Loving the Campus Monster

Chapter 12 (Undoing some Wrongs)

Ross

Propped on an elbow, I lean over the sleeping Laura, with the moon high outside the window behind me. In its soft light mixed with the warm glow from the lamp light, Laura's face seems peaceful. She trusted me to keep her safe in her dreams, without realizing what kind of monster she'd allowed close to her.

For days after that night, I waited for her to report me, expecting the doorbell of the mansion to ring any minute with the police standing on the other side to arrest me. But the punishment I was waiting for never happened, and the gnawing guilt I held inside already became deeper, turning into an even worse form of torment.

My partying increased, helping me to make it through the last months at home with all the memories that tortured me there, and a mother that just didn't seem to give a shit about me. She had her money and drugs, and that was all she needed. Alcohol had become my trusted friend for coping with the guilt and pain of trying to forget about the monster I had glimpsed inside myself. The monster I tried so hard not to be most my life, that I promised Ricky that I would never become. But I realized..... there was no escaping it.

I was becoming like my father.

Whisky became my trusted companion to numb the pain and guilt over the years, but it made it impossible to control the anger. The suppressed rage that had been seething inside of me for years, fed and nurtured by my father's regular attacks back then and later on by the memories that wouldn't leave me. With alcohol weakening my defenses, the anger sprang out in fiery outbursts that no one could control, definitely not me for sure.

Somehow, I still made it through high school, and then enrolled in the University of Maryland a few hours away from the town. Another dig at my father for not choosing to go to his university he picked out for me. Being away from home gave me new hope that I could do better, that I could be better. And initially I was able to stick to the life plan that I had devised with Ricky. He always hoped for us to be drafted in the NHL and be on the same Hockey team someday. So, I tried hard in honor of him. The first year of university I made it into the school's hockey team and for a while kept up the rigorous training and discipline. I even maintained my grades at the required level. I did all of this to keep my promise and show Ricky that I could be a better person than our father ever was. That I was not becoming like him, but that all changed when my uncle decided to come here and start teaching at the school. I absolutely hated that he followed me here, bringing with him all the memoires I tried to suppress over the past few months, as well as my anger at him that I still harbored inside. I wished he could have just left me alone, but instead he'd just had to follow me, unearthing old painful memories and messing everything up for me.

I know what he was trying to do by coming to work at the university. He was trying to make up for leaving Ricky and me all those years ago, to show he was there for me now, but it was a lost endeavor, because there was nothing, he could do that will ever make me forgive him. As far as I was concerned, he blew his chance five years ago when he abounded us to our father's volatile temper and abuse. I used to believe that my uncle would save me and Ricky from him someday. He was always there to help protect us from our father by coming over to see us a lot, diverting our father's attention from us to him, or having us stay at his place for days at a time. He even told us he would try to get custody of us, giving me and my brother hope. False hope.

Now I know that it was all just a lie. For a whole fucking year, I held out hope that he would call to let us know where he was and when he was coming back, but he never did, and he never answered any of our calls either. Two years after that we started to believe that he was never coming back. That's when Ricky started to blame himself, thinking it was somehow his fault that he was gone. Ricky already had low self-esteem thanks to our father who loved to belittle him every chance he could get, and that just made me hate our uncle even more for causing it.