Phoenix Knight [A Bad Boy Story] - Editing

Chapter Fourteen

Today’s word of the chapter: ‘Phantasmagoric’. Definition: (Adjective) having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination.

WARNING: This chapter is very, very vulgar and I apologise in advance if I upset anyone!

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Chapter Fourteen

I found my parents seated across from each other at the dining room table. My mother was aimlessly stirring a bowl of oatmeal and my father was staring at her like she might break. I couldn’t blame her is she did.

Immediately, I noticed the box of chocolates that sat beside the pink and blue bowl of her high-fibre breakfast. According to my phone, it was well past ten AM and he had somehow managed to buy her a gift even though it was a Sunday morning. Stores tended to open between nine and nine-thirty which meant that he must have arrived back home not long ago.

The minute my father noticed my presence, he jumped to his feet and pulled a box out of his back pocket. “Sadie, listen –,” he started.

I knew what he would say next but I didn’t care to hear him. I was not my mother. “Stop.” He halted a few steps before me and began stretching his arm so that I could view what was within the box. “Don’t,” I growled.

His arm retracted and he pushed the box into his front pocket.

As I stared at him, a memory of my childhood floated to the surface. I was no more than six years old but the event had been so traumatising that it was engrained in my memory to this day. I recall playing in our small backyard with a stray kitten that my mother had let me keep. It was an undernourished but adorable little animal that was all grey with a large white spot on its nose.

My father had stepped out onto the lawn and I remember running up to him with the kitten held delicately within my infantile grip.

I remember him pulling the kitten out of my hands and stroking its tiny head with one index finger as his other hand slowly closed around its neck.

I remember trying to tell him to stop and screaming out of pure shock and disbelief as he twisted its tiny head.

I remember the sound of its neck snapping.

I remember how he just laughed afterwards.

My father wasn’t an alcoholic.

He wasn’t a drug addict.

My father – my own flesh and blood – was a psychopath.

I knew why he was attempting to give me whatever gift lay hidden within the box. He was attempting to win me over so that he was on good terms with my mother. He didn’t want to lose her because, in his own weird way, he loved her too.

It is also why he had forced me to promise not to tell her about the kitten and what he did to it all those many years ago. I was told to convince my mother that the animal ran away while, in fact, he just took its lifeless body and buried it in the corner of our garden.  If my mother knew... if she knew that he had killed a helpless animal right before the eyes of his six-year-old daughter then she would not be seated at that dining room table right now.

How could I possibly be related to a human being like him?

“Will you hear me out?” my father started.

“It’s a free fucking world,” I barked.

I saw a flash of red hot anger within his blue-green eyes but as quickly as it developed, it was wiped away. “I didn’t mean to slap you. I just lost control of my emotions and took it out on your mother and you.” His gaze shifted up to my mother who was still toying with her oatmeal and hadn’t glanced at me for even a second since I arrived. “I promise you, Sadie. I will never do it again.”