Copyright © 2006 M. E Ellis
All rights reserved, Wild Child Publishing.
This excerpt contains some strong language and disturbing content. We do not recommend it for those under 18 years of age or for any one who is bothered by violence or profanity.
Whenever I picked up snails they would try to hide inside the homes on their backs. I couldn't see their bodies then, so I would rip their houses away. Failing that, I would quite simply stamp on them.
* * *
I began my life as countless others, born in a hospital to a mother and father who were still married. I was taken home to a modest house, where my parents struggled to pay the mortgage and bills. You could say I had the same chances as any other child born under such circumstances. From the outside, I looked like a boy from any normal family.
My first memory is of toddling, probably around age three, with snails clasped in my chubby hands, bashing their shells against one another. I recall plonking myself down on the grass in our back garden, peeling away the broken bits of snail shell to reveal the squiggly body beneath.
Do snails feel pain? I don't know, but I revelled in that task and remembered digging my thumbnails in their slug-like bodies to try and pierce their tough skin.
My mother admonished me for my snail torture. She shook me and picked me up roughly by the top of my arms, digging her own sharp nails into the soft skin of my underarm. I wondered then if this was what the snails experienced at my hands.
"Go and put those snails in the bush, you little fucker, and then get indoors for your tea!"
I stared defiantly at my mother and measured her up in my own eyes. She had shoulder length hair that was abundant in brown waves, falling back from her face. Hands on her slim waist, her pretty face scowled down on me as if I was the devil incarnate. I wondered why she looked at me that way. Why didn't she look at me the way my father did?
I slung the snails away, not in the bush, but at her painted toenails, and stomped indoors, all the way to the sink--where I washed my hands like the good boy I was supposed to be.
Tea was good. Not only did I get bread and butter, but if I was lucky, jam as well. Maybe a biscuit would follow, and a glass of milk accompanied this meal every day. As I said, tea was good, because that was when Father came home.
Sitting at the wooden table, swinging my legs, I'd listen for the sound of his key turning in the lock. Every time I heard it my stomach would flip in excitement. I recall this particular memory so vividly for this was the day my life really began, when I truly started on the road to becoming who I am.
"How's my little boy, then?"
My father had come into the kitchen with a cardboard box, and, after he placed it on the floor, he straightened up and held his arms out to me.
Getting down from my chair I scrambled towards my father. He whirled me round in the air, but my squeals of delight made my mother frown.
"He's been a little shit today, Henry. Ripping shells off snails. There's something wrong with him!" My mother began slamming the masher onto the boiled potatoes--mother and father didn't have bread and jam--and she angrily flicked a blob of butter in there and continued her task.
"Peggy, please! Don't say things like that in front of the boy!" My father tickled me under the chin and squeezed me tightly. I remember feeling safe, and knowing that I was his special boy. "Besides, I have a present for someone."
My mother stopped mashing and turned around, her face full of expectation and smiles. Father set me down, and I stood while he knelt beside me, pulling the cardboard box towards us. Mother knelt down also, her anger forgotten, and placed her hand upon father's knee. He indulged her with a smile and brushed his hand over hers before opening the flaps of the box.
A scratching noise from within made my mother's brow crease and a sigh escaped her pursed lips. "Henry, we discussed..."
"I know, I know, but he needs a playmate!"
Her 'tsk!' of disapproval, I recall, made me feel happy inside. The gift within the carton was for me, not her, and it was evident that this upset her.
Father opened the remaining three flaps and reached inside the box. A hiss and a scrabbling noise erupted from the container, which caused my father to jump back. He pulled his hands from the box and immediately sucked at the back of his hand. I watched as blood formed in small beads from three scratches. My mother leapt up to grab a tea towel.
Father's brow furrowed. Mother cautiously turned down the flaps of the box and peered inside.
"It'll have to go back, Henry. I said this was a bad idea." Mother's mouth flattened into an ugly straight line.
"It's afraid, Peggy, that's all." Father patted his hand with the tea towel, and all this time I stood still, wondering what was in the box that could have hurt my father and caused him to bleed. Whatever it was, I had already decided not to like it.
Feeling brave, I inched closer to the box. My hands dove into the carton and I grabbed it. It was a tabby kitten. It didn't hiss nor mew. It dangled; toes splayed, claws out, as I held it aloft. As the kitten looked down at me, I felt rage, proper rage, for the first time.
"You hurt my daddy, you little fucker!" I bellowed loudly.
Father looked at me in complete astonishment. I thought it was because he felt I was his big brave boy for being able to hold the cat without being scratched.
"Where did you hear that word, John?"
Without hesitation, I answered. "Mummy. She called me that today."
I wandered off to the garden with the kitten where I pulled at its ears and tail and pinched the baggy, furry skin on its flank until it mewled quite piteously. I could hear mother and father shouting, but paid no heed. My mind was more intent on hurting the kitten and paying it back for scratching my father.
Over the next few years though, that cat brought me gifts that made me extremely happy. I could perform operations on them. I especially liked doing this when they were still alive.