I lost my father when I was sixteen. It sounds tragic, doesn't it? I beat his head in with a baseball bat.
He had only himself to blame.
When I was ten he told me to always protect my big sister. She was two years older than me, but of slight build like our mother. For her eighteenth birthday, Sara went out with two of her friends to celebrate. We didn't hear from her for two days. I watched my father stew and simmer for every second of those two days.
Now our father was raised in the South where obedience is taught with a belt. He has a heavy hand for a man of God. Sorry, he had.
When Sara came home I was in the yard cutting the grass. I didn't hear her because of the mower so I didn't know she was there till I came around the corner of the house. I saw her car in the drive and, shutting off the mower, I ran for the back door. I heard my sister screaming as I came inside. It was coming from upstairs.
At the time I don't remember my mother grabbing at my arm. I must have pulled out of her grasp without ever feeling her hand touch me. When I hit the top of the stairs I saw the open door to my sister's room. Through that door, I could see her and my father.
He had her by the back of her head, his left hand an iron grip in her brown hair. Sara's shorts and panties were down around her ankles, hampering her trying to get away from him. Father had his belt in his right hand and he was swinging with everything he had at her bare ass and thighs. Dozens of red whelps already marred her pale skin from the small of her back to the bend of Sara's knees.
She was screaming with tears running unchecked down her face.
My bedroom door was open.
He kept swinging that damn belt. Even when Sara's skin split and her blood ran in red lines down to her knees.
My bedroom door was open.
My baseball bat was by the door. The autopsy report said the cause of my father's death was blunt force trauma to the base of his skull. I hit just at the top of his spine with enough force to sever his brain stem!
Death was instant. All I remember was holding my sister as she cried. I don't remember my mother's screams, or the ambulance, or the police arriving.
They pulled me from my sister. I fought that. Not to get away, but so I would not be parted from Sara. Two large officers held me down, with their knees on my back, while a third put the handcuffs on me. My sister flung herself onto me as they tried to take me out the front door. I stood there with Sara's arms around my neck looking at all the neighbors on their porches. Their faces lit red like demons.
My sister thanked me.
They tried me as an adult. My court appointed attorney pleaded me guilty. He asked the court to show leniency due to my age, that the act was done in the heat of the moment, and that I had swung without the intent to kill. They gave me twenty years. I guess that's lenient.
After that, I did a year and a half at a max juvenile prison and then they gave me to the state. Now any of you who might be thinking I got raped in prison you would be wrong. See I got put in a cell with a man named Chris Tyler. A burly biker looking fella who was coming back for his second stay in prison. He was there to show me the ropes. Where not to step, who not to talk to. He kept me out of a lot of trouble.
Now on the inside, they called him 'Ink'. He was a trained tattoo artist with a dozen years of
paid
work to show for it. Ink had been running his own shop when one night, in frustrated anger, he put a gun to the head of a customer who had refused to pay.
They called it armed robbery. Chris got handed ten years by the judge like he was handing out candy. But my cellmate Ink would only serve six of them and, in that time, he taught me the trade.
We made our machines from cassette motors and coat hanger wire. Our ink was burnt toilet paper mixed with shampoo. Or, when we could get an ink pen, we would strip it down for our tubes and use the ink in the tats.
As the years so slowly passed I came to spend my days in the weight corner of the yard. Lifting iron, with the muscle heads. Having the biggest strongest guys in the house respect you -- even if you can't lift as much as they do -- doesn't hurt. My nights were I spent learning how to tattoo.
At first, I wrote letters to my high school friends. Trying to keep in touch with the outside world. They were the ones who told me my sister had moved out of our parent's house even before my trial was over. Sara vanished not long after. No one knew where she was. Not my friends, not hers. I tried to write to our mom twice. Both letters came back unopened. I took that to be answer enough.
Poor mom. She lost a husband, son, and a daughter all on the same day.
My buddy, Ink, got his parole after six years. When he left, I hardly resembled the eighteen-year-old boy that Chris Tyler had first shared a cell with. Thanks to him I have some beautifully dark tribal work across my shoulders, down to my elbows. From there shadowy fills of spiders and webbing run down to my wrists in full sleeves on both arms. Off the tribal flows blue Celtic knotwork, which runs down my back following my spine? And then, to round it off, I have Japanese style shaded feathers that appear off the Celtic work and wrap around my ribs. Ab wings, Ink called them.
Long days with those weights had left me cut. Dangerous looking. It's not good to look like prey when surrounded by predators. By carrying two hundred pounds of tatted muscle on a six-foot frame, and coupled with the fact I killed a man at sixteen with a baseball bat, got me generally left alone.
Of course, what I could do with ink helped as well.
I had just turned twenty-six when a parole board sat my case. Overcrowding, a good record inside, and the fact I had a job waiting outside got me out with half my sentence served, and ten years parole. I took my last shower and did my best to scrub the stench of the place from my skin. Dressed in clothes that no longer fit right, and with personal possessions I hadn't needed for a decade, I was processed out...
In my pocket, I also carried a wad of cash that I had made inside. My hand checked that as I walked through the last locked door and out into the light again. The guard told me good luck. That was nice of him. Most of those
screws
say see you soon.
As I stepped outside, blinking in the bright light, a car pulled up with a blonde at the wheel. She blew the horn as I started to walk towards the bus stop. The blonde slammed her car into park and jumped out. Then, as I stood there dumbfounded, she sprinted across the road and threw herself into my arms!
I was numb with shock.
Then I noticed how she smelled, how soft and magically female she was. My bag hit the ground by my feet as I wrapped her scented heat against me. However, it wasn't till she spoke that I knew who she was.
"Oh, god Kevin!"
"Sara?"
My neck was growing wet from Sara's tears as she clutched me tightly, her face buried in my shoulder. I held her to me wanting to cry myself but I was too shocked to do so.
"My god Kevin, it is so good to see you."
She eased up then and I reluctantly let her pull out to the end of my arms.
"How did you know I was getting out today? And since when are you a blonde?" I asked laughing.
She smiled, shook her head and looked me over. "Since when are you buff?" She giggled then. Such a sweet half-remembered sound. "I had the prison to notify me if you ever got parole, silly."
We laughed and hugged again. God how wonderful her body felt against mine. I suppose I should have felt ashamed of the growing arousal I had, but it had been ten years since I had seen much less held a woman. But then I saw a look of surprise cross Sara's face -- her smile, that teasing grin that I remembered so well, appeared -- and I did at least feel embarrassed.
"Come on little brother; let's get you away from here." She nodded her chin down toward my crotch. "If you're getting that kind of reaction from your skinny sister we need to get you laid."
I blushed but then shrugged it off and laughed at my body's reaction. Grabbing up my bag, I followed her to the car. I'm honest enough to admit I was watching her ass. It was a pleasant sight till my mind recalled the last time I had seen it.
"So what do you want to do first?" she asked me with that teasing grin.
I smiled and then to her surprise said "Food!"
She laughed. How beautiful is so simple a sound. Just one among many sounds I had forgotten. The world seemed new to me again. And soon, sitting in the dining room of our favorite fast food place from when we were kids, I had stuffed myself sick in enjoyment of that. As we ate, I listened to her talk about all the things I had missed out on.
"Mom remarried," she said.
I sipped at my milkshake and took a bite of some super salty fries. "I can't say I'm surprised."
"She sold the house, and just about everything in it. She took the money, and moved to Atlanta." Sara reached over and dragged her fries through my ketchup.
Atlanta. Our mom was born there.
My sister grimaced at the salt I had laced the ketchup with. "Don't know for sure, but I would bet she hasn't mentioned either of us to him."
"I wouldn't take that bet," I said nodding again.
She sat silent for a minute or two then looked up at me. "What have you got planned? You need a place to stay right?"
"Yeah, I do. Then I have to report to my parole officer when I find a place. I do have a job offer with a guy I know." I wiped oil and salt from my fingers.
"Well, I have a place, an apartment with a fold out couch. So you have a place to stay."
I started to object, but she shook her finger in my face. "No. You have a place to stay. Now when do you want to go see about this job?"
"Whenever."
"Ok, well when you get done stuffing your face, we will go see. Then we can go to the apartment, and drop off your stuff. Want to go maybe get you some clothes that fit?" she asked stealing the last of my milkshake.
