Hands Of Monsters

As I sprint along the broken footpath in a shady area of town towards my night job I break out in a cold sweat. I’m late and if my boss fires me It will set me back at least three months. I had done so well in the last three months saving all the money I could. I had managed to acquire a small apartment and was finishing my year 12 certificate online in less than two weeks. I wanted that certificate so badly, I wanted to enter college and prove to my mother that I could fulfil her dying wish. That I could make something of my life and improve my situation. My heart pangs whenever I think of my mother. Sadness, anger, love and hatred all warred within me at even the slightest reminder of her. I blame her for dying even as I know it’s not her fault. In my heart of hearts I am angry at her for leaving me with her husband. I hate that she could die when she knew what he was capable of. How could she leave me with him, how could she not warn me about him, how had she hidden her sadness from me and how was I supposed to know what awaited me. His closed fists would mark me instead of her, his wandering hands would caress me instead of her and no one would acknowledge what was obvious. No one would help me or save me. I’m sad that she died but I love her and after experiencing what she had gone through I’m glad she escaped. In hindsight, knowing what I do now, I could see the signs. How he broke her down, how she hid it from me and how the moment she died it had started to happen to me as well. After her death My own personal hell had begun. David was the reason she had died. He had been drinking that night but still insisted on driving them home. The road guard that stopped them from tumbling over the edge of a cliff had impacted my mother’s side of the car. She was crushed on impact and died two days later in the hospital. David walked out of the car wreck with only a broken leg.  When he had come home from the hospital he had to spend time off his feet. Being the ever dutiful daughter I had helped him with his basic necessities and the first time he had compared me to a wife I was only 14. When he could walk again I had stopped doing things for him and it had made him angry. He developed new rules for the house and slowly implemented them so by the time I realised what was happening I was trapped.  The first rule was almost immediate, I was to cook dinner every night before he got home from work. His reasoning was that mum used to do this and I finished school earlier than he finished work making it easier if I did it.  The first time I didn’t have dinner ready by the time he got home from work he had taken away my phone. He had been furious that I was out with friends instead of at home cooking for him. I was grounded from hanging with friends ‘until further notice’. The second time I had forgotten to have dinner ready because I fell asleep after an intense afternoon training with my gymnastics team. He had awoken me with a slap to the face and dragged me into the kitchen to cook his dinner.  Sweat had run down my face and spine while my face throbbed. He stood in the kitchen the entire time and quietly raged. His arms crossed and his face pinched. When dinner was ready and we sat down to eat he had cupped my cheek and apologised. He spoke of work and how stressed he was. He told me that if I had just cooked dinner on time he wouldn’t have been driven to such an extreme. The way he spoke made sense to my childish brain. His words were confident and logical and I had believed him. He was an adult. I never again missed a dinner.  The second important rule had come on a day when he was home for paid leave. Whenever he was home, so was I. He said that as a family we never spent time together and he didn’t want to miss out on the short time he had at home. I was 15 and had been so happy that the man I called father wanted to spend more time with me. He made me clean the house with the promise of going to an amusement park the moment It was spotless. We hadn’t gone to an amusement park since mum had died. I was so excited that I scrubbed every speck of dirt and wiped every speck of dust. When I was finished we went out and had a day unlike any other. My ‘father’ had held my hand the entire time and whenever I would win prizes he would kiss my hair and praise me.  A few days after the amusement park he had asked me to clean the house and I had done it without comment. When I was finished I had asked him where we were going and he had looked at me like I s**t in his coffee. After berating me for being an ungrateful child he had left the house to go drinking. I was asleep when he stumbled into the house drunk at 3am. He smashed a vase on his way inside and I awoke to help him into bed before he could break any more of my mother’s cherished porcelains. I had removed his boots and tucked him into bed but before I could escape he had pulled me down to cuddle with him. My naïve brain had told me that my father needed his daughter so I hadn’t pulled away and eventually I had fallen asleep in the ‘safety’ of my father’s arms.  He woke me up the next morning with an open mouthed kiss. I was so shocked and he quickly apologised saying he was dreaming of my mother. When I remained disgusted he punched me in the mouth and blamed me for being in his bed to begin with. I believed him. While he was at work that day I cleaned the house spotless and dinner was hot and on the table when he walked through the door. His praise removed the animosity between us and things returned to our twisted normal.  Gradually he had removed all my privileges and painted me into a corner filled with labels like ‘rebellious teen’ which the people around us believed. He slowly increased the amount of affection he showed. This made me believe that I was doing things correctly. So I kept doing them. One night he slipped into my bed under the guise of reminiscing about my mother. We fell asleep to her memories and I awoke to her nightmares. David was balls deep, stealing my innocence and completely sober. I tried to fight him off and he rewarded me with a fractured eye socket. He forced me to stay home from school to heal. He was a doctor and a respected man so the school didn’t question him. The entire time I was stuck at the house with him he would force himself upon me with the threat of breaking more things in my body. When I was healed and returned to school I couldn’t look the other students in the eye as I was scared they would see what I was. The teachers were too busy trying to help me catch up to notice anything wrong. David had told me multiple times that if I told anyone what went on in the house they would call me a slut for seducing my step ‘father’. He told me that if anyone ever discovered what went on between us before we were legally married he would kill me just like he had my mother. He said he would make it look like an accident.  Just before my sixteenth birthday I had discovered that I was pregnant. I told David and he was excited. He truly believed that the baby would make this family ‘whole’ and promised that upon graduation we would be married. We had ‘celebrated’ that night with his favourite game. He tied me down to the bed and made me cry until he was aroused. Then while the tears tracked down my cheeks he had his way with my body as many ways as he could. When my stomach started to show he made me stay home from school informing the school I was ill and having my work routed to his email. I couldn’t believe what was happening and I was so deep in his poisonous clutches that I went along with it all. Eventually it became too hard for me to walk and I couldn’t clean the house or cook dinner anymore. David didn’t let me out of ‘our’ room and because he was a doctor he didn’t see the need for me to be seen by a hospital.  One night I woke to the most intense pain I had ever felt. My screaming woke David and he got so angry he punched me into silence before inspecting my belly. My stomach was mottled with bruises and David accused me of trying to kill his child. Like I would willingly abuse an unborn baby just to spite him. He carried me to the room that used to be mine, he had prepared it for the delivery. He assured me he knew what he was doing as he floated about the room and I believed him.  It was only after he split my stomach from navel to pelvis with a kitchen knife and removed a sack filled with a blue skinned newborn that it had finally sunk into my brain how messed up this was. As he placed the blue newborn on the bed between my legs and walked away from me with hatred in his eyes I felt all my old fears disappear. The front door had slammed shut and I was left on a bed with my stomach still open and a dead baby. Whatever he had injected me with before cutting me open was still working and despite the fact that I could see right into my body I could barely feel it. I picked up my baby that was still attached via it’s umbilical cord to something in the depths of my body. Using the hair band on my wrist I tied off the cord above the baby's belly button. The knife was on the floor where David had dropped it so I used my teeth to disconnect the cord.  I raised the infant to my chest and rubbed its tiny back while I cried for its loss. After a few minutes the baby moved and a mixture of hope and fear swirled through me. Inspecting the baby closely I see its tiny chest moving with a heartbeat and the shallowest breaths were being pulled into its little lungs. David wasn’t back and I somehow knew he wasn’t going to return. This baby had meant more to him than he let on and with the failure of its birth he had abandoned me.  I wrapped the blanket around my belly to hold it closed with one hand and with the other I held my precious baby to my chest. The baby is so small that I can hold its entire body with only my arm. When I reached the phone I fell onto the couch with a scream. The painkiller was wearing off and adrenaline surged to replace it. My body began shaking and I lay on my back with the baby on my chest. Using all my remaining strength I held the baby close and dialled the emergency services.  Ambulance, address, blood, name, baby. I don’t remember what I had told them on the phone that night but they arrived while I was still awake. I watched as they packed my stomach with padding then stapled it shut, My baby was taken from me and I watched as they used an airbag to force oxygen into the tiny body. At some point they shipped us both to the hospital and my world went black.  I woke up three days later to the news that I was lucky to have survived. My uterus was obliterated by David’s version of a c-section and my abdominal muscles had been torn down the centre from the kitchen knife which had required an intensive reconstruction. Luckily my ovaries were unharmed so I wouldn’t go into early menopause and the place David had torn my bladder was stitched back together. Against everyone’s wishes I asked to keep my baby. They all believed that because of the trauma of the past three years with my stepfather that it would be unhealthy for me to be around my baby. They didn’t understand that my baby was everything to me from the moment I had felt the first kick. My daughter had been blue and unresponsive at birth due to lack of blood flow. The doctors transfused her with clean O positive blood and she recovered at a record pace. When we were both as healthy as we could be we were discharged and one of my great aunt’s had arrived to take us in.  She wasn’t there for me and my daughter though. She wanted me to give my daughter up for adoption and attempted to manipulate me into signing off on my inheritance. She wanted control of my mother’s assets but they were in my name and couldn’t be accessed until I was 21. That also meant I couldn’t sign them over unless I was 21 but no one said my great aunt was smart. After my time trapped in David’s web I knew the way of manipulation and though my great aunt's efforts were subtler they were ineffective because I noticed what she was doing.  I left in the night with my daughter and a suitcase filled with all our belongings. No one had seen or heard David, he had disappeared and was unlikely to reappear anytime soon. The police had posted his image to all stations and he was a wanted man. With no money and a newborn baby I stayed at a women’s shelter for a month. Three weeks after Katya was born she turned blue and her breathing shallowed out. I rushed her to the hospital and they thought she was being abused. They called CPS and after an investigation, and a few blood transfusions, they realised she was actually very sick.  Her blood was not generating healthy red blood cells. It took the doctors two months to come up with a treatment, on top of regular infusions of healthy haemoglobin she also received regular iron, b12, b2 and b3. The treatment would be ongoing until they could discover a permanent solution and it was costly. While we were in the hospital I had met a woman who had broken her ankle at work. She wore expensive clothing and jewellery and carried herself with grace. I asked her politely where she worked and she had given me a card to a club with instructions to ‘check it out’. By the time Katya was discharged I had visited the club and applied for a job as an exotic dancer. The pay was decent enough to pay for Katya’s medical bills and leave us just enough to get a small apartment. I enrolled online to get my High school diploma and Six months later we were finally doing alright.  At least we were until tonight, Katya had caught a non-fever. When other babies get sick they get fevers and become hot but my Katya gets cold. Trying to explain that to the babysitter and showing her how to watch for the de-oxygenation of Katya's blood, which would require an extra shot, had taken a chunk out of my travel time.  Up ahead I see the glowing neon for the club and the pavement beneath my feet evens out. The couple of blocks surrounding the club always looked nicer than every other place in this side of town. On the upper end of town they referred to this place and its people as dregs. I had chosen to hide here with Katya so no one from my old life would find us. I lived in constant fear that David would find us, I lived in fear that kids from my old school would see me and tell others where we were. I didn’t want any attention from them or the people who could never notice what was happening right below their noses. The ones who turned their back on me when the story broke in the papers because a nurse had blabbed. They could all rot in their fancy homes. The security at the back of the club let me through with an amused smirk and I smiled back.  “You’re late Clare.” I hadn’t given anyone my real name except the boss. No one here knew I was a 17 year old runaway, except my boss. Luckily she was quite uninclined to admit that she had hired a minor. However it also meant I got a lower paycheck than the other dancers and I couldn’t complain about it. I made up the loss with my tips from dancing anyway. “Well, stop distracting me with your handsome face and get back to work then.” He belly laughed at that and I smiled as I rushed inside. ‘Jon’, or so he had told us, had a big scar that ran from the corner of his mouth up through his nose bridge and slanting the edge of his eye. It made his face look like a Picasso painting and scared most untoward customers from their bad deeds. In the dressing room I applied my make-up and braided my hair in a long line behind my back. Today’s routine required a pair of sequin bummer shorts and n****e tassels. My heels today had leather all the way up to my thighs and screamed ‘s*x’. Whenever I wore them I got the bigger notes. By the time the Dj announced ‘Candy for stage three’ I was dressed and psyched to go. I loved dancing and the acrobatic side allowed me to utilize my many years of gymnastics.  My routine was flawless and by the time I finished one of the security guards had even tipped me a hundred. The boss man didn’t mind if security tipped the dancers so long as they didn’t get distracted and made sure to do their jobs. After picking up all my cash from the floor I removed myself from the stage so the next dancer could do her set. After changing out of the shorts into a G-string and mini skirt, made of tassels that match my n*****s, I head to the bar. Cassie is sitting there with a bit of paperwork and as I approach she pushed a small stack of bills towards me.  “Your first personal dance has already paid. The blue couch, white shirt.” I look over to the blue couch and the only guy in white sitting on it. “Well, show him the way. And don’t think you got away with being late. I’m taking twenty out of your paycheck.” I apologise and hurry away just grateful not to have lost my job. White shirt notices my approach and smiles politely.  “This way sir.” I lead him arm in arm to the private dance room and he sits back like he is the most comfortable man in this place. The dance goes by pretty quickly and white shirt is the perfect gentleman. He even paid the extra hundred it cost to lay hands on my hips while I danced for him. I was grateful for his tip and in a great mood as I left the private room. As I make my way around the club looking for patrons who would like private dances a familiar face by the door catches my eye. A boy I had gone to school with was standing between the bar and the front entrance with a punch drunk look on his face. Without drawing attention to myself I move around the room until I’m beside one of the security guys. “That blonde boy by the door. He is underage and would have used a fake ID to get in.” Normally the club would overlook things like that.  The boss’s motto, a client is a client. However the security guards knew that if a dancer raised an issue about any of the patrons the dancers were ALWAYS right. “I’ll deal with him. One moment Candy.” I watch from the edge of the room as the boy is removed from the club and once he’s gone I breathe freely. “Candy, call for you.” I move towards the bar and smile apologetically at the look the boss gives me as I take the phone from the bartender. “Clarissa, there is something wrong with Katya.” I feel the blood drain from my face as I listen to my babysitter Jane on the phone. “She is blue again, but it’s really dark this time. I gave her the injection and it didn’t help. She keeps screaming should I take her to the hospital?”  “No, I’ll be there in a moment. Take her into the second bedroom and put her in the cot, In the fridge is a silver bag. I need you to clip it into the machine that looks like a robot and press on the button. Try to keep her calm, as impossible as that sounds and I’ll be there momentarily.” I handed the phone back over to the bartender before turning to my boss.  “It’s an emergency so you can leave but if you expect a full paycheck next week you better talk to Misty about covering one of her shifts as I’m going to tell her that she has to stay longer tonight.” My boss was a legend and in that moment I loved her. “Thank you so much I’ll be sure to switch with Misty.” I blew her an air kiss and half sprinted to the dressing room. I ripped my boots from my feet and slipped on a pair of sneakers. I threw on my long coat not bothering with clothes and hit the rear entrance at a dead sprint.  “Clare? You ok?” He yells after me as I begin sprinting across the parking lot. “I’ll give you a lift.” No other words would have made me stop but the offer of a ride meant I would reach my baby faster than if I ran halfway across the dregs. “Please?” I barely hold back the tears and my voice wobbles as I all but fall to my knees waiting for him. Waving to the other guard he pulls a chain from his belt and jogs a few feet to my left where he straddles a black 2018 Kawasaki Z650.  “Come on. I’ll get you wherever you need to go.” I pull up the map on my phone as he places a helmet on my head. And he gives it a quick look before handing the phone back to me. As we take off I lace my arms around his abdomen and squeeze the bike as best I can with my thighs without burning myself. We made it to my apartment in minutes, Jon took a lot of backstreets, and I jumped from the bike while flinging the helmet at him. I open the front door and rush to the second bedroom with a lump in my throat. Katya is screaming murder and bluer than a berry when I enter. As I cross the threshold the timer on the warmer goes off and I pull the silver bag from its depths and hang it on the IV pole. I connect a line and pierce Katya’s precious skin in perfected movements. As I set the infusion to medium speed I can see the babysitter watching in fascination.  “Why didn’t the injections work? Did you give it to her correctly?” I didn’t mean to yell the question but as the girl flinches I take some calming breaths. “I don’t know.” The babysitter is crying by this point. “It always works every other time she has an attack. I’ve never seen her this blue.” As the girl starts to shake I pull her into my arms. She tried her best and she has never failed me before. “Sorry for yelling. There must be something else going on. She shouldn’t have needed another infusion for a month.”  A gasp sounds from the doorway and I turn with horror shining on my face. Standing in the doorway is Jon. In his hand is my clutch that I must have dropped at some point. His eyes are glued to Katya and an uncomfortable feeling crawls up my spine. I step in front of her cot and his eyes shift to me. If looks could kill I would have died right there on the spot.  “Where did you get this child from?” His voice booms across the space and Jane shrinks back against the wall.  “What the f**k are you doing in my house?” I yell back putting as much venom into my own voice as possible. “Put my clutch down and leave. I didn’t ask you inside Jon.”  “Like I need an invite.” He scoffs at me before striding up face to face with me. “Where. Did. You. Get. This. Child?” I stared up into his face refusing to back down despite the fact that all the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end. A tugging in the back of my head makes me want to answer him but I clamp my mouth shut.  “Maaaa!” Katya’s cry breaks through the stare-off and I move to pick her up.  “Shh, it’s ok baby. I got you.” I pick her up and rock her in my arms until she calms. Her skin had lost its blue colour with the infusion and she now had pale cream skin with a rosy glow in her cheeks. As she snuggles closer into my shoulder and begins babbling in baby, Jon looks between the two of us in shock.  “Not possible.” He breathes and I shake my head at him because for some unknown reason he was still in my house spouting nonsense. “I need to make a phone call.” Placing Katya back in her crib I follow Jon through the house and lock my door the moment he steps outside. “Jane, I need to get out of my underwear and wash the club off me. Can you stay for a little bit longer?” She nods as she rocks Katya in her arms with a smile. I remove the line connecting Katya to the IV pole and Jane takes her to the living room while I shower.  When I’m clean and dressed in soft shorts and a singlet I move into the micro living room with a pillow and sit down to feed Katya. She latches onto the breast like the little greedy monster she is and I smile down at her as I wipe her light brown hair from her forehead.  “Clarissa, I have to get back home now. I’m a bit shocked so I need sleep. Call me next time you are free and teach me how to set up the IV.” I raise a questioning eyebrow at her. “Well, I never want to feel that helpless again. If I know what to do you wouldn’t miss out on work. I know how much you need the money.”  “Thanks Jane. You are absolutely the best and next time I get a good tip so will you.” I point to my clutch that’s still on the floor in the doorway of Katya’s room. “Grab yourself a hundred from in there.”  I watch with a smile as Jane makes a subtle show as she takes the money out of my wallet. She always does this to make sure I cannot accuse her of stealing. I’m not sure who would accuse Jane of stealing but the thought of them doing so makes me angry. Chronologically she is older than me by two years. However she is small enough to be mistaken for a young teen and she’s soft spoken and sweet as a buttercup. She has her first aid and babysits her way through a local college life. It works for her because she is studying to be a childcare worker and most of the women in this apartment complex have kids and work nights.  As she leaves through the front door Jon muscles his way back inside and locks her out.  “Do you want me to call the police. My phone is already dialled.” I say to him without raising my voice. Katya had dozed off fitfully in my arms and I didn’t want to wake her. “Get the f**k out of my house Jon. You have always been nice and now you are being a creep.” “Clarissa,” he drawls my full name and for a dumb minute I’m shocked he knows my name, then my brain starts to work and I realise Jane has said since I’ve been home. But wait, wasn’t he outside when she did? “What is the name of your baby daddy?” “David. Why the f**k do you want to know?” I hiss quietly. “Well whoever this David is, he broke the law.” “How do you know that? Did you have me investigated or something?” Fear slithers its way up my spine. I snuggle Katya into the couch behind me with the pillow up against her to stop her from rolling off then stand up into Jon’s personal space. “So you do know then?” He asks in a voice like I’m the psycho in this situation. “Well when you abuse, knock up and then slice up your step daughter leaving her for dead because you assume she had a hand in the death of your offspring,” I shrug as if recounting those years doesn’t tear me open. “I would assume that breaks more than just one law.” The silence after my speech could be cut with a butter knife. It was so thick with tension. I watch as Jon opens and closes his mouth multiple times, like a fish, trying to figure out what he should say to all of that. “So, you don’t know.” Scraping his hand across his bald head he looks in every direction away from me. “How old is the baby?” “9 months. Why do you keep asking me questions and why am I answering them?” Each of his questions causes a headache to blossom at the base of my skill and I was starting to feel the effects of that. “You answer because I’m making you.” He says casually and tries to step around me towards the couch. Stepping into his line of sight I place one of my hands on his chest. “If you don’t back away from my child you will regret it. Last warning.” Jon looks down into my face like I’m a cockroach in his path. He places both hands on my shoulders and lifts me out of his way.  Before he can turn back towards the couch I barrel into his body with my shoulder throwing him away from the couch. Pain spreads across my shoulder joint and I’m sure that I dislocated my shoulder on all of Jon abs. If I hadn’t caught him off guard I doubt I could have moved him at all. As it was, I pushed my advantage. Unstrapping the shotgun from my coffee table, swiping up a handful of shells and loading the gun takes moments. I have the gun trained on him before he had raised off the ground and it makes him hesitate. “I told you multiple times now to f**k OFF.”  I hiss still trying to avoid yelling. Jon’s eyes move from me to the shotgun and back again.  “It works in the movies.” He mumbles under his breath before reaching out a hand and clasping the barrel of the gun. I fire and he grunts as bullet tears through his hand obliterating it and the splatter cuts into his face and torso. Raising his eyes to mine with a snarl he snatches the gun away and I watch in horror as he curls it into a pretzel.  He uses his obliterated hand like it still exists and as I watch it begins to regrow. The fragments that had hit the rest of his body begin to fall from their purchase in his skin and I can feel blackness pushing at my consciousness. I fall to my knees and crawl over to Katya laying over her body.  “I’m sorry baby.” I whisper before the blackness steals my consciousness away completely. “f**k!” that one word follows me into the darkness.