Rotten Daisy

May, 19th, 1987.

In the end, really, it isn't my fault.

Even as I sit here, wiping the sweat from my pale flesh and subsequently smearing blood like an oil spill I can't recollect causing, shakily staining the page of this notebook with a pen clasped too tightly in my hands- it wasn't my fault. The knife I chose happened to be the one closest. What choice did I have?

None.

Most people don't think of murder as a solution to their problems. And it's not- please, keep that in mind as you read my diary. It is not a respite and it will not fix anything. Hurting others physically is never a justifiable action if they didn't provoke you.

That being said...

The newest victim who's still spurting blood up- inconveniently on my white rug, the sack of shit, was a rapist. A rapist that targeted pre-pubescent boys. So, no, I don't murder people that are good and kind or a wife that had an affair.

I kill abusers

I blink owlishly at the scene in front of me. It's strange-- no, sorry, it's charged. To sit on this earthy bed confined by candle smoke and wisps of indisguinable days and watch myself, a tender tween through the eyes of a misshapen adult.

It is a scene warped from dulled edges and barred windows. Hazy orange like looking through a smoggy lens.

I am charged with emotion I have apparently never expressed adequately, and am forced to relive this moment as an inocuous bystander. To spark a lifeless wick. Digesting it through the eyes of a flightless bird, pecking at a dead squirrel.

The grass was at the point of the summer where it was practically hay- scratchy and crunchy beneath bare feet. There was a drought- and the youngest Summers girl was lugging a pale of water from the river home to boil for drinking, or whatever else dearest David, patriarch extraordinaire, instructed.

I watch from where I sit next to my mothers flower garden as he cracks open his Wintergreen tobacco dip, running a fat finger across his gums with a sneer.

He wasn't a dad. Because anyone can gain the title father. It's one that just comes with the whole territory of knocking a woman up. But to be a dad? That was an honour. One David did not deserve. I always knew- even then. He was a disgusting man. He drank and drank until he puked- and had me, only thirteen at the time, and my elder sister by two years cleaning it up with toothbrushes.

That wasn't the bad part.

The bad part came in silent declarations of domestic violence- in the form of purple bruising in places you couldn't excuse as falling down the stairs, or burning your skin on a hot pot. Chunks of hair were missing- and it couldn't be from stress, due to the infection usually laying at its scalped root. Moulted and hidden beneath a strange little Parisian hat other kids would tease me for.

I didn't know- I still don't- what it was about this particular heated day that led little Sally Summer to stand behind her father as he fiddled with his car engine, cigarette limply hanging from his lips and the stench of liquor rolling off his skin in waves. But it was too much.

Mother had been ushered to the hospital- a collapsed lung. She didn't know how she'd exxplain it away- her elder siblings went along with their mother, regretfully leaving the youngest with the man. He never hurt his kids. He only hurt his wife.

Their mother.

Her mother.

Our mother.

David took the cigarette from his lips, his back cracking as he stood to his full 6'2 height to grab at his beer. I hold my breath as I wait... one gulp.. two..

He spits it onto the oil-slicked floor, globs of dip spattering with it.

"Fuck- this is warm!" He smashed it to the ground, its warm contents and dark brown glass scattering. She flinched a bit at the sound. My fingers twist and tear at blades of grass to try and dislodge the knot forming in my chest, bruised and battered.

He motioned aimlessly to the house. "Get me a fresh one, girl."

Girl.

Because girls couldn't help with cars like brothers were allowed to. Girls couldn't go on trips to the hospital with a sick mother like the woman at fifteen could. Girls couldn't be capable of murder.

She returned with the beer, a hand behind her back and he didn't even look to tickle the very thought of concern. He would never suspect his daughter. No one would suspect a girl with eyes wide as daisies.

In one hand was the cleaver that was discarded with the skin of a pig hanging off it, browned steel from the poor animals blood. I was a vegetarian now, after father brutally murdered the pig I watched grow up as my little self did. In the other hand was a wrench he'd thrusted at her with a grunt.

She held them both like they were toys. Maybe they were. Maybe I always found comfort in something tangible, something capable in my fists.

David grunted from beneath the bonnet, coughing around the cigarette, "Pass me the wrench, kid."

She did as he asked, stepping back without thanks to survey him. I tilt my head, trying to grasp for what I must have been thinking so tiny and so fresh to the world.

He was big. Much bigger than a young girl- and bigger than any of the other kids dads. With a permanent scowl where smiles usually played.

I watch, my fingers digging into the earth as she quivered, the cleaver much too heavy as she tried to lift it above her head and nearly bowled over at the same time. I want to help- my fingers itch to cover her eyes and shield her from such brutality but for that I would have had to creep into my mother's womb and stolen the life from an angelic little fetus.

My swallow mirrors hers, heavy, thick against the wretched stench of motor oil and stale smoke that pours out of that garage. She heaves the cleaver up, high in a pretty arch like her mother at her tallest, and swings it down in a jagged curve like the curls of her mama's pretty brown hair.

There is a sick crunch, and a squelch, and I must think of my older sister, sequestered to being wed off to a man of her father's pedigree, and yanks. Pretty ribbons follow the blade, splattering red like his precious car. It falls again like the blade of a guillotine, sure and purposeful to try and break the chord that would tie her big brothers to inherit such a rotten gift. She swings it up, and he topples forward beneath the car, the wound in his back easy enough to cover with a kick of her foot to the jack pedal. It creaks, and collapses onto the lousy sack of shit with a resounding finality.

I want to clap for the theatrics of it all, want to cherish her sweet little Kubrick stare as she stares with a loathing that borders worship for the act, but my hands are stuck in the mud. Worms digging beneath my fingernails like the edge of a fresh page. Dirt clinging to my flesh like the poison of a new chapter, of a fate determined with a gleeful little smile Sally Summers offers David's quivering corpse.

Sally hops over the carnage, taking a look at the engine herself. With a simple twist of a knob, it was fixed. No one would ever credit me for that, though- they would assume David did it before dying doing what he loves: being a fantastical monster.

I watch her skip happily out from the garage, blood dripping from her skin in a gruesome ink. For a second I think she might jump out of the scene, and into me. I want to celebrate her success, and boast her to the world as a heroin with the grandest character arc. God, I share that same glassy look to this day when I take a life.

My first taste of blood was like honey. The second like wine. The third like power. And with power, well... you can never get enough of the stuff. Vengeance is one hell of a drug, I couldn't wait for my next fix in the sequel.