the same line back to my throat. I think I had gotten used to the sharpness against my skin as I felt the coldness come to rest by my ear lobe.
‘I think our lives would be better if he wasn’t here, we could go back to the way thing were we could be happy again’ His voice sounded like it was going to break.
‘You don’t need to do this Chris we are happy’ she tilted her head the expression on her face that of pity.
‘No…no we aren’t don’t lie’ his voice was raised to high decibels. He never said another word as his right hand drew the knife across my neck.
They say that your life flashes before your eyes before you die, but mine didn’t but then again what life had I had at eight. All I saw was the darkness behind my eyelids. The neurons in my brain screamed that he had done it, that he had open my throat to the elements. I put my hands to my neck frantically grabbing at it in the hope that I could contain it, the warmth of the liquid, to stop it from leaving my body. I desperately sucked in air as I began to hyperventilate. In my blind panic, I thought I could hear three high-pitched screams and I was waiting to take my last breath. Then I could feel it the warmth came, but not from my neck, in my uncontrollable hysteria I had lost control of my bladder and I had pissed myself. The warm fluid being absorbed by Paddington as he clung to my damp skin, as it ran down the inside of my legs down to my socks and on to the waiting carpet. That night was the start of it; I had never wet the bed up until that point, dry nights as soon as I came out of nappies. But after that, after what had just happened I wet the bed every night till I was thirteen.
I hadn’t got used to the edge of the blade-like I had though, it was the thick blunt end that he had put back in its place and it was this end that he pushed into my skin, but how was I too know, my skin was so sore from the sharp edge. I dropped to my knees with a splash as I landed in the puddle of urine that had formed below me. I felt hands on me as I froze thinking it was him, he hadn’t stopped, what could he possibly do to me now. But it wasn’t it was gentle hands caring hands that embraced me that pulled me to her heaving chest.
‘You fucking bastard’ Mum screamed at him, her voice hurting my eardrums.
‘Who does that? Who fucking does that to a child, get out, fucking get out’ I felt her left arm leave the embrace.
Amongst the chaos I hadn’t even noticed that it had started to thunder until I heard the rolling barrage of explosions, which made me open my eyes, a sheet of white lighting lit up the night sky like someone had switched on a light, and I could see a reflection in the large hallway window. It was the reflection of my Dad and he was just standing there towering over us and staring at himself, but there was something strange about his appearance, his face had changed, the orange light of the street lights breaking through the heavy raindrops as the danced and twisted their way down the windowpane, running through his reflection, the prism of light through the rain distorting it bending it to their will. His big black unseeing eyes set deep into his skull, the sinister twisting of his lips from the smirk on his face, didn’t make him look human, he looked like he had been possessed, he looked demonic, he looked like a demon. Maybe he had been possessed and it wasn’t him that had just done this horrible thing, it was the demon inside him that had taken over him and made him do it. Out of everything that had happened that night it was his face in the glass that scared me the most, it wasn’t the knife against my throat or the fear that I was going to die. It was this moment, the moment I realized my father was the devil.
The storm was right above us as another clap of thunder was followed by a strike of blinding lighting that reflected of the blade that was still in his right hand, he was just standing there silently. Mum's grip like a boa constrictor crushing my bones, the light sound a weeping from the corner.
‘Do you know what? I am done with all of you, y’all are fucking pathetic’
The sound of a light thud carried across the room, the sound of the knife landing on the floor.
‘Good fuck off’ she shouted. Mum turned with a start and looked over to Alice with wide eyes. Dad averted his gaze at her and Alice moved nervously back into the corner, as she couldn't believe she had said what she did. He let out a smirking laugh as he pulled out his cigarette packet from the pocket of his wet jeans and taped the bottom against the palm of his hand. Mum loosened her grip around me and lifted my chin with her right hand and looked deep into my eyes as far as she could to reassure me that it was over, that he wasn't going to hurt me anymore, and with her thumb, and wiped the tears that had formed from my eyes,
‘I am so…so sorry’ she said
A flint was being struck behind me as he was trying to light his fag; I could see the spark in the window, then the flame, the glowing orange of the fag as he took a long deep drag. His eyes met mine through the reflection in the window and he knows I could see it in his face that he had taken my innocence and that he had made me, in his eyes a man and I could sense that he was pleased with himself, proud of his handy work. He was right he had stolen my innocence that night and I would never get it back, and I would never be the same. I would never again feel what it was like to be happy or sad and as I got older I wouldn’t even remember what it felt like, to feel anything at all, he took everything from me that night, everything that made me a child, the playfulness, the joy and the imagination that a young boy should have and he had replaced it with nothing and empty shell of a boy, who would find it hard to smile, to have empathy and to find a feeling of care toward anyone or anything, my eyes became expressionless and my heart soulless, I had become hardened, I had become him.