Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2020 17:56:51 GMT -5
PREFACE - Written March 4th 2020 at NFW
As my birthday draws nearer, I find myself drawn more to the drink. Alone on a quiet roof top cradling a bottle of cheap whisky I sat. It's been ten long years since I left Scotland, never to look back. I love the country and it's beautiful splendor, but there is a taint to it in the form of bad memories, bad times, and a ruined childhood. Taking a swig from the bottle, I feel the bite of the alcohol and taste the bitter smoked flavor of it immediately. It was piss swill, but I didn't care. I just wanted to get hammered and forget my troubles for a few minutes. Dull my mind from the pain as it were. Fuck does it rarely work though.
I lay back and stare up at the glittering night sky, letting my mind drift. I was told it was a cold night that seventeenth day of March that I was born in the year of our lord, nineteen ninety-four. An unwanted child of another man who bedded my mother behind the back of my father, an unnamed Welsh sailor he was called. For years I had hoped he would come and save me from the thing that called himself my father. Even now, the name Chadwick Bronnel O'Hatherine put a sickening taste in my mouth even when it was just a thought and nothing more.
My mother was, in a way, more hurtful as she would sit back and let him do whatever he wanted without challenge or question. In silence, she'd watch him drunkenly abuse me. To the eyes of a toddler to even ten years old, he seemed a massive beast of a man with massive fists, greasy jet black hair, and bushy sideburns on a ruddy, weathered and rounded face with a nose that was crooked from being broken in far too many fights. For the first ten years of my life, I would reach out for her, crying my eyes out and begging for help as he beat upon me with those fists. All the pale, thin blond woman would do was look away.
Whenever she did, he'd shout with his thick Irish brogue, "LOOK AND SEE WOT YER SIN DID WROUGHT WOMAN!" His fists would land harder. It wasn't until my thirteenth year of life that I started to laugh at him in wicked mockery, begging him to kill me. I'd land in the hospital unable to speak in such instances, but I didn't care. I wanted to die. No, Chadwick wouldn't let me out that easy and would pay off the local constabularies to turn a blind eye and write stories about me getting into fights in school.
Yet it was my mother, Connie Madeline Hatchet-O'Hatherine who angered me even more than him. At anytime, she could have ended it all. She could've stood up for her own flesh and blood but instead, all I would ever get were sad eyes and the same meek, tired apologies. "A'm sae sorry, dear hert," I'd hear until the last night I ever saw her. My father caught me sneaking in after winning roughly five hundred pounds sterling in a back alley fight with a man almost as big as Chadwick was. I was in no condition to stop him, already beaten down. I was due to turn sixteen in a few days and my plan was to take that money and charter a boat to anywhere that took me away from this painful existence.
Soaked to the bone from the stormy weather I had walked miles of city back alleys with the money in a small black bag, I was halfway through the window when his hand caught my arm and pulled me in before I could even react! I started to get up and his foot went straight to my back, pinning me down as he snatched the bag from my grip.
"Wot's this wee child?" He asked, slowly unzipping it.
"NO! TIS MINE! I EARNED IT!!!" I shouted back.
A stomp to my back had me croaking with pain. Out came the legal tender and I looked up at him, foolishly hoping he might do the right thing this one time. He smiled back at me cruelly and slipped the money out, tossing the bag in my face.
"So ya' go out pickin' strangers pockets fer money then, is that it? Is my child a bloomin' thief?"
"Nay! I beat a man as big n' almos as fawk uglae as ye' are ta' get it!" I spat back with venom.
He reached down and picked me up by the scruff of my neck, lifting me effortlessly off the floor and hurling me across the room! I cried out as I hit the dresser and crumpled to the floor. Wrong choice of words girl, but I didn't care. Either he was going to kill me or I him!
"HA HA HA!!! That's rich wee one," he said with condescension dripping from his deep, rough voice.
I pushed myself up, wracked with pain and muscles aching. Before I knew it, he had me pinned to the wall by the throat with one hand! Slowly he started to choke me right then and there, me battering his wrists and kicking my legs. His arms were thick and long like that of an ape. I couldn't reach his face and in the ravaged state I was already in, I could do little else.
"Ya think ya can fight me? FIGHT ME! COME ON THEN! HA HA HAAAA!!"
He slammed my head against the wall so hard my vision doubled and he leaned in with an evil sneer.
"That's what I thought girlie... as weak as tha' blood that spoiled yer mother and made you!"
I don't know what happened really, I blacked out and when I came to, he was clawing at his eye, screaming bloody murder!
"MY EYE! YA FUCKIN' TRASH CUNT! YA TOOK MY BLOODY FUCKIN' EEEEYYYYEEEE!!!"
Sure enough, in my blood covered hands were an eye that I then tossed upon the floor and with him looking on in horror with his remaining good one, I stomped on it! Chadwick came at me and I thought fast, gathering a stool by my bed up and crashing it across his fucking skull! The stool shattered from the impact. There were tears of pain and joy in my eyes as I gathered a sharpened piece of wood intent on stabbing and murdering the man that brought me so much misery. I trembled as I stood over him, my weapon raised high over my head and ready to be plunged into his heart like a stake to a vampire.
"Stoap!" came a voice from the doorway.
There my mother stood in her night gown, tired and fearful.
"Why?"
"Fur ye'll be in jyle 'n' yer lee wull be ower!" She answered.
"An' why's that a problem? This fawkin' bastard deserves ta' die and prison wonnae' be so bad compared to this life!"
"Na molly. Tak' yer dosh alang wi' this 'n' gang stairt a freish lee!"
She tossed me a small black bag. Out of curiosity, I lowered down to pick it up and opened it to find roughly two thousand pounds sterling.
"Mother..."
"Nae anither word! gang afore he wakes up now!"
Gathering up the money, I listened despite every fiber of my being wanting that man dead. Perhaps it was the shock that for once, my mother actually helped me. I'll never know as I never went back. Oddly no one ever came looking for me nor were the authorities called. Perhaps I had damaged my dear father's ego by hurting him in a permanent manner, who's to say? That night, the victim, Molly O'Hatherine was no more. I left home and with only twenty-five hundred pounds sterling in my pocket, I began a new life thereafter that lead me here.
I hated thinking about it, hated the thought of ever going back to Scotland and yet a small part of me is drawn back there. As I said, I loved the country but I fucking hated my family with all my being. You'd think that in ten years time, with the fame and small fortune I've managed, I'd be over this shit but I'm not. Will I ever be free of these memories that haunt me so and taint me even in the good times I have now? Perhaps one day, I'll go back there and put this to bed but today is not that day.
Steadily I had been sipping that whisky the entire time, unaware of how much was still in the bottle. I didn't even realize I had a fairly good buzz going until the last drop hit my tongue and there was no more. With a sigh, I tossed the bottle aside. It wouldn't be until the chill of air aged past the chimes of midnight's call did I finally decide to pick up and climb down the building. Once on foot, I began my trek. I'm sure Cherry would have questions for me being out so late without her. I'll just use sex to shut her up. That always seems to work just grand. I had a brief thought of how my father would react knowing that I had turned out to be of bi-queer persuasion despite his best efforts. This thought brought a small bit of chuckling at the comedy of awkwardness, given his hypocritical staunch Irish-Catholic beliefs. Then the further realization that she's a Satanist really brought the laughter out of me.
No. She'll never meet him. Ever. She doesn't deserve to have someone that low class in her presence.
The house is empty, save for me things and cat. Cherry, however, was gone. Family matters to deal with she had said and that was fine with me. I await me love patiently, stroking me furry Caleco cat on the couch as Youtube played on my television screen. I'd just finished a rousing round of Jack SepticEye playing King's Crusade III and felt like going for a walk when there was a knock on my door. I rose from the couch, eager, and hopeful. Maybe Cherry was back! With a grin on my face, I gave the baggy night shirt I wore a slight tug and tussled my bed hair a bit. Don't judge, it's the morning yeah!
I skipped my way to the door, a smile beaming on my face as I tore it open.
"CHERRY!" I shouted, but stopped when I saw someone much older and haggard. A woman that looked vaguely familiar to me, with her blond hair cut short and sporting a long sleeved shirt, black pants, and arched slip shoes. Her pale skin is wrinkled by stress and age, dotted with freckles.
"Wait...." I began, but was interrupted.
"Molly dearheart, tis guid tae see ye," interrupted the woman.
"...Mother?"
"Aye."
"Wha.... what are ya doin' here mum?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"Ah juist git oot o' jyle 'n' ah said that if ah survived mah time thare, a'd see come 'n' see ye," she answered, then asked in return, "Kin ah come in?"
"Jail? You were in Prison? Oi... yeah come in..." and I side stepped to let her inside.
What was my mother doing here, in America? How'd she find me? Why was she in bloody prison? Fawk I had alot of questions that needed answering!
She settles on the couch as I start brewing up tea on the stove in the kitchen.
"Yer hame needs a bawherr o' a cleaning, dear," I heard from the living room.
"Aye, well tis me house, I own it, and it'll be in a state of me chosen till I clean it," came my terse reply.
"That wis rude, mah apologies. A'm proud ye hae managed a' this oan yer ain."
It didn't take long for the tea to brew in the pot. I poured two cups, adding a spot of whisky to my own, then bringing them to the table. I hand a cup to my mother as I settle down in the chair by the couch.
"What happened? Did that miserable bastard put ye in jail? Are ya finally free of him?"
There is a bitter smile on Connie's face as she sips her tea, then sits it down on the coffee table before her.
"Ye cuid say that, loue. Th' nicht ye left, ah murdurred him deid ah did. Slit his throat richt thare oan th' flair whaur ye left him, then called fer th' bobbies tae come git me. Ah got lifted, pled guilty in court, 'n' spent th' lest loads years in jyle. He'll ne'er hurt a'body ever again."
I stare back at my mother in silence for a full minute. He's dead and buried? Ashes to the wind? I couldn't believe my ears.
"You killed him, mum?"
"Aye. Urr ye deaf dear? ah juist said ah murdurred him!"
She notices a picture of Cherry on the table and picks it up.
"Who's this young lassie? mist be a pure claise mukker tae hae a picters o' her oan yer coffee buird 'n' shelf ."
"She's me girlfriend, mum."
"A mukker that's a lassie or....?"
"She's me lover, mum. I sort of found out I'm queer, yeah. Does that change yer opinion of me?"
She settles the picture down and rubs her hands together. Mom stayed quiet for a moment until finally looking up at me with a brilliant smile.
"Tis a brand freish world. If yi'll waant tae mak' loue tae wummin, ah suppose that's howfur it's. Na grand bairns fur me," She said at long last.
"Aye, 'cause if ye protested, I'd show ya tha door."
Connie chuckles softly and slaps a hand on mine, giving it a soft squeeze.
"Ah dinnae care wha ye loue dear. Ah wis in a woman's jyle fur eleven years. Ah hud a burd tae, sae na judgements fae me. A'm happy ye'v fun loue. Whaur is she? a'd loue tae catch up wi` her!"
"She's been gone awhile, mum. Dealin with family matters of some sort but didnae' invite me. Personal matters are what they are, yeah."
I look my mother in the eye and finally it hits me. I never realized how much I had really missed her, but then there's a combination of anger that wells up with it as well. Memories of all the times she watched me being beaten mercilessly by that bastard that called himself my father. I shove her hand away.
"I know ye' killed him... He had it comin. I'll ne'er condemn ye fer that, but why did ya wait so long? Why did I have ta' suffer for so many years at his hands while ya sat back and did nothin?!"
Rising from my seat, quivering with clenched fists, I practically towered over my mother who sits back, staring up at me with guilty blue eyes.
"He beat me and beat me and beat me black and bloody blue week after week, sometimes night upon night! WHY DIDN'T YE' KILL HIM THEN?!"
With tears in my eyes, I lift her up off the couch by the collar of her shirt. She grabs at my wrists but it's clear I am far too strong for her as I pull her up and slam her against the wall. I'd lost control in this moment as long dead emotions fired back to life. What felt like a thousand years of pain burned through my soul as I sobbed uncontrollably.
"Ah wis scared, wee yin! ah wis a bloody feartie-cat, feart o' him fur he beat th' lee oot o' me yin tae mony times 'n' said if ah tried, he'd mak' it worse oan us baith! ah didnae waant him tae murdurr ye!!!"
I tossed her to the floor and she promptly scrambles back from me, panting, wide eyed with fear. I stalked after her, feeling every muscle tensed as I dip foward like a five foot hulk. The anger within me was deep and burning, a rage that wanted a soul to feast on. Her back hits a wall and I close the distance, taking a fist full of her shirt and pulling her up, rearing back my fist and just as I'm about to strike, I catch myself. From the corner of my eye, I see the pose I struck in a mirror on the wall. I turn my head and look at it. There I stood, holding her much as my father would hold me, my fist reared back in the exact same pose.
"Fawkin' hell...." I said softly as I released my mother. She fell to the floor. My hands shook as I ran my fingers through my hair. Turning my back to her, I walk away.
"Ye hae ilka richt tae be crabbit, loue. Ah failed ye as a mither 'n' whin ah finally did step up 'n' dae whit wantit daein', 'twas tae wee, tae late. If ye hud gubbed me juist noo, a'd hae deserved it."
"I'm not dad," I responded, still speaking softly, hugging myself.
"A'm proud o' ye, mah daughter. Ye'v dane sae muckle wi' yer lee in sic a short time. Ye'r better than him, me, 'n' a' body else wha hud failed ye afore. Guid oan ye fur becoming a stoatin international wrestler!"
She watched me while in prison? I turn around to face her.
"You saw me wrestlin?"
"Aye. Ah proudly hollered tae th' ither inmates that ye wur mah daughter. Ye made something o' yersel' even wi' everything 'n' a' body against ye. A paukit spitfire that's gubbed back sae muckle. Ta fur daein' whit ye'v dane wi' yer lee, fur it made ilka moment ah spent in jyle worth it!"
Her Edinburgh accent would be so hard to understand for most. I'd never lost my ability to understand her, even all these years later. My mom's proud of me. I thought she'd hate me for embracing such a violent lifestyle, but I love wrestling I do. She rises from her seat on the floor and approaches me with slow, deliberate steps.
"Mum... I... I donnae' know what ta' say..." Tears were in me eyes and she just swept in, throwing her arms around me, hugging me close.
"Ssshhhh. Thare, thare dearheart. Ye dinnae hae tae say anythin' et all."
We spent the remainder of the afternoon catching up on missed time. I regaled her with wrestling stories and she told me of her experiences in prison. By the time she left, I'd found my heart for her again. I love my mother, I do and that bastard? Chadwick Bronnel O'Hatherine, is food for the worms. The relief that I'll never so much as see or hear him again lifted a huge weight from my heart. Part of me though is saddened that my mother suffered for something I still feel that I should've done myself all those years ago, but she's right. Had I killed him, my life would have been ruined and I'd have missed every opportunity I had gained. Thank you, mother dearest.
MARCH 4th 2020 - Before Molly's 25th Birthday!
As my birthday draws nearer, I find myself drawn more to the drink. Alone on a quiet roof top cradling a bottle of cheap whisky I sat. It's been ten long years since I left Scotland, never to look back. I love the country and it's beautiful splendor, but there is a taint to it in the form of bad memories, bad times, and a ruined childhood. Taking a swig from the bottle, I feel the bite of the alcohol and taste the bitter smoked flavor of it immediately. It was piss swill, but I didn't care. I just wanted to get hammered and forget my troubles for a few minutes. Dull my mind from the pain as it were. Fuck does it rarely work though.
I lay back and stare up at the glittering night sky, letting my mind drift. I was told it was a cold night that seventeenth day of March that I was born in the year of our lord, nineteen ninety-four. An unwanted child of another man who bedded my mother behind the back of my father, an unnamed Welsh sailor he was called. For years I had hoped he would come and save me from the thing that called himself my father. Even now, the name Chadwick Bronnel O'Hatherine put a sickening taste in my mouth even when it was just a thought and nothing more.
My mother was, in a way, more hurtful as she would sit back and let him do whatever he wanted without challenge or question. In silence, she'd watch him drunkenly abuse me. To the eyes of a toddler to even ten years old, he seemed a massive beast of a man with massive fists, greasy jet black hair, and bushy sideburns on a ruddy, weathered and rounded face with a nose that was crooked from being broken in far too many fights. For the first ten years of my life, I would reach out for her, crying my eyes out and begging for help as he beat upon me with those fists. All the pale, thin blond woman would do was look away.
Whenever she did, he'd shout with his thick Irish brogue, "LOOK AND SEE WOT YER SIN DID WROUGHT WOMAN!" His fists would land harder. It wasn't until my thirteenth year of life that I started to laugh at him in wicked mockery, begging him to kill me. I'd land in the hospital unable to speak in such instances, but I didn't care. I wanted to die. No, Chadwick wouldn't let me out that easy and would pay off the local constabularies to turn a blind eye and write stories about me getting into fights in school.
Yet it was my mother, Connie Madeline Hatchet-O'Hatherine who angered me even more than him. At anytime, she could have ended it all. She could've stood up for her own flesh and blood but instead, all I would ever get were sad eyes and the same meek, tired apologies. "A'm sae sorry, dear hert," I'd hear until the last night I ever saw her. My father caught me sneaking in after winning roughly five hundred pounds sterling in a back alley fight with a man almost as big as Chadwick was. I was in no condition to stop him, already beaten down. I was due to turn sixteen in a few days and my plan was to take that money and charter a boat to anywhere that took me away from this painful existence.
Soaked to the bone from the stormy weather I had walked miles of city back alleys with the money in a small black bag, I was halfway through the window when his hand caught my arm and pulled me in before I could even react! I started to get up and his foot went straight to my back, pinning me down as he snatched the bag from my grip.
"Wot's this wee child?" He asked, slowly unzipping it.
"NO! TIS MINE! I EARNED IT!!!" I shouted back.
A stomp to my back had me croaking with pain. Out came the legal tender and I looked up at him, foolishly hoping he might do the right thing this one time. He smiled back at me cruelly and slipped the money out, tossing the bag in my face.
"So ya' go out pickin' strangers pockets fer money then, is that it? Is my child a bloomin' thief?"
"Nay! I beat a man as big n' almos as fawk uglae as ye' are ta' get it!" I spat back with venom.
He reached down and picked me up by the scruff of my neck, lifting me effortlessly off the floor and hurling me across the room! I cried out as I hit the dresser and crumpled to the floor. Wrong choice of words girl, but I didn't care. Either he was going to kill me or I him!
"HA HA HA!!! That's rich wee one," he said with condescension dripping from his deep, rough voice.
I pushed myself up, wracked with pain and muscles aching. Before I knew it, he had me pinned to the wall by the throat with one hand! Slowly he started to choke me right then and there, me battering his wrists and kicking my legs. His arms were thick and long like that of an ape. I couldn't reach his face and in the ravaged state I was already in, I could do little else.
"Ya think ya can fight me? FIGHT ME! COME ON THEN! HA HA HAAAA!!"
He slammed my head against the wall so hard my vision doubled and he leaned in with an evil sneer.
"That's what I thought girlie... as weak as tha' blood that spoiled yer mother and made you!"
I don't know what happened really, I blacked out and when I came to, he was clawing at his eye, screaming bloody murder!
"MY EYE! YA FUCKIN' TRASH CUNT! YA TOOK MY BLOODY FUCKIN' EEEEYYYYEEEE!!!"
Sure enough, in my blood covered hands were an eye that I then tossed upon the floor and with him looking on in horror with his remaining good one, I stomped on it! Chadwick came at me and I thought fast, gathering a stool by my bed up and crashing it across his fucking skull! The stool shattered from the impact. There were tears of pain and joy in my eyes as I gathered a sharpened piece of wood intent on stabbing and murdering the man that brought me so much misery. I trembled as I stood over him, my weapon raised high over my head and ready to be plunged into his heart like a stake to a vampire.
"Stoap!" came a voice from the doorway.
There my mother stood in her night gown, tired and fearful.
"Why?"
"Fur ye'll be in jyle 'n' yer lee wull be ower!" She answered.
"An' why's that a problem? This fawkin' bastard deserves ta' die and prison wonnae' be so bad compared to this life!"
"Na molly. Tak' yer dosh alang wi' this 'n' gang stairt a freish lee!"
She tossed me a small black bag. Out of curiosity, I lowered down to pick it up and opened it to find roughly two thousand pounds sterling.
"Mother..."
"Nae anither word! gang afore he wakes up now!"
Gathering up the money, I listened despite every fiber of my being wanting that man dead. Perhaps it was the shock that for once, my mother actually helped me. I'll never know as I never went back. Oddly no one ever came looking for me nor were the authorities called. Perhaps I had damaged my dear father's ego by hurting him in a permanent manner, who's to say? That night, the victim, Molly O'Hatherine was no more. I left home and with only twenty-five hundred pounds sterling in my pocket, I began a new life thereafter that lead me here.
I hated thinking about it, hated the thought of ever going back to Scotland and yet a small part of me is drawn back there. As I said, I loved the country but I fucking hated my family with all my being. You'd think that in ten years time, with the fame and small fortune I've managed, I'd be over this shit but I'm not. Will I ever be free of these memories that haunt me so and taint me even in the good times I have now? Perhaps one day, I'll go back there and put this to bed but today is not that day.
Steadily I had been sipping that whisky the entire time, unaware of how much was still in the bottle. I didn't even realize I had a fairly good buzz going until the last drop hit my tongue and there was no more. With a sigh, I tossed the bottle aside. It wouldn't be until the chill of air aged past the chimes of midnight's call did I finally decide to pick up and climb down the building. Once on foot, I began my trek. I'm sure Cherry would have questions for me being out so late without her. I'll just use sex to shut her up. That always seems to work just grand. I had a brief thought of how my father would react knowing that I had turned out to be of bi-queer persuasion despite his best efforts. This thought brought a small bit of chuckling at the comedy of awkwardness, given his hypocritical staunch Irish-Catholic beliefs. Then the further realization that she's a Satanist really brought the laughter out of me.
No. She'll never meet him. Ever. She doesn't deserve to have someone that low class in her presence.
THE PRESENT
The house is empty, save for me things and cat. Cherry, however, was gone. Family matters to deal with she had said and that was fine with me. I await me love patiently, stroking me furry Caleco cat on the couch as Youtube played on my television screen. I'd just finished a rousing round of Jack SepticEye playing King's Crusade III and felt like going for a walk when there was a knock on my door. I rose from the couch, eager, and hopeful. Maybe Cherry was back! With a grin on my face, I gave the baggy night shirt I wore a slight tug and tussled my bed hair a bit. Don't judge, it's the morning yeah!
I skipped my way to the door, a smile beaming on my face as I tore it open.
"CHERRY!" I shouted, but stopped when I saw someone much older and haggard. A woman that looked vaguely familiar to me, with her blond hair cut short and sporting a long sleeved shirt, black pants, and arched slip shoes. Her pale skin is wrinkled by stress and age, dotted with freckles.
"Wait...." I began, but was interrupted.
"Molly dearheart, tis guid tae see ye," interrupted the woman.
"...Mother?"
"Aye."
"Wha.... what are ya doin' here mum?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"Ah juist git oot o' jyle 'n' ah said that if ah survived mah time thare, a'd see come 'n' see ye," she answered, then asked in return, "Kin ah come in?"
"Jail? You were in Prison? Oi... yeah come in..." and I side stepped to let her inside.
What was my mother doing here, in America? How'd she find me? Why was she in bloody prison? Fawk I had alot of questions that needed answering!
She settles on the couch as I start brewing up tea on the stove in the kitchen.
"Yer hame needs a bawherr o' a cleaning, dear," I heard from the living room.
"Aye, well tis me house, I own it, and it'll be in a state of me chosen till I clean it," came my terse reply.
"That wis rude, mah apologies. A'm proud ye hae managed a' this oan yer ain."
It didn't take long for the tea to brew in the pot. I poured two cups, adding a spot of whisky to my own, then bringing them to the table. I hand a cup to my mother as I settle down in the chair by the couch.
"What happened? Did that miserable bastard put ye in jail? Are ya finally free of him?"
There is a bitter smile on Connie's face as she sips her tea, then sits it down on the coffee table before her.
"Ye cuid say that, loue. Th' nicht ye left, ah murdurred him deid ah did. Slit his throat richt thare oan th' flair whaur ye left him, then called fer th' bobbies tae come git me. Ah got lifted, pled guilty in court, 'n' spent th' lest loads years in jyle. He'll ne'er hurt a'body ever again."
I stare back at my mother in silence for a full minute. He's dead and buried? Ashes to the wind? I couldn't believe my ears.
"You killed him, mum?"
"Aye. Urr ye deaf dear? ah juist said ah murdurred him!"
She notices a picture of Cherry on the table and picks it up.
"Who's this young lassie? mist be a pure claise mukker tae hae a picters o' her oan yer coffee buird 'n' shelf ."
"She's me girlfriend, mum."
"A mukker that's a lassie or....?"
"She's me lover, mum. I sort of found out I'm queer, yeah. Does that change yer opinion of me?"
She settles the picture down and rubs her hands together. Mom stayed quiet for a moment until finally looking up at me with a brilliant smile.
"Tis a brand freish world. If yi'll waant tae mak' loue tae wummin, ah suppose that's howfur it's. Na grand bairns fur me," She said at long last.
"Aye, 'cause if ye protested, I'd show ya tha door."
Connie chuckles softly and slaps a hand on mine, giving it a soft squeeze.
"Ah dinnae care wha ye loue dear. Ah wis in a woman's jyle fur eleven years. Ah hud a burd tae, sae na judgements fae me. A'm happy ye'v fun loue. Whaur is she? a'd loue tae catch up wi` her!"
"She's been gone awhile, mum. Dealin with family matters of some sort but didnae' invite me. Personal matters are what they are, yeah."
I look my mother in the eye and finally it hits me. I never realized how much I had really missed her, but then there's a combination of anger that wells up with it as well. Memories of all the times she watched me being beaten mercilessly by that bastard that called himself my father. I shove her hand away.
"I know ye' killed him... He had it comin. I'll ne'er condemn ye fer that, but why did ya wait so long? Why did I have ta' suffer for so many years at his hands while ya sat back and did nothin?!"
Rising from my seat, quivering with clenched fists, I practically towered over my mother who sits back, staring up at me with guilty blue eyes.
"He beat me and beat me and beat me black and bloody blue week after week, sometimes night upon night! WHY DIDN'T YE' KILL HIM THEN?!"
With tears in my eyes, I lift her up off the couch by the collar of her shirt. She grabs at my wrists but it's clear I am far too strong for her as I pull her up and slam her against the wall. I'd lost control in this moment as long dead emotions fired back to life. What felt like a thousand years of pain burned through my soul as I sobbed uncontrollably.
"Ah wis scared, wee yin! ah wis a bloody feartie-cat, feart o' him fur he beat th' lee oot o' me yin tae mony times 'n' said if ah tried, he'd mak' it worse oan us baith! ah didnae waant him tae murdurr ye!!!"
I tossed her to the floor and she promptly scrambles back from me, panting, wide eyed with fear. I stalked after her, feeling every muscle tensed as I dip foward like a five foot hulk. The anger within me was deep and burning, a rage that wanted a soul to feast on. Her back hits a wall and I close the distance, taking a fist full of her shirt and pulling her up, rearing back my fist and just as I'm about to strike, I catch myself. From the corner of my eye, I see the pose I struck in a mirror on the wall. I turn my head and look at it. There I stood, holding her much as my father would hold me, my fist reared back in the exact same pose.
"Fawkin' hell...." I said softly as I released my mother. She fell to the floor. My hands shook as I ran my fingers through my hair. Turning my back to her, I walk away.
"Ye hae ilka richt tae be crabbit, loue. Ah failed ye as a mither 'n' whin ah finally did step up 'n' dae whit wantit daein', 'twas tae wee, tae late. If ye hud gubbed me juist noo, a'd hae deserved it."
"I'm not dad," I responded, still speaking softly, hugging myself.
"A'm proud o' ye, mah daughter. Ye'v dane sae muckle wi' yer lee in sic a short time. Ye'r better than him, me, 'n' a' body else wha hud failed ye afore. Guid oan ye fur becoming a stoatin international wrestler!"
She watched me while in prison? I turn around to face her.
"You saw me wrestlin?"
"Aye. Ah proudly hollered tae th' ither inmates that ye wur mah daughter. Ye made something o' yersel' even wi' everything 'n' a' body against ye. A paukit spitfire that's gubbed back sae muckle. Ta fur daein' whit ye'v dane wi' yer lee, fur it made ilka moment ah spent in jyle worth it!"
Her Edinburgh accent would be so hard to understand for most. I'd never lost my ability to understand her, even all these years later. My mom's proud of me. I thought she'd hate me for embracing such a violent lifestyle, but I love wrestling I do. She rises from her seat on the floor and approaches me with slow, deliberate steps.
"Mum... I... I donnae' know what ta' say..." Tears were in me eyes and she just swept in, throwing her arms around me, hugging me close.
"Ssshhhh. Thare, thare dearheart. Ye dinnae hae tae say anythin' et all."
We spent the remainder of the afternoon catching up on missed time. I regaled her with wrestling stories and she told me of her experiences in prison. By the time she left, I'd found my heart for her again. I love my mother, I do and that bastard? Chadwick Bronnel O'Hatherine, is food for the worms. The relief that I'll never so much as see or hear him again lifted a huge weight from my heart. Part of me though is saddened that my mother suffered for something I still feel that I should've done myself all those years ago, but she's right. Had I killed him, my life would have been ruined and I'd have missed every opportunity I had gained. Thank you, mother dearest.