Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Thirty-One: Waverly, IA

TRIGGER WARNING: DOMESTIC ABUSE & ALCOHOL ABUSE

I was born Clinton Francis Barton, to my ma': Edith Barton, and my father: Harold. I grew up on a generations old ranch that my family has owned since the town sprung up, in Waverly, Iowa with my brother Barney. Waverly is a titchy market town, a collection of indigenous inhabitants, dwellers who are following in the footsteps of their forefathers. It's an island of civilisation slap bang in a sea of wilderness, where everyone knows everyone and nothing much happens. But I wish I could tell you nothing much happened to me.

Nothing much would be orthodox. I would've ended up ordinary. Born, got schooled, got married, had kids, had grand kids and snuggled down into my velvet lined coffin at the ripe age of ninety-odd. But somewhere along the line, my path skewed, sending me hitchhiking to a hellish future. It was all an unfortunate draw of cards from the pack of life, a combination of cruel circumstances whisked up into a bitter cocktail that I've been sipping on since I saw the sunlight and breathed the air.

My ma' was benevolent. A goddess of hospitality. She was the embodiment of everything that is pure and altruistic; not a single selfish shard in her soul. Everything she did, she did it for other people: and she never once complained, or asked for a thank you or stopped working. She was the home maker; the one who filled the kitchen with the mouth-watering aroma of baking cakes, livened the soulless walls of the house with her merriment and striking personality and brought joy with her harmonious laughter.

My father? Not such a great guy. If there's one regret, it's that it wasn't me that took his life, it was his fiercest advocate and adversary.

Ma' and Harold were like Persephone and Hades; he was despotism, sadism and egotism personified; a living and breathing organism that feasted on pain. My ma' was so foolishly lured to him by his superficial charm. He was a wolf in sheepskin, and he pulled the wool over the eyes of everyone. Women in the town were bowled over by his duplicitous generosity, his charismatic compliments and his falsified grins. He was respected. Loved. And no one ever believed me when I tried to tell them who he really was.

He was as capricious as a mental patient, and constantly inhibited by the alcohol he consumed like water. Have you ever been so terrified of something that it makes your skin crawl like furry spiders are cloaking you just to think of it? Your stomach ropes into agonising knots, twisted and mangled? Your veins turn to ice as their flushed with a shot of dread? Well for me, that feeling was concocted by one sound. The front door opening.

If it was past five'o'clock, and I heard the scraping of the front door on the porch, my ma' would usher me to a hiding spot. She would sweep my brother and I away out of eyeline; cramming us amongst the animals in the barn and burying us in the hay. She censored the situation for years; faultlessly and effortlessly blinding us to the issue and making us deaf to her grievances. Until I reached the age of five. I was inquisitive and 'why?' was the only question on my lips; I was adventurous, I used to ramble the acres of farmland we owned hand-in-hand with my older brother who knew every hollow and meadow.

Stupid five year old me needed to know why my ma' did what she did. I needed to know what was going on that I didn't see. Even with Barney warning me not to, grappling my wrist and burying his feet in the dirt to restrain me from peeping, I audaciously pushed on. I crept around the door and my young eyes were exposed to something vile far too soon. I was corrupted the second I set eyes on the life changing tableaux.

The man I admired so ardently was snarling like a monster, his shadow smothering my mother who was sprawled across our newly broken table; limbs lax, surrounded by splinters and chunks, drowsy with concussion. His features were contorted into an wretched mask of disgust and his fist was bloodied, the scarlet matching perfectly with the smear pattern splattered up my ma's blanched face, a trail dozily dribbling from fresh wounds on her face.