Brenda sat on the couch, silently staring at the man passed out in the recliner. The tears on her face had dried, leaving only feelings of anger mixed with her physical pain.
He had abused her in ways no father should. Even worse, he let his friends take turns…after the first two or three she had lost count of how many times her bedroom door had opened and shut during the night. She honestly didn’t even know who they were because she kept her eyes closed the whole time until she heard their cars leaving early in the morning.
Feeling somewhat safe then she half dressed & had ventured out into the living room but he was still awake, sitting on the couch drunk and cleaning his revolver. When he saw her he laughed and asked her how she enjoyed the previous nights festivities. When she began to cry he got angry, threw her on the couch, ripped off her panties, shoved his gun inside her and told her if she ever said a word about it he would kill her. Then he smiled, cuffed her, pulled off his pants and started all over again.
Watching him sleep she wondered how easily it might be to kill him, but something deep inside told her not to. He was her father after all and in some sick, perverted, twisted way she knew he loved her. But what he did to her was wrong. If her mother was still alive she would’ve never allowed it but mom died when she was 8…the abuse started soon after. She was 13 now & had started to develop early…way more than most of the other girls her age which brought her a lot of unwanted attention. She didn’t understand why the boys kept staring at her but if it had anything to do with what her father did to her constantly she wanted no part of it.
His gun was still laying on the table but she wasn’t quite sure how it worked. He had never taught her how to use it and she didn’t want to just harm him, she wanted him dead. There were all those knives in the kitchen too but she didn’t want to stab him in the wrong spot because if it didn’t kill him then what’s the point.
She really wasn’t sure what to do so she thought maybe while he was still asleep should take a walk to clear her head. Maybe she would think of something.
They lived about two blocks from the train station in a very run down part of town. Most of the houses in their area were either abandoned or close to being condemned and hers was one of the only few left on their street that was still occupied. Mainly because dad didn’t have enough money to move them and there was nothing else they could afford. She was walking behind the station house when she heard someone crying, like a small child. She walked around to the front of the building and saw a woman standing at the ticket counter talking to the agent. Close to the edge of the platform there was a small boy, maybe around 3 or 4 years old. He was dressed real fancy in nice new clothes bought from a store in town. All she ever got to wear were old items from the Salvation Army store or the donation boxes at church. She noticed a red spot on his leg and figured a mosquito or something else had bit him which is why he was crying. Snot was running down his nose, dripping on his new shirt which made her angry. He was just a kid, didn’t really know any better but it irked her that he was all clean & nice, messing up his neat clothes while she was dirty & dressed in hand-me-downs. He noticed her as she walked closer and smiled, gurgling and trying to babble at her. She shushed him and motioned for him to follow her as she walked backwards towards the woods. He slowly made his way down the steps as she looked towards the counter…neither his mother nor the ticket agent were looking in their direction. He caught up to her but tripped on a small branch and started crying again.
His mother yelled at him without even turning around “Be quiet Tommy, I’m almost done!”
Brenda smiled & reached out to him “Don’t be afraid Tommy, we’re gonna go play in the woods. Wouldn’t you like that?” He nodded at her smiling his toothy grin as he took her hand and she led him away.
The police had been looking for Tommy for 3 days before they found his body in the woods, buried in a small shallow grave covered with leaves. Something had been gnawing on his face…part of his nose was missing and there were bite marks on his lips and cheeks. Several fingers were missing and part of his left leg was gone. It made the news all over town and everyone around came for the funeral, Brenda included but her father was conspicuously absent. She watched Tommy’s mother, sobbing uncontrollably while the man behind her held her steady. It was probably Tommy’s father. He was handsome, well-dressed & you could see the pain in his face as he tried to hold himself together. Suddenly she recognized him…he was a well-known lawyer whose face was plastered on several billboards through town. If she had known that then maybe she wouldn’t have done all those things to Tommy. But then she realized it never would have mattered. She had been so angry, so hurt…she needed to inflict pain on something else. Or someone. Tommy had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He never even saw it coming…he was so clumsy falling over everything as they walked away & crying that she knew his mom would come looking soon so she picked him up and ran, carrying him deeper into the woods. She sat him down on the ground and he was momentarily distracted by a frog that came hopping by, long enough for her to find a large rock nearby that wasn’t too heavy for her to pick up. He was crawling along the ground slowly when the rock came down hard on the back of his head. She knew all about soft spots on babies heads and figured as long as she got close to it then maybe he would be dazed enough so he wouldn’t struggle too much. He never even screamed…it killed him instantly which made her even angrier. She wanted him to suffer and she couldn’t even hear the sounds of his screams when she pulled out her pocketknife and stabbed his lifeless body over and over until her hand ached. She had sat & cried a bit out of frustration before trying to find something to hide him with. The rock she had found had a sharp, flat edge on it and she used it to dig out a small depression in the ground to put his body in. The ground was covered in old leaves which she used to cover the grave. She stamped them down to put more & more on before falling back, exhausted. The whole day played over & over in her head but she felt no better than before. The anger she’d felt towards her father was just deepening so if this didn’t cull her need to inflict pain she wasn’t sure if anything would. She had slowly gotten to her feet before walking back towards the house to find her dad still asleep. All the feelings she had for him earlier were gone. He was just a sack of meat that caused her pain and he needed to pay for it. She had found the large butcher knife in the kitchen and sat on the coffee table in front of him, plotting, looking over him slowly trying to figure out where to cut him first. Somehow she needed to incapacitate him so he wouldn’t move much or make a lot of noise. Back in the kitchen she found some duct tape and a long extension cord…he was so drunk he didn’t even flinch when she placed the tape over his mouth and tied the cord around his stomach and the chair.
By the time they found his body, several days after Tommy’s funeral, she was long gone. Someone had called the cops because she had missed some school and he was found still tied to his chair. The knife was protruding from his face, lodged deep in his left eye but he’d been stabbed 47 times, 3 fingers sliced off and his left ear was missing. They never found it, or her.
THE QUEEN OF HELL
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Words From The Underground 