SCRATCH Episode 1: Ashes in the wind

6

Benji stood for a moment, still with his back planted firmly against the flimsy wooden door even though he knew that his father had abandoned the idea of raping him in favour of the TV, and cried silently to himself. Although the horror hadn't happened, for a second there it was a very real possibility in the young boys mind, even if it wasn't rape his father wanted, but merely a fresh beating. This torture coursing the vessels of his brain like a parasitic worm ate away at the boy until he reached the point where he was then. Just the sight of his father, especially his drunk father, would put the fear of god in him and reduce him to a quivering mess inside.

He could hear the tears rolling from his reddened cheeks and slapping the carpet beneath him and then slowly realised he was clutching his backpack so tightly to his chest that some of his nails were bending backward and firing an array of stabbing pains through his fingers. Benji, loosened his grip, dropped the bag on to the bed next to him and closed his fists, trying to absorb the pain without making any noise. His eye lids slammed shut, spilling another round of tears on to the now quite soggy carpet. The broken boy holding his clenched fists to his chest until the worst of the pain passed and felt he could release them without an involuntary whimper.

Slowly the sharpness of the pain started to fade to a dull throbbing. He pulled himself lazily away from the door and slumped down on to the bed, the old springs protesting in a rough squeal. The boy wiped tears from his cheeks with both arms and followed up by wiping his running nose too. With a sniffle and a jagged inhale he tried to force some sort of calm in to his mind, the sight of that sturdy box just over the horizon. What could he do to take away the mental pain, what could keep his mind entertained? Had he been a bit older, the answers to those questions could have been a bit more obvious. What do lower class folks generally do to take away the mental pain? Drink, drugs, sex, these kinds of pain killers are much more accessible and easy to come by when you're a little older, but what does a boy of ten do to keep the demons on the other side of the door?

Then it hit him - not literally - the pages. The pages that he had so strangely clung to when he thought his Dad was going to come barging through his door, cock in hand. Benji shifted his gaze and stared at the pack laying at the end of the bed. He felt some apprehension but didn't know why, as if the pages held some strange unnatural power. When he reached out to grab the bag, he once again felt the beat of his heart rise in his temples and the skin of his scrotum contract.

From the other side of his wall he heard the clunk of the trailers front door being flung open and the bouncing of the floor as someone stepped inside. Then he heard voices, not raised, but full of tension. Even a child can feel the emotion in conversation, especially when it's between one's own parents.

'Bout time you showed up. Hope you got my fucken liquor?'

'Settle your shit, Daryl I got it right here, would I forget your damned Bourbon?'

'Don't you use that tone with me, Lilly, what'd we discuss th'other day about respecten me?'

There was a short pause before he heard the door clang shut and the footsteps of his mother move closer to his room. They stopped for a second and he heard the rustling of a paper bag. Lilly must have been unloading the liquor by the couch, Benji thought. Knew. It was a daily ritual.

'I'm sorry baby, I dint mean anythin by it, you know that.' Benji could almost visualise the scene outside. His mother bent forward over his father. A seductive smile across her lips displaying her gappy smile. One hand on her breast, the other in her husbands crotch. She knew how to calm him. She'd been doing it for years. She was a submissive woman who knew her place, or thought she did. Whether she enjoyed it most of the time or not, she knew exactly how to keep herself out of harms way. Benji listened intently, thinking that one day he would like to take his mother away. He hated to see her like that, a piece of meat before his fathers eyes. Nothing to him but the void between her legs. A man shouldn't see a woman like that, he thought.