Page 4 of For Love & Torture
Chapter 3
Grant
Two years later
A dreary morning finds me driving aimlessly. It’s been two years since my father murdered my mother and I’m tired of waiting around to see if dear old Dad will ever open his mouth about what he’s done.
He took a guilty plea and received a punishment of life in prison, but he’s never told his story. We know Mom’s left wrist was cut. The cut was so deep that it went all the way to the bone. The coroner estimated it took her twenty or so minutes to bleed out. Enough time that my father could’ve stopped her from dying. A tourniquet could’ve been fashioned out of a piece of cloth and wrapped around the wound to put pressure on it and slow the bleeding until they could get to help. Dad was a police officer. He would’ve known what to do.
But my father didn’t do a damn thing. And no one knows why.
He’s never said how the wound was inflicted, other than admitting he cut her wrist. There was a knife that was found with her blood on it. It was her left wrist and she was right handed; she could’ve done it to herself. I’ve thought through every possible scenario in the two years since it happened.
In this last year things have started happening to me that have only added to my confusion. Things I don’t understand. Sometimes I think I can actually hear my mother’s voice. It makes me think I’m going insane, so every time I catch a shadow out of the corner of my eye and hear her voice, I shake it off. I leave wherever I am to get away from the insanity that seems to be trying to close in on me. The dead don’t speak—I know it’s all in my head.
My father wouldn’t give anyone any information, so I suppose we’ll never know anything more about it. But there is a suspicion that has been lurking in the back of my mind that my father took the blame for something he didn’t do. But why he would do such a thing is still a mystery.
With everything weighing heavily on my mind, I head toward Wilsonville, Oregon to the Coffee Creek Correction Facility. My father has been placed there, and it’s the weekend for visitors. What better way to spend a drizzly day than trying to talk to my father in a prison yard?
White tents have been erected to keep the rain off the inmates and their visitors in the outdoor area where the prison building meets the outside. My father hasn’t come to me yet, even though I’ve been signed in for thirty minutes. Time is running out, and I’m sure he knows that.
Obviously, he doesn’t want to face me. The last time we laid eyes on each other was when I drove him and Mom to the airport to leave on their trip to South Africa—a place Mom always wanted to go but never had. They’d seemed happy that day. There wasn’t one reason in the world for me to suspect that Dad was going to kill the woman he’d seemed to love more than life itself in a matter of a few days.
Mom had kissed me goodbye and given me a hug. Dad had shaken my hand and told me to take care of my younger brother and sisters while they were away. I assured them I would and told them to have a nice time.
A couple of years have passed since that fateful day. I know Dad might have a hard time seeing me. But he has to get over that some time, and this might as well be the time. I’m tired of waiting to find out why he killed my mother.
As I sit here at this picnic table, I have nothing else to do but think. I’m thinking about the club a few of my male friends and I have in the works.
We have talked in great detail about what we want. With money put into an account just for the club we’re planning, we’ve purchased a piece of land just outside the Portland city limits.
Nothing currently sits on it. It’s a flat piece of land, and we all decided that building underground will be the best thing to do. What we’re making is going to be on the taboo side of life, for most people.
The more hidden it is, the easier it will be to run it without interference from people who would tell us that what we’re doing is sinister.
Most people don’t want to have to explain the one room in their house that’s filled with things that most others would consider to be torture devices. Whips, chains, ropes hanging on the walls and bondage equipment filling the room—these could be a red flag to those moral people who think anyone who is into this sort of thing must be insane. Or morally bankrupt.
I’m neither, nor are the men who sought to partner with me to build us a playhouse of sorts. One where men and women will come willingly to participate in things that are better off kept hidden from polite society.
Lately, I’ve been reading things and making rules our members will have to abide by. So far, I’ve found the list to be getting longer with each article I read. But we’ll make sure our club is safe, sane, and consensual.
I’ve been watching an old man and his family talk while I’ve been waiting. They are an animated bunch, using their hands to say nearly every word. I think they must be a blast to sit and listen to. They all laugh a lot, including the inmate.
It’s funny to me how they can be so joyful when one of their own is trapped behind these tall fences with razor wire topping them. From the moment I drove up to the prison, I felt the heaviness in the air here. No one wants to be here—it’s a punishment. How can anyone be happy inside these fences?
My attention is drawn away from the happy group as someone catches my attention in my peripheral vision. An orange color moves and sits on the other side of the table. Turning my head, slowly, my eyes land on my father.
For the first time in a little over two years, I am looking into the glassy, pale blue eyes of my father. “You look terrible.”
He doesn’t say a word back to me. He looks right into my eyes, but he says nothing. The guard who has brought him does say something, though. “He doesn’t speak.”
I look at the guard as I nod. “I can see that.” Then I look back at the man who should be happy to see me. “How’s he getting along here?”
“No one bothers him,” the guard answers me. “He keeps to himself.”
“Do you know if he needs anything?” I ask, even though I have no intention of making his stay at the prison any better. He deserves to sit alone and sad for what he’s done to our family.
“If you ask me, then I’d say he could use some pencils and legal pads. He seems to think a lot. Maybe he could write down some of those things he’s thinking about.” The guard’s meaty hand clasps down on my father’s narrow shoulder. “He has a lot going on inside of him—a lot weighing on him. My heart aches for him sometimes. He sometimes has a look to him that’s heartbreaking.”
