I was bleeding now. He broke my skin in many different places.
I felt like my body had swollen up to about three times its normal size, but this was really the first sensation of numbness creeping over me. He was killing me, beating the feeling out of my body, beating the life out of me.
It went on for days… weeks… months… years…
There is no time when your every waking moment is pure hell.
I only know that I completely lost touch with reality… I completely forgot everything… who I was… what I was… where I was… there was nothing left in my life but pain… and finally, even that was denied me.
I passed out… and it might as well have been for good.
I don't know how long I was unconscious.
I had no idea what was happening around me.
They thought I was going to die.
I woke up in a hospital, and they were shocked to see my eyes open. They didn't believe that I could have regained consciousness.
"What do you remember?" they kept asking me, not realizing that all I wanted to do was to forget.
"Try to remember," some would say.
"Move this finger," others would say.
"How many fingers am I holding up," others would ask.
I was patient, but I said nothing. It was almost a year before I would talk again.
In that time, I learned that Hunter's family had alerted the police that their lodge was a likely place to look, assuming that I really was kidnapped, as everyone was thinking.
They'd come up, finally, but not before he'd beaten me senseless… not before he'd gone mad himself and turned a gun on his brains.
They found me hanging where he'd left me… almost dead.
But somehow, someway, I came back.
Enough, anyway, to provide this court deposition. But I still refuse to speak.
Someday, perhaps I'll rejoin the world of the living… but for now, I still feel half-dead, and I prefer not to pretend to be alive, thank you.
DADDY DADDY!
It's hard, you know. I mean, you work all day long, sweat your fucking gonads off and bust your back seventeen times before lunch, break new blisters on your hands every day and then you run the risk of being laid off without any notice… and for what?
For a lousy paycheck that might make it through till the next one comes along except that you've got a wife who stays perpetually pissed because it's not big enough, and to prove it, she goes out and spends the whole damn thing in two days and then nags you the rest of the week because there's not enough money.
"What'd you do with my paycheck? I just brought it home Friday?!"
"Don't you yell at me, Herb Metcalf. It's not my fault that you've turned your life into a case study for failure. You could have done a lot of things but you were too stupid and lazy and worthless and so now we have to scrape by on a paltry salary that couldn't be expected to support a cat… let alone a family."
"I asked you, what the fuck did you spend the money on? I don't see nothing new! Where'd it go? How come you don't know nothing about managing a budget."
"Oh yes… I see. It's always my fault… isn't it Herb? It's always my fault because YOU don't earn enough money. You can't make a decent wage, but it's my fault because I don't know how to manage a budget."
And so it went… every week… month after month… year after year…
Depressing… damned depressing.
You can figure out how many nights I'd come home with a hard-on wanting to fuck her… oh by the way, her name's Isabel. I mean, I'm gonna stay awake at nights thinking about her? Shit I am.
Trouble is, she's not too bad looking either… nice tits… a sweet face whenever she remembers how to smile… but Christ, what a bitch. Meanest bitch you'll ever see.
Then, there's Cassie… our little girl. Cassie got her mother's body… but so far she doesn't seem to be nowhere near as mean, you know.
She still likes me in other words… and she don't seem to pay much attention to her old lady when the bitch starts to give me the red ass about not having enough money, which is a fucking joke… I make plenty… she just spends it on shit. Clothes… stupid shit for the house…
Ah… but what's the use, right? I mean, if I was to try and do the healthy thing, which is leave her… she'd go bonkers and bring the law down on top of my head and fucking well take me to the cleaners.
So I put up with it… and every day I go to work and I pound nails and I carry heavy beams and I drill, and I measure, and I survey land contours and I put up buildings, and I make me a fairly good living… nothing that ever seems to please the little woman, but I'm doing all right.
Only… Christ… I spend all my time being horny.
I mean… there's Gladys the waitress down at Mickey's Bar and Grill, and she's a nice sloppy kind of big-titted broad, you know, makes you think you're getting laid by a whore and loved by your mother at the same time…
But you know… she and me, we got an understanding and it kind of draws the line at a real specific spot… and I don't go around to see her all that much anyway…
So… I guess Cassie's moving on to be about fourteen or fifteen by this time, Christ, how can you tell, you know… kids… they're like weeds… popping up and growing by doubles and triples overnight, so you don't even recognize them the next time you see them.
That's sort of the way I felt one day, a Saturday I think, while out in the back yard reading my paper, laying in the chaise lounge, sipping on a nice cold one… there's a small ice-chest next to me, and before that sucker's empty I know I'm gonna be sucking on a fuck of a lot more… and that's okay, 'cause it's a Saturday and the barbecue's firing up and there's some steaks to be slapped on the grill later on (oh yeah… we got us one of them nice middle-class existences you read about in TIME and NEWSWEEK… but Isabel, she don't want to be middle. She's got her sights aimed for society or something fucked up like that) and so anyway, I'm laying there reading the paper, and being kind of horny on account of I'd thought of going over to see Gladys the night before, and I never got around to it, but that didn't stop me from thinking about her.
So, I drain that cold beer, and I'm popping the top off another one, and I've sort of got tits on the brain there, thinking about those big sloppy tits Gladys has hanging off her that she still keeps good and firm… you know…
So what do I see but my little girl, and she's climbing into her girl friend's car, and they're both heading for the beach, it looks like, and I'm kind of amazed because the terrycloth beach coat she's got on comes undone, you see… and there's these tits under there.
I mean, we're talking tits here, with a capital fucking "T". I mean, this is some fine acreage she's holding up there, and it sort of takes me by surprise.
She's my little girl, for Chrissakes… and so what's she doing looking so fucking boobulent for?
And then, I wonder what she's doing showing it off so freely.
And then I wonder why my cock's starting to throb and pound real hard…
And that kind of sets me to thinking about her some more… and before I've drained too many more cans, I'm thinking a lot about some of the things that we've done lately.
She's always been my little girl.
Ever since she was old enough to move around under her own power and could climb up onto things, she's been climbing up onto my lap, though recently, there's not too much climbing called for…
But she still likes to come over and plop herself on my lap a lot, and throw her arms around me, and give me a big hug and a big kiss and tell me she's my little girl…
And rub her sweet little ass over my crotch…
Hmmmm…
How come that never seemed to stick out in my mind before, I wondered.
Because, she's my little girl, and little girls don't try to come on to their daddies… that's why. Except that she's not so little any more… and I can't quite figure out why I never noticed it before now.