Post by Sicko on Apr 21, 2024 13:03:26 GMT -5
As the pudgy little boy with the sallow cheeks found his concentration split between the masterpiece of Lincoln Logs he was quietly assembling (it was a tumbledown mishmash of haphazardly-strewn sticks coming out every-which-way) and the smiling face of Bozo emanating from their wooden-boxed RCA, the yelling began in the kitchen anew.
He tried to block it out, sullenly staring at his Logs, trying to figure which way he could make the cab of his truck.
As his thick little fingers pulled a Log from the pile, the soft, sepia color palette of the old kid's show warmed the room, as Bozo had a child on his lap and said "Well there little boy, what do YOU wanna be when you grow up?"
Ephrain couldn't help but snake a fearful glance as him mother wailed in pain. "Pleeeease, Rafael, not in front of Ephrain!!"
"STUPID FUCKING WHORE, SHUT YER WHORE-MOUTH! I'M THE MAN OF THIS HOUSE YA HEAR ME? YOU WOULDN'T HAVE ANY OF THIS!" Rafael Ruben Ortiz-Vega raged, as he always did.
Little Ephrain could see all this from his Injun-style seat parked in front of the 25 inch wooden boob-tube. It was only a short peek in to the kitchen behind to see the tableau playing out, Rafael's thick, calloused hands wrapped around Penelope's neck, his mother bleeding from the mouth yet again from some perceived slight.
Rafael noticed Ephrain looking up from his Lincoln Logs, and the catharsis of pummeling his wife into submission abated, but he scowled. "What are you looking at, you little MONSTER-
That was his favorite epithet to hurl towards his ugly, ungainly and pensively-thoughtful son. Others, more cutting (freak, abortion, not-mine) were also thrown, but monster seemed to hit deeper than others, monster was the rejection of Frankenstein to his Adam, the creator raging endlessly at a clay he'd had hand in forming.
On the television, Bozo the Clown's face turned to look at Ephrain, and his painted mouth pursed in concern. Ephrain saw Bozo's concerned look, but he didn't acknowledge his secret friend's presence. Ephrain'd had long experience when daddy was in his dander not to let on that Ephrain talked to someone who wasn't there, that the man in the tube-box spoke to him sometimes.
Rafael's face twisted into an ugly, ugly sneer, as he stood in his kitchen. He grabbed up a knife from the chopping block where Penelope'd been preparing what (to him) was a substandard dish of cabbage and corned beef. He brandished this knife now, pointing it at Ephrain.
"Think I'll take much more of you giving me those looks, you little monster?] Think I won't do you like I've done her??"
Rafael, cruelly, brought the knife up to Penelope, who, at this point, didn't flinch as the butcher knife came up to mark her cheek. What was one more?
Penelope's eyes pleaded with Ephrain, please, escape, please, don't court his wrath any further. Just go. Just don't look at him anymore.
Ephrain was hardened to the abuse, numbed to the suffering of his mother, and although there was some pitiful part in the deep well of his breast that cried out that he just wanted some acceptance for once, he knew it would never come from Rafael.
The man thought of him only as a little monster
Head down, feeling that little shame creep in his chubby little gut as he turned away from Penelope, who, once more, did begin to cry for her son, Ephrain went into the tiny, little room that served as his, a cheerless cell populated by what few small comforts he was allowed to be a kid, one of which, was a stuffed Raggedy Andy-type of rag doll, it's triangular nose, painted smile resembling that of the only person who smiled at him.
As Ephrain turned on his side and laid on the squat little cot in the corner, curled fetal and began to tremble, the ragdoll came alive.
Crawling down off of it's cockeyed perch atop the dresser, the doll, showing sympathy, came over, and put it's hand on Ephrain's shoulders. It spoke in the voice of a man, the type of friendly, sympathetic and loving bond that he wished he felt from his father.
"I got you, kid."
"I've always got you."
The ragdoll held his shoulder empathetically for some time, and in time, the dam did break. Ephrain began to weep. The ragdoll didn't judge him, didn't tell him to stop that crying and man up, you little monster...
"It's hard, I know."
"You want acceptance that he'll never give."
"No," Ephrain's voice was soft, lisping, disused from not being allowed permission to speak for so long, "I'm past that..."
"Then?"
"Daddy is a bad man and he'll never stop hurting mommy... or me. He needs to pay."
"Mm," the ragdoll mused, it's wide black-button eyes turning upwards as if considering that profoundly, "But this isn't something you can walk away from after doing, Ephrain, there's a lot of men like your daddy in this world."
Ephrain stared coldly, his lip beginning to peel back savagely, a rage that'd been stoked from a hundred afternoon's humiliating beatings, idle threats, the occasional lick from the tip of a lit cigar... a rage that bubbled up in his chest incessantly and would not stop until it burned everything down.
"Then... I'll never stop making them pay. All of'm."
The ragdoll held silence for just a beat, Ephrain wondered if he'd broken the spell, if that was the abracadabra that'd turn his secret friend off. He felt guilty as if he'd upset another paternal figure.
But when the ragdoll spoke again, it was with a sense of pride.
"The butcher knife is still in the block in the kitchen. Y'know what to do with it?"
The little boy stood, his face becoming a blank mask.
"Then go to work, kiddo. And don't worry."
"I've got you. I'll always be here with you."
"Always."