Written by Big H
He still couldn’t remember what happened that night.
Even now, 12 years later, he had only what the police told him all those years ago and images from the fragmented flashbacks that tortured him night after night.
Inside, your memories are the only thing you have to keep you company at nights and he would spend hours in his cell playing back the memories from his youth like old video recordings in his mind. Remembering a time when they were still a family, before he realised that he was different from the other boys, before his father found out he was different and that unconditional love of his was withdrawn, the contract changed, the un in unconditional struck through. Crossed out. Erased.
No longer willing to accept his son unless he changed, no longer able to meet his eye or spend more than two seconds in the same room as him, no longer able to be the father that little frightened boy needed, he sent his son running into the arms of good old Uncle Tom. Those strong arms of Uncle Tom that hugged him tight when he broke down and cried on him confused and hurt by his fathers rejection; those strong arms that bore the pathetically puny pounding from his 15 year old fists when yet another attempt to reach his father had failed, those big strong comforting arms that held him, in retrospect, just a little too close, a little too long and always a little too eagerly.
Those same arms that pinned him down one night, that ripped his clothes trying to pull them off, that smacked him across the face when he struggled. The same ones that pushed his head down, that held it there whilst he gagged and retched, the ones that wiped away the tears afterwards, that held his shaking petrified body close whilst telling him that he wouldn’t tell his father as long as he came back tomorrow. The same arms flipped him over the next time and held him down, and then later tenderly wiped away the blood whilst promising not to tell his father as long as he was a good boy and did as he was told. As long as he kept coming back, week after week, night after sickening night; every night that Aunt Jane was working at the hospital, every night that she and her gal pals went dancing, every night that good old Uncle Tom could think of a reason for having his nephew round to his house.
He still couldn’t remember what happened that night.
They told him it was a kitchen knife and sure enough, when they showed him the blood stained blade, he knew it was the one from the knife rack at home. It was one of the expensive ones his Dad had bought his Mum for her birthday, the ones she had been after for ages. He remembered thinking at the time that his Mum was going to be mad as hell about that knife and had even asked the policewoman if she thought his mom might be able to get it back. The policewoman had just looked at him coldly and placed the knife back in its little zippy bag.
He tried to tell them about those nights. He tried so many times to tell them about the pain and the humiliation, about the threats and promises, but they refused to hear him, they point blank refused to listen and accused him of being a coward, of coming up with pathetic excuses. They told him his father had already told them about his ‘unnatural and perverted tendencies’ and how he had already caught him with another boy so why should they believe that these things were against his will? Why should they believe that the poor dead family man that he butchered was doing these terrible things to him?
In court they twisted it all round, made him out to be the pursuer, the predator who saw red after his uncle rejected his advances. Nothing he said was believed…by anyone.
12 Years is a long time and with that time he came to understand his family’s rejection and hate. He made peace with his daemons and although he still couldn’t remember what happened that night he came to accept what he had done.
Tonight, the eve of his release, it was time to forgive. To forgive himself for crimes he still didn’t fully understand, to forgive his family for their inability to believe in him and, hardest of all, to forgive his uncle, for tomorrow was a new beginning. Taking one last look out at the world he would soon inhabit he lay down on his bed, closed his eyes and smiling gently to himself, dropped into the most peaceful sleep he had had in over 12 years.
He no longer wanted to remember, only to move on, a free man in all senses of the word.
