The choices we make in life can be right, or they can be wrong. But can they be both right and wrong at the same time? I don't know the answer to that. Only at the end of one's life do we ever find out for sure. Enjoy the story.
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I poked the barrel of the shotgun into the man's back urging him to keep walking. It was a late fall evening and the stars twinkled brightly in the sky despite the presence of a full moon. The air was crisp and cold, yet my face was sweating profusely under the ski mask that covered my head. We were the only souls around in this section of desert thirty-odd miles outside of Las Vegas. I prodded the grumbling man once more in the back, sick of his pathetic whining and his demands to know what he had done. He knew what he'd done; and he knew what was coming. You don't get kidnapped and taken out to the desert by a guy with a shotgun without figuring out what was coming. Fifty more yards and we reached the spot I wanted. Before us was an abandoned mine shaft that I had discovered many years ago while hunting with friends. It was just large enough, and deep enough for my needs. The man stopped and turned to face me; he kept asking me who I was. Slowly I removed the ski mask and watched as his eyes grew wide with fear and all the blood drained from his face. "You!" he shouted. The blast from the shotgun echoed off the distant hills.
In order for me to explain why I had made this life changing choice, I must first give you a little background of what my life was like when I was growing up. My name is Ben Rogers, and this is my story.
For the first ten years of my life I thought of us as a normal family. My mother Madeline, everyone called her Mady, and my father Bill seemed to be the perfect couple. Mom was the perfect housewife and Dad was a successful businessman. There were the occasional fights, and I was aware of the bruises on Mom's arms and legs. She had insisted that they were the results of her and Dad rough housing and I had believed her. She was my mother after all, a woman I adored, she wouldn't lie to me.
While Mom spent as much time with me as possible, Dad did just the opposite. He shunned me for reasons I wouldn't find out about until I reached the ripe old age of fifteen. By then I knew Mom's rough housing story was a complete fabrication. It was her way of keeping me from knowing the truth. It was during one of their increasingly frequent fights that I heard Dad accuse Mom of bearing someone else's kid. At first I didn't understand what he meant; I was an only child. I knew the accusation couldn't be true since I looked just like him in so many ways. Other than being gangly as hell I resembled him to a T. I had short brown hair; smoldering brown eyes, and stood just as tall as his six feet. The only thing I didn't inherit from him was his ability to make people like me. Where he was outgoing, I on the other hand had trouble making friends. This was fine with me; it meant that I could spend more quality time with Mom.
Shortly after I turned sixteen I learned that Dad was being investigated by the IRS for shady business practices. Nothing came of it, but Dad felt it prudent to transfer everything we owned into Mom's name. Not long after that the beatings started coming on a more regular basis. My pleas for Mom to leave him fell on deaf ears. There were even times she actually seemed to get angry with me for bringing up the subject. It was around this time that I had started referring to him as "The Bastard" instead of Dad. That didn't sit well with Mom, but she never punished me for it.
My rage finally boiled over when I was eighteen years old and fresh out of high school. I heard the screams coming from my parent's bedroom and then the sounds of flesh hitting flesh. I knew that sound like I knew the back of my hand. It was the sound of my Dad hitting my Mom. Again. I jumped off the couch and got to their bedroom door just in time to see my father pulling back his fist to strike her again. Something inside me snapped. Rushing forward I slammed my own fist into the side of his head. The only thing that accomplished was, it broke my wrist, and made him turn his attention toward me. He caught me in the side of my head with a right cross sending me flying into their dresser before sprawling out on the floor.
"When you think you're man enough to try that shit again, let me know," he sneered at me, then stomped off leaving Mom and I in heaps on the floor.
Through teary eyes I looked over to where she sat leaning against the bed. She had a goose egg on her forehead and the front of her blouse was ripped almost completely off. There was a trickle of blood coming from her nose. I crawled on hands and knees over to her and then wrapped my arms around her shaking shoulders. She buried her face in the side of my neck and silently wept.
"Why do you stay with him Mom," I asked in frustration.
I got the same answer as all the other times I'd asked that question.
"Because I love him, and he does love me too."
"If he loves you, why does he do this to you," I asked bitterly.
"He just gets frustrated with things, and I come along and say or do something stupid. He tells me how sorry he is later, you know that."
"Yeah. And in a week, or a month from now he'll do the same thing. Just leave him," I pleaded.
"And do what? He takes good care of us, and don't you forget it mister," she replied, anger evident in her voice.
I helped her to her feet and gave her a once over that turned into a lingering stare. She stood there with one hand rubbing the goose egg while her other hand absently fingered the torn pieces of her blouse. Her thick shoulder length brown hair was disheveled, and other than the goose egg and trickle of blood around her nostril, she looked okay. There was one other thing; she wasn't wearing a bra. A fact that she seemed to be oblivious to. I wasn't however. I tried to look away but I couldn't pull my eyes off the firm round globes that sat proudly on her chest. Creamy white skin topped with dark brown areolas and pointy nipples. My dick began to swell in my jeans at the same time her eyes noticed my intense stare. Color jumped to her face as she swiftly turned her back to me and tried to hide her exposed breasts. The fact that I'd gotten aroused by the sight of my own mother's tits sickened me. I ran from the room and hid in my bedroom for two days, only coming out to get something to drink or eat. I spent most of that time remembering the years of seeing bruises and black eyes on Mom's face and arms. It was during those two days that I grew to realize that if I didn't leave I'd probably do something stupid.
That incident had taken place a little over four years ago. I had kissed my mother goodbye and joined the army. She had wept crocodile tears, but didn't try to stop me from leaving. I found out that I was pretty good at being a soldier. I bulked up, learned to fight, and lost my cherry to some skank during a twenty-four hour pass in Amarillo. Life was good.
Mom stayed in touch with me, but she had to sneak the letters she wrote over to my Aunt Penny's to get mailed. Apparently my father had disowned me. There were even a few occasions when Mom and Penny arranged for her to call me on base. Mom would never tell me how things were going with her and Dad, but Aunt Penny filled me in on all the beatings she knew about. My hatred grew.
Each year I was allowed thirty days of leave; this year I had saved it all up. With permission from my commanding officer I took it all at the same time. I was going home for the first time since leaving. Aunt Penny and I had made plans to surprise Mom.
Aunt Penny met me at the airport on Saturday morning around nine and I had her take me to a motel on the outskirts of town. It wasn't the Ritz, but it was clean and off the beaten path. I had no desire to run into anyone that knew me. After dropping off my duffel bag in my room, I took Aunt Penny out for a bite. She filled me in on her plan to get Mom to my room. It was a simple plan. She was going to tell her that Uncle Sid was in town on a layover and wanted to see her. The plan would have worked too, if Dad hadn't known that Uncle Sid had passed away a week ago. Something no one had bothered to mention to Aunt Penny or Mom. He was Dad's brother after all. Dad accused Mom of having a lover and beat her mercilessly. This time an off-duty cop was walking his dog when her screams broke the stillness of the evening. Dad was arrested for domestic violence, and Mom spent the night at the hospital. I didn't know anything about it until the next day.
I was beginning to worry when my repeated calls to Aunt Penny went unanswered. My worry turned to concern when she banged on my door around eleven AM. When I opened the door I saw Aunt Penny looking back and forth from my door to her car. She looked like she hadn't slept in a week; her eyes were bloodshot with dark circles under them.
"I have your Mom in the car. Your Dad beat her up pretty bad last night," she rambled.
"I'll kill that bastard," I growled as I rushed out and opened the passenger side door.
Mom was still in the hospital gown the nurses had put on her, since her clothes were now evidence against my father. Her soft brown hair was neatly brushed, and there were no visible signs of trauma on her face, other than the fading blackness around one eye. I could tell that she was on some sort of medication, her eyes refused to focus and she didn't seem to know where she was.
"Careful, she's got some bruised ribs and she's pretty weak. Also the meds cause her to go in and out," Aunt Penny was saying as I reached in to help Mom out of the car.
"Shouldn't she still be in the hospital then," I asked worriedly.
"The doctor says she'll be okay, she just has to stay off her feet for awhile. I brought her here in case that prick gets out on bail," she told me, her voice sounding a little frantic.
"Calm down Penny, everything's gonna be okay," I said, reaching behind my Aunt's back and rubbing it as soothingly as I could.
It was a struggle, but we managed to get Mom from the car to my room. She actually giggled when my hand accidentally touched a bare cheek through the open slit at the back of her hospital gown. It was clear she didn't recognize either of us. Aunt Penny turned down the bed while I held Mom's wobbling body. After getting her safely tucked under the covers I followed Penny out to her car. There she handed me a bag with a tube of suave for Mom's ribs, several bottles of medication and a bottle of baby powder. She explained that one was for pain, one was for nausea and one was to help her sleep. Embarrassment on her face, she also handed me a small bundle of adult diapers. Her eyes said, 'sorry', as I took them from her.
"I want to come back and help, but if Bill gets out he might try to follow me over here."
