Lussuria (New Version) (6 page)

I twiddle the fringes on the end of Eleanor’s tartan shawl as I quietly answer. “Yes, I’m here. Does my mother know, and did you tell Cameron?”

“No, darling. We thought it best that we should tell you first, but please tell Cameron. He will want to know. I’ve told Grandpa that I think it’s best for your mother’s wellbeing and therapy if we don’t tell her. It will just upset her and set her back. You know she is making great progress. She is being granted more day visits.”

“Oh, that’s fabulous, Granny.”

“It is, Alexis. She has taken up an art class in the centre because her therapist says it’s the best form of distraction. It calms her and stabilizes her moods.”

“Aww, I’m glad she has a distraction. I will come up soon, I promise. Tell her I’m so proud of her. I miss you all terribly, but I will be busy with the new clinic when I get back from Tuscany. How’s the weather?”

I want to change the subject ... pronto.

“It’s been beautiful for May, and the garden is looking super. Alexis, how are you about the news? I wish you would not shut yourself out from us. We love you and we are here for you. Your grandpa wants a word.”

I perk up slightly, thankful that my interrogation is over...for now.

“Alexis, apple of my eye, my little angel sent straight from the heavens above, how are you, kid? Okay, your granny has gone into the kitchen. I don’t know why I still sneak behind her back!”

I chuckle, but tears well up in my eyes.

“Grandpa, I’m fine. I’m not at all affected by the news. I’ve moved on. I have an enriched life with lots of people around about me, so please stop worrying.”

I wish I could convince myself of this.

“I want you to hear something. I’ve been practicing.” I hear him shuffling around, then he plays somewhere over the rainbow on his mouth harmonica down the phone.

I start to sob.

Big emotional sobs as I try to swallow back the anguish. Maybe it’s because I miss him and he used to play this to me when I was young, or maybe it’s because of the confusing day I have had. I don’t know…

“Grandpa, that was beautiful. Now you will need to go on Britain’s Got Talent next year!” I force my high-pitched words out as my throat is cut and dry.

“Oh I would like that, Apple. You could sing in that sweet angelic voice you have. Now, keep your chin up. Have a wonderful time, and please let some love in, kid. It’s your time. I hear your granny coming back, so I will let you go before you get another scolding. Love you to the moon and back. Tell Ted I won the chess championship in Elgin last week.”

“I will, Grandpa. I love you to the moon and back. Tell Granny the same. I’ll call you both when I’m back.”

I hang up, then lift my hands over my face, trying to control my breathing. I hear Mr. Carlin shuffling through the French doors towards the sunroom.

“So, Michael Parks has been released from prison. I’m sorry, I overheard.” He places his hand on my shoulder.

“It’s okay. Yes, he got released early, but it’s fine. Really, it is, honestly. Because I’m here and he is there and well, it’s fine…”

I’m sobbing, but I try to sound convincing. Maybe I’m trying to convince myself.

Mr. Carlin sits down next to me on the tartan shawl and clasps his hands on his knees. He doesn’t say anything. This is his way of being compassionate. He doesn’t push me; he simply gives me reassurance and understanding by giving me his attention and presence.

He’s a wise man.

Burning Embers

I shut my eyes and inhale a long slow steady breath.

I was doing rather well until I heard this news. I’m a twenty-six year old woman who is disturbed by horrid memories of a little girl who was born into a life of blackness and torment. A little girl who was born into an unsafe environment that would daunt her whole life. Ironically, as a young child I was naive and unaware of the deep, sinister, unimaginable reality of my situation.

It was, in fact, normal to me.

All I knew.

It took me many years to accept I had a place on this earth. Even now I sometimes feel unworthy—another insecure demon I battle with from time to time. Grandpa always tells me I’m strong, and a true blessing, but I’m not so sure.

I thought Michael Parks would rot in a cell for the rest of his life and endure the darkness and torment we suffered. I truly hoped he would. Michael Parks is a psychopath. A mentally unstable sociopath who is tormented by his very own demons. He was raised by an unstable drug abusing mother and an evil monster of a father—the devil himself.

Evidently, he would follow similar traits.

He would be around thirty-five years of age now, and I shudder to think what he looks like these days, or what he is capable of. I remember him as a teenage boy, nine years older than I was, his sandy blond hair tied back in a rubber band, and his face long and thin. There was no mistaking his sleek, green, sleazy eyes. Opened fully, he looked like a serpent, conniving and hungry with possessiveness. Those eyes still haunt my dreams, my nightmares. I remember a scar across the front of his hand and running over his forearm; he’d sliced it on barbed wire as he squeezed through the fence between our land and the rugged bush while chasing me. I got brutally beaten for that.

He was evil and tormented from an early age. When my mother first met him, he was only five years old, but he would strangle stray cats and spear frogs. This was going to be the start of a life of grueling antics for him; following in his father’s footsteps.

His father Simon abused my mother, he abused me, and his mother, Scary Mary, abused us both.

Michael smelled of moss—a stale, damp smell that I loathed. He would hover over me and grab my long dark hair from the back and yank it down. Sometimes he would whisper cruel things into my ear about what he was going to do to me, then bite my neck, drawing blood more than once. He would laugh and push me down to the ground, continually kicking me while I hugged myself into a ball and cradled my head in my arms.

He’d never touch Cameron, but he’d manipulate and control him, often threatening him. He told Cameron that if he tried to stop him from harming me, he would shoot him with one of his father’s riffles, then drag his body into the bush and leave him for the dingo’s to gorge on.

“I will let the dingoes eat ya alive, tearing at ya flesh with their razor sharp teeth. You’re nothing’ but a bloody useless bastard.” For Michael Parks, these were not just well rehearsed words. He meant everything he said.

His mother knew he was abusive and evil, but she’d encouraged it. Mary would often be drunk, or high on drugs, when she wasn’t at her job at the local hospital. She appeared to have no grasp on reality, and it never ceased to amaze me that she held a position where she was responsible for other people. She watched Michael whip me with blazing hot leather straps the night I got the scars. He’d held them in the roaring flames of the bonfire, circling them in the hot ash at the bottom of the burned out wood, then used them to whip my bare back. He’d locked my mother and Cameron in the outhouse where they were sedated with the drugs Simon would use to put us to sleep. Mom eventually reached the point where she’d beg Simon for these drugs because she said it blocked out the pain.

I watched as burning embers from the flames flickered and twined into the air in front of me while Michael held me against a huge tree, forcing me to wrap my arms around it as he tied them together. He pressed his large dirty hands at my neck while he slashed and slayed the burning leather across my bare back. All I could do was hug the tree and turn my head to the side, I’d screamed and screamed, trying to kick, but he was far too strong. I’d cried out to Mary to help me, but she’d just sat in a fold-up camping chair, drinking a bottle of beer from her icebox and smirking with amusement. She’d enjoying watching, her eyes hazy, half closed and out of focus.

The pain had been severe, so intense that eventually with each blow I’d become dead, raw… I’d had no feeling left as my nerve endings twitched and pulsated responsively to the blows which thrashed again and again. Even without the use of drugs, he’d had a way of anaesthetising me, the burning sensation replaced by cool numbness. Michael had called me a fucking whore over and over again, and said I would pay and feel the pain because I should never have been born; that I was a fucking good for nothing bitch, and nobody wanted me here. I remember urinating while I stood wrapped around the tree. I’d sobbed with embarrassment, then vomited over my forearms, trying hard to miss them.

I had been eight years old at the time.

I’d looked into the remains of the fire and watched as the red and orange flames turned smoky-black as they danced and twirled into the dry night. My eyes had stung sharply from crying salty tears, and the smoke of the fire added to their tenderness. The moths, bugs, and mosquitos had flickered and buzzed around what was left of the dimming light above the ashes.

The sun had set, and the Australian night air had crept in. I could smell dry bark close to my nostrils, mixed with the scent of moss, musk, urine and blood which made my head swirl. Dirty, bloody, sore and exhausted. I slumped down towards the bottom of the tree and tried to gasp for breath. My body had an odd sensation of both burning and numbness while my raw, raspy throat inhaled the intoxicated air.

For many days after the attack, I was given drugs, entering in and out of consciousness. My mother had bathed my wounds with a filthy ripped cloth as she begged Simon for medical supplies. He’d eventually brought some ointment, eucalyptus oil, dressings and antibiotics which Mary had stolen from her shift in the hospital ward. In return for his generosity, he’d forced my mother to do inexplicable things that night in one of his repugnant, drug-fuelled role plays as he videotaped his dominance over her. It lasted for at least seven or eight hours until he’d made her crawl back from his house on the inhospitable remote land and into our decaying shed. She’d slept for almost two days after that ordeal.

Looking up at Mr. Carlin with my eyes full of anguish, I stare blankly, but I don’t speak. He knows about the abuse and torture I endured, both physically and emotionally. His wife, Eleanor, had witnessed me breaking down one night in the back garden not long after we moved here and she comforted me when I needed it most.

“You need to challenge these demons, Lexi, and face your fears. You’re too young to go through your life worrying like this. It’s time you moved on, Eleanor always said you were a worry, but you need to learn how to cope with these feelings and learn to trust. When you want to talk about it, I’m here for you. You need to take a leaf out of Hazel’s book. Now there’s a girl who is free spirited and open-minded.”

As I put Mr. Carlin’s dinner out, I decide I’m not going to tell the girls about Michael Parks or my encounter with Lucca Caruso. I can’t be bothered with the sympathy chat or the romance inquisition before I go on holiday. I give Mr. Carlin a hug and tell him that I have placed Tupperware in his freezer with all of his favorite dinners; all he has to do is lift it out in the mornings to defrost and reheat.

“Please take good care of Doris, and keep that heating down before you fry to death.”

“Lexi dear, the heating won’t kill me. Your life is going to get to me first,” he mumbles and places his hand on his heart.

I smirk at him dubiously as I make my way back next door.

My Darlins’!

Feeling slightly better after my hot shower, I prepare to be organized. I’m glad that I had my waxing and nails done yesterday as I’m pushed for time tonight and wouldn’t have managed to squeeze them in today. I moisturize my legs and arms with Brazil nut body butter and then apply moisturizer to my face and neck. I like to look after my skin. I think from all the exposure to the sun when I was a child has made me paranoid.

Turning around and dropping my towel I look in the mirror and heave an exasperated sigh. My eye gaze trails down the long noticeable thinned out scars of pink soft tissue entwining and weaving across the skin of my back, from just around bra strap level until the top of my backside. It repulses me, makes me furious with rage and flares my insecurities. I apply a leave-in conditioning treatment to my hair and run my fingers down my long strands to the roots, ensuring it’s evenly spread. I put on my grey yoga pants and a black camisole top, then make my way into the living room.

Hazel is sitting in her animal print sleep shorts and cream stretch vest with her laptop on her knees, her long blonde straight hair sitting just over her shoulders. She has a pale complexion with rose tinted cheeks and lips and beautiful flawless, porcelain ivory skin with bright blue eyes. As usual she looks good even in slump wear. She is watching the latest Body Step Choreography DVD and engrossed. Doris is sprawled out in front of the fireplace.

“You’re as bad as Mr. Carlin! He’s gotten you used to the heat, young lady.” Doris jumps up, wags her tail and bounces up to me, but when she starts barking, I know the doorbell is about to ring, so I dump the clothes in a pile on the floor and walk to the front door. Jessica comes in with a suit bag draped over her arms. She gives me a kiss on the cheek and scowls over at Hazel.

Jessica looks beautiful, as always. She’s wearing an emerald green blouse that I love on her and black skinny jeans with black suede pumps. Her autumn, rustic-colored, wavy hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and she has minimal makeup on, boasting the most amazing green eyes you have ever seen, and her gran’s little pearl studded earrings. She always looks smart, but with minimal effort. She is truly lucky.

“How are you, my darlin?” she asks with a singsong tone. We all started greeting each other this way in university, and it stuck.

“Good, but would be better if I had this case packed up,” I tell her.

“Well, don’t fret, lovely Lexi. I will help you.”

“Thank you, Jess. You’re a star! Set your stuff down and I’ll get us a wine. Marlborough?”