NOBODY KNOWS…

By

Granville Johnson

Part 2

“PLEASE!”

Sevin jerked upright awake, drenched with cold sweat, only to cringe, as if groin-stabbed by the sound that greeted him. He hadn’t relived that hidden horror in many years. Now he knew why his dreams had once again betrayed him. Awake or lost in dreamtime, the sense of malignant betrayal was ever present. His life, now devoid of meaning, was no longer his to control or direct. He lived a cruel jester’s dance before Loki’s grinning throne. “Oh… God! Please help me!” he croaked.

“I need you… I need you… I need YOU… I NEED YOU! I NEED…!”

Rook’s crackling voice was unmistakable, above the rhythmic hump-thump of thigh and lion joined in love lust. Far past caring about her husband’s unwilling role as witness, Rook and Quail sweated and swore their feverish devotion to the moment and each other. Wife and lover, bodies intertwined, lives interwoven, celebrated their union.

Sevin, Rook’s husband, Quail’s best friend, heard them and listened in the darkness through his now dry sobs, and plaintiff pleas to a God he wasn’t at all sure he believed in.

He mused over the irony of this fate.

Enduring recurrent nightmares of his past, while trapped by his fear, within the ongoing nightmare of his present. “Life is Hell between this rock that hard place. And there is NO time off for good behavior!” he whispered fiercely, knowing, with soul-chilling certainty that his very private hell of unending suffering and cascading pain, had only just begun.

Silence.

The sudden quiet cradled a renewed awareness of a greater resonance. Sevin, ten years her husband, could easily picture his life-mate.

Sweat, spittle and sperm dripping from her cheek, trailing down to her small heaving chest, clutching Quail’s softened penis in tacit directness, while listening for our children. She acts a perverse tableau of parental concern.

The image, in stark truth, reopened his vast inner bleakness. The hellish pit beckoned. Sevin moved toward the absence of sound, as much to deny the hurt, as to instinctively seek ‘safe harbor’ for his soul in the presence of his children. Flinging off his sweat-saturated nightshirt and wrapping himself in the kids’ Christmas-gift-to-dad, which also happened to his favorite gift, a cozy-thick black fleece bathrobe, he strode down the hall to their room carrying his down quilt over his shoulder as a bed-roll. Sevin hardly noticed that his children were now quite suddenly, ‘his’ and no longer ‘ours’.

Peering into the soft semi-darkness, he was very relieved to find that all three were sleeping soundly, quite safe in their sweet sleep of innocence. Sevin gave thanks once more as he lay down.

He rested amidst their deep calm, feeling the near perfect purity of their peaceful stillness.

Drifting off to welcome sleep, he heard once more the tense hushed movements of the lovers in the room above his head. Sevin thought, “Time to clean up,” with a snicker and a giggle, wash face, body and soul free of the guilt that cannot abide. No negativity allowed, no ‘nea-sayers’, no party poopers please; after all they’re young and so deeply in love. Though married to significant others, were they not destined to be together? Had the Universe not concurred by sending a close-strike lighting bolt and thunderclap during the moment of their first adulterous climax? Was it celestial sex? Or did the fact that they were in the back of his pick up truck, on top of a local mountain during a thunder storm, have anything to do with the coincidence of the near miss. I wonder how ‘blessed’ they would have felt if that ‘high-voltage-cosmic-gift’ had been delivered to the correct address? Given of course, that it was a cosmic ‘blessing’, as they wished to believe.”

Sevin couldn’t stop the word as it flowed through his weary consciousness like lava trough a brittle forest.

“… Cock-coaled… My turn!”

To his children he could only quietly enchant, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… so sorry,” as the waiting void reclaimed him once more.

Within the dreamtime of sleeping children dwells the quintessence of truth, wisdom, freedom, faith, trust and unconditional love, quietly at rest. Their past, present, and future, reborn, revived, renewed afresh with each new day. Their vibrant simplicity embellishes the flowing fabric of life where there are no mistakes, only the creative adventures of random chance and change.

Sevin’s children: Onel’e, eight, Kudo, six, and Inez, four, were gifted and talented with exceptional beauty, astute minds, voracious curiosity, and impish humor. Their silky-satin skin of golden hue would darken into a deep dark-chocolate brown under the Spring/Summer Sun’s warm caress.

Favored with: full graceful lips, radiant smiles, huge deeply brilliant sepia eyes, long lavish lashes, thick brows, and crowned silken ebony-auburn swirling spiral curls, their extraordinary physical beauty was but a superficial reflection of their resilient personalities. The interracial mixture of their parental gene pool blessed each child with the best of both races and many cultures.

Little Inez did not know why her Dad was curled up on the floor next to her bed. Nor was she concerned about the night’s events that had brought him to her room, seeking refuge from the tumult. What did intrigue her was this body-in-sleeping-bag shape that so closely resembled the shape and size of the big brown pillow in the playroom, next door; otherwise know as daddy’s sick-child-night-duty-bed. It was his place when the inevitable school-bug followed one of them home.

Curiosity tickled, Inez couldn’t resist the opportunity to explore the potential use of her softly snoring Dad as a landing pad. She looked carefully choosing a likely spot with ample girth. She giggled, with high anticipation of the fun below, and slight expectation of risking a little trouble for herself. She perched on the side of her toddler’s bed, a custom made hand-me-down crafted by her uncle Nate, originally, for Onele’. She launched high and happy, “Wheeee…,” to belly-flop on her father’s head and shoulders. Like the proverbial fat spider pouncing upon a trespassing fly she clung to her prey, quite satisfied with the success of her attack… and still giggling.

“Good morning Inez,” came the deep muffled voice directly beneath her belly. The sound of her daddy’s voice tickled her again and her giggles quickly bubbled into a full-throated peal of infectious laughter.

Kudo wasn’t sure when he began laughing, or why. Just that something exceedingly funny had bounced him into wakefulness. Chuckling into a long yawn and stretch, he bent over edge of his upper bunk, glanced at his spider-sister and dropped into the fracas.

“Daddy… wait for me!” squealed Onele’ as she landed on Sevin’s legs, the only part of his body that wasn’t buried under a giddy sibling. With her arrival, the tickle-fest began in earnest. A rollicking bubbling mass of galloping giggles and not so quiet roars, the children joyfully rough-rode their bucking ‘Brahma Bull’ daddy, determined to hang on for dear life and happiness.

The ‘bull’ below, bellowing for all he’s worth and loving every second of this total immersion in family play, momentarily forgot the night’s pain, terror, and rage. Their love was a living witness to his joy. For this dad, a renewed awareness was kindled. Only the welfare of his children mattered. Their laughter gave meaning and purpose to his life.

Fortunately, for Sevin, he was blissfully ignorant of how gravely his resolve and commitment would be tested: how soon his every breath would center on his resoluteness, and challenge his dawning courage.

Eventually, their sides aching terribly, limbs intertwined to form a bewildering sculpture, the rough-house-rodeo-ride transformed itself into a purring family snuggle.

“Oh… Lord, I love you. Okay folks, it’s time to let your old dad up.”

“Dad, you are not old,” was Onele’s quick reply. “Besides, I love you too.”

“I love you too, dad, Kudo joined in from somewhere beneath the pile.

“Me too daddy, chimed Inez, snuggling in even tighter.

“I know, and I live for the way you love me. Still we should get our day started.”

“Feels pretty started to me, daddy,” was the group reply, in almost perfect sync.

“What the Hell…?! What’s going on here… Sevin?!”

“Playing with dad, mom.” Three voices answered as one.

Sevin looked up from the family snuggle at her stern features dripping horrific disgust and rage, as if she was viewing the realization of her worst night-horror: A pervert named dad preying on her children in her home. In that mound of interwoven young bodies she saw a predator grooming his prey to be comfortable with inappropriate touching and dress, hid within the smokescreen of bedroom-play. Foreplay is more like it. “Was this sick bastard molesting my kids last night in some perverse attempt at revenge? And is he really stupid enough to think that somehow THIS is Okay?!” thought Rook, screaming, in her mind, to tear this throat out but not daring to let them see it through her patented smile. “Fun’s over folks, break it up. Breakfast in a few minutes. Last one dressed, washed up and sitting at the table has to help cleanup.”

“Okay mom,” all chimed in turn as they hurried past their mother and through the door, kitchen bound.

Sevin watched the inner struggle behind Rook’s eyes, deep within her empty smile and shuddered. “She wants to kill me to protect our kids. Here, in her mind, I am the monster…my feigns and claws honed to rend and ravage as I suck the life from their souls.” He watched the battle within her that he had lost long ago. His warrior-wife wanted to take his life as if she hadn’t already done so. Her dark accomplice stood behind her just out of the light, a hulking figure in the soft shadow of the hall eager to do her bidding. The toothless coward loved to bark but had no bite.

Sevin stretched out to his full length. Languidly, his hands came to rest forming a cradle at the back of his head. He made no attempt to rise or speak.

The silence grew dangerous as her rage simmered.

Sevin felt nothing for this woman and less for the shadow, “What was I thinking…?! Suddenly, the laughter came; from the tips of his toes it rumbled through blood, muscle and sinew it rolled and rose.

Rook had turned toward Quail following her kids when the sound burst against her back. Startled badly, she jumped mid-stride stubbing her baby toe hard against the log door-jam. Yelping at the pain of the wounded toe, she stumbled forward falling into Quail’s crotch head first, head-to-head-to-balls contact. Stumbling, crumbling and cursing they both went down in a sudden heap of agony.

Sevin continued to roar in joyful agony of barking laughter, rocking back and forth on the floor in tear-filled celebration, he sang, “You can’t always get what you want…”