Eating Worm
Page 2 of 6
Gravy woke up in the dark. At first she wasn’t sure if she had opened her eyes or not. But after several successful attempts at blinking, she realized that her surroundings were as dark whether or not her eyes were opened or closed. She wasn’t cold, so she didn’t think that she was outside any longer. Tentatively, she adjusted herself so she could sit up. She had no idea where she was or what surrounded her, so she made as little noise as possible. She felt no discomfort, which scared the shit out of her; she had known nothing but discomfort for the past few months. Am I dead? she wondered. Listening to herself breathing, she put her hand over her breast to feel her heartbeat. It was there, low and deep, and further away than she ever felt anything, sounding more like a bass kicker at a party across the street than her heart. This failed to reassure her.
Now sitting on her knees, she felt the ground to see what she was on. It felt like concrete, but warm. She thought she felt something edge onto her hand, and she yelped, pulling her arm towards her. The sound she made echoed and she now could imagine herself in a cave, or at least a very dark parking garage. She tried to discern if the thing she felt touch her hand was furry or slimy, but she couldn’t be sure if she hadn’t just imagined it. “Hello,” she said softly, barely carrying it beyond where she imagined her nose to be.
Gravy knew she wasn’t in a very good position. Whether or not she got a reply, she’d be damned. Since she got none, she felt only slightly better than she would have if she heard a reply. She put her hands back on the ground and now felt as if she were on grass, moist and spongy. She gasped, and realized that her eyes had been closed, because now she could see clearly that she was in a field and that a low crescent moon hung in the sky. It was obvious now that no one was around her, and she felt much better about this, so much so that she began to laugh at herself for keeping her eyes so tightly shut that she didn’t realize where she was all this time. She was alone in a park just a few blocks from her house. She felt wonderful. Crickets and lightening bugs and a rabbit or two were the only other visitors here, this night. She stood up, laughing, and began to dance about. She loved her pretty white dress and how she could see her long, golden hair follow her as she twirled about. And though she thought it was night time, it was really daylight and she was twelve, swinging on the cool adult swings at the park. Someone called her a bitch, but it didn’t matter. She was getting higher and higher, and it felt like she would never touch the ground again, and then she leapt off and soared into the sky.
I am Grace’s father, a man that she once respected and loved, but now only fears and loathes. When she was a little girl, she was the apple of my eye. She and her mother and I would visit the zoo and amusement parks. She had the best time. When she was seven, I lost my job, which, in retrospect, wasn’t all that important, but at the time it seemed like the end of the world to me. I began to drink, heavily.
I very effectively began to isolate myself from those I loved. I was abusive to my wife, and I embarrassed myself in front of my friends. Grace’s mother, who had abandonment issues from her father, left us when Grace was eight. I took on the responsibilities of raising Grace all by myself, and as an abusive drunk, this was probably a mistake.
One night, while Grace was taking a bath, I walked in on her after finishing a fifth of whiskey. I told myself that I need the comfort of a woman, and, although Grace was no where near a woman, I allowed myself to believe that she was. I sexually abused her that night and on and off again for four years. Whenever I was drunk, Grace knew that I would find her, no matter where she hid.
Finally, when she was twelve, I died in a car crash, ending my abuse. Grace went to live with her grandparents then, and never told anybody about the suffering she went through for all those years. She would have dreams about me for long afterwards, of me coming to her in the middle of the night, stinking of drink. She would also have dreams of my car accident where she could imagine the details of my head smashing into the windshield, or of the steering wheel crushing my pelvis, my ultimate weapon now just a bloodied piece of flesh. She mental killed me in a thousand ways as she grew up, but it never made up for the horror that I had given her.