killers in disguise

enjoy your slay part 2

Mum and I were sitting watching a crappy movie. After I receive permission from mother to go to my room to retrieve my fire engine but expressly cautioned to not make a sound because dad only just went to bed however I find my insomniac father awake, sitting at the edge of his bed and staring zombie-like into space.

In a stuporous voice (and with a disorienting double image of him in a mirror reflection), dad asks me to join him. Incongruously, dad holds and embraces me and places me on my knee.

I have always had an primal fear that he will hurt my mother and him. During a halting, strained, distant conversation.

"How's it goin' just?" Dad asks.

"OK." I say.

"Havin' a good time?"

"Yes Dad."

"Good. I wantcha to have a good time."

"I am, Dad. Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Do you feel bad?"

"No. Seem a bit tired."

"Why don't you go to sleep?"

"I can't. I have too much to do."

"Dad?"

"Yes."

"Do you like this hotel?"

"Yes, I do. I love it. Don't you?"

"I guess so."

"Yeah. I want you to like it here. I"

"wish we could stay here forever, and
ever, ever." I echoes the words of the two ghost-girls from the previous day.

"Dad?"

"What?"

"You would never hurt Mummy or me, would ya?"

"What do you mean? Did your mother ever say that to you? That I would hurt you?"

"No, Dad."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Dad."

"I love you, Justin. I love you more than anything else in the whole world. And I would never do anything to hurt ya, never. You know that, don't ya? Huh?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Good."

Few days later

I stood in my mum's room methodically repeating "Redrum" in my spencer voice as I pick up a sharp butcher knife on the nightstand next to my sleeping mother. I brandish the knife over her and slides my thumb down the sharp edge of the blade.

I take a tube of red lipstick from the dresser and write "Redrum" on the bathroom door while bleating out the word. The writing spells "Murder" in the dresser mirror's reflection. Mum understands the revelation in the mirror - Dad wants to murder her.

Suddenly dad rapidly transforms into an axe-wielding homicidal madman. He suddenly appears to murderously pursue his wife - he takes a long-handled axe to their apartment's front door.

"Honey, I'm home."

Both Myself and mum retreat to the bathroom. I escape through the window and slide down a giant drift of snow but mum was unable to fit through the ice-jammed window's narrow passageway.

I run back inside and hides inside a metallic storage cabinet in the kitchen. As i hear Hallorann call out "Anybody here?" I hear dad jump out from behind a pillar, swings the axe at him, and puts it through his chest, leaving the sacrificed, murdered man lying across a large Indian design on the floor of the lobby.

The placement of the bloodied black man on an Indian design brings up multiple images of violence and hostility in American history. If Hallorann had the gift of telepathy and clairvoyance, wouldn't he have known of the ambush? I scream in terror. Now obscenely evil, dad hears me and knows my hiding place. causing me to run from the kitchen cabinet with my father carrying a blood-stained axe in pursuit.

Dad hobbles and staggers after me through the blizzard into the outdoor garden's icy maze. Pursuing me with murderous intent and the threat of annihilation, dad follows and chases after my footprints in the frosted snow, in a symbolic attempt to visit "the sins of the father" upon his own flesh and blood. He cries out with wild and inarticulate grunts "Danny! I'm coming! You can't get away! I'm right behind ya."

Using an old Indian trick in an age-old game, I retraces my steps by backing up in my own footsteps in the snow and then hiding off to the side in some hedges. After I manage to escape the maze I leap into my mother's arms, crying in relief "Mommy! Mommy!"

myself and mum manage to escape in Hallorann's Snow-cat, leaving dad in the convoluted maze - where he would most likely freeze and die from the cold in his tracks.

2000 (age 10)

"Shit just that sounds horrible" Spencer says as we sit on his bed at the orphanage. I have been here for 2 years. I Spencer has been here for almost 6 years.  "What happened to your mum after that" he asks.

"Died in her sleep" I say.

"If you don't mind me asking how did you end up here"

"That a long story" he says laying down next to me. I look at his left wrist and his soul mark matched mine.

"Come on I just told you mine"

"Fine I was nine years old. My parents were out and my babysitter had bought a few friends over"