Son for Hire: Chapter 82

As a shattered man I weep.  Evelyn holds me close and I weep.  What else is new?

This time was different though.  Those other times were the stirring of the monster I had tried mightily to ignore and deny, but this time pierced to the very center of the beast to bring it to fearsome life.  This wound was old and cut deep, its scab torn away by the dream last night and then again by my fearful panic and the triggering phrase Evelyn had inadvertently uttered.  The hug from Kit this morning had put a bandage on it but blood still seeped through.  Try as she might my sister could not heal me.  How could she?  She was still bleeding herself.  The pair of us were two grievously wounded soldiers on the battlefield of life, all shot and blown to hell but helping each other carry on as best we could.

The longer I spent in Mommy’s warm, loving embrace the more that cuffs holding me in a near fetal position went from scary…to comforting.  So comforting.  It is slow transition but as she soothes me and pets me the feeling gradually changes from helpless to protected.  I was safe.  I was safer than I’d ever been.  Mommy had me now.  When she at last whispers “Let me free you baby.”, I shake my head no.  Bound and held was just where I needed to be right now.

“Please.”  I whimper, wriggling tighter into her.  “A little longer.”

“Okay.”  She sits up, gazing down on me and stroking my hair and wiping my wet cheeks.  With the gentlest voice she says.  “Do you want to talk about what just happened?”

I take a deep shuddering breath and slowly let it out, pushing the fear from my heart.  I didn’t want to bother her with this.  I never wanted to bring this to her home, to our home, but it had followed me.  I knew now that as much as I wanted to I could not escape my past, not even here.  If I was to truly give myself to her, my whole self, I had no choice but to give her the bad as well as the good.

“I had a dream last night.”

“A bad dream?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“About being tied up?”

“No Ma’am.”  I keep my voice respectful and subservient, my obedience gave me a buffer between my words and the raw emotion behind them.  The man called Donny could never say the things that the submissive boy named Donny was about to say.  I’d opened up to her before but I already sensed this time would be different, those other times mere warning tremors before the great quake.  But this time I was bound, I was safe, I was protected.  Evelyn wouldn’t let anything hurt me.  Nobody could get me here in Mommy’s arms, not even…her.  “It was about my mother.”

“I see.”  She takes in the gravity of that statement as her soft fingers stroke my jaw.  “Would you like to tell me about your dream Donald?”

“Yes please.  May I?”

“Go ahead my boy.”  She gently commands as she kisses my forehead.  “I’m here.”

She commands, I obey.  With my bare hands I tear at the scars and lance my beating heart to let the blood and stagnant puss and black ichor ooze freely.  I tell Evelyn of the dream and the very real night that it was based on.  I tell Evelyn of how my mother hurt me that night, emotionally and bodily.  I tell Evelyn about how my mother brought my sister into prostitution far too early.  I tell her about the bruises I saw on Kiki when she got home that night and how she cried like I’d never seen anybody cry before or since.  I tell her details that I didn’t even remember until the words began to flow.  From the telling of that single terrible night the floodgates open.  I bare my soul, telling Evelyn of the dark years of abuse that Kiki and I faced at the hands of my mother and her more sadistic boyfriends and how these men and their needs always came above her children’s and how she abandoned us the moment she realized that my sister could carry the responsibilities that rightfully belonged to her.  One after the next I force the horrors trapped inside of me out into the light.

In the refuge of my bondage, cocooned safely inside of my submission, I tell my angel of mercy everything.

With the gentle strength and grace that only a true mother possessed she listens to my words and shares my pain.  Though she feels the sting of my words as keenly as I do, her hazel eyes exuding compassion and showing that she shared my pain, she doesn’t cry or swear or judge.  She simply listens and soothes and keeps me tight against her warm soft body.  Now was not the time for her own emotions.  For her boy she had to be strong.  With a selfless power that leaves me humbled she somehow lifts the crushing burden from my shoulders to bear it herself, for a time at least.  When it is all over I am shaken and spent, but I feel…reborn.

The words eventually dry up to leave us in a serene intimate silence.  Somewhere along the way the tears had stopped but my Mommy continues to console me and pet my soft clean hair.  We gaze and we bond for a stretch of time in the calm after the storm.

“Well…that was a long time coming.”  She speaks only once she sensed I was well and truly done.  “Thank you Donald.”

“Thank you?”  I say, my voice froggy from the weeping.

“It takes a lot of courage to trust so deeply.  Thank you baby.”  She hugs me, she hugs me tighter than she ever had before.  “I am so sorry for what you had to go through.  You did not deserve what happened to you.  It’s not your fault Donald.  It is not your fault.  None of it.”

I let out a shuddering sigh as I melt into her body.  My mind already knew the truth of what she said but my heart desperately needed to hear it.

“It’s not your fault.  You did everything you could, for yourself and for your sister.  You survived Donald, it’s all anybody could have done.”  She kisses the side of my head.  “And you are not alone baby.  You are loved.”  She kisses me again.  “I love you Donald.”  And she kisses me again.  “You are a good boy.”

“Ohhhh Mum.”

Cradling me close she does what comes natural to her and begins to rock me and hum a sweet little lullaby.  I give myself over to it, allowing her to care for me.  My catharsis was complete.  The wound in my soul had been opened up by my submission and willing vulnerability, purged of infection by my confession, cleansed and sterilized by Mommy’s love, and now sutured and dressed with that final ‘good boy’.  The scars I would carry for the rest of my life but the real healing could now, at last, begin.