Mercy

Amidst the jagged, rasping pants of a sexually satisfied older man and his harmless, if not playful, advances, I succumbed to an oblivion so powerful that when I finally did wake again, I was still wholly immersed in a world in which my mind had full control. A squinting, cautiously eyeballed glance about the room I shared with Billie Joe brought about a sense of confusion so profoundly bewildering that all sense of time and reality were momentarily beyond my grasp. I failed to understand why my sight was not hindered by intricately woven wicker the second I cracked an eye open, and it was equally puzzling as to why I seemed to be nestled horizontally against another being while in the Land of Omniscient Reveries my legs ached from being folded beneath me for hours on end. Hell, for the first delicate moments where my mind wavered between its conscious and unconscious corners, I was five years old and cowering inside a wicker laundry hamper because I was utterly terrified of a woman called Momma Cass. It was eerie how similar being stuffed in that basket was to being locked in a closet.

Though I had no prior cognizance of this dream, every part of my soul screamed it was a memory. Why it had resurfaced then, after nearly twenty years of being subconsciously concealed within a padlocked bureau of my psyche, was impossible for me to say. However, the idea of me being terrified of this woman was not completely impossible. It wasn’t until Elliot had once asked for an irrelevant childhood recollection that I realized I had no memories earlier than my seventeenth year, the year of Cadence’s conception. Either my youth as a whole had been extraneous enough to have been forgotten, or something far worse than my encounters with Elliot occurred. The latter would certainly explain why I’d been so easily pliable and so effortlessly controlled by that sadist.

***

The dream started as inconspicuous and innocuous as any with the only anomaly being that it wasn’t primarily a nightmare. Its initial lack of torment or petrifaction was enough cause for unease from the start, yet my peacefully slumbering mind gave way to one that was far more optimistic. At first, I assumed to be dreaming of an anonymous child romping about a playground of sorts for the less fortunate. To the child it was paradise, but to the snootiest of the upper class it was nothing more than an abandoned lot packed to the brim with stripped cars, abandoned cars, torched cars, irreparable household items [refrigerators and distasteful, retro washing machines seemed to be the most abundant], and the occasional lone tire thrown haphazardly among the dirt and scrap metal. The child didn’t mind the grease and grime that coated his face as a result of pretending to race around in the disassembled vehicles, for it was the only place where he could truly escape to. The only place he felt safe which, ironically, could kill him at any moment if he lost his footing and tumbled onto the jagged daggers of broken glass or scrap metal which littered the ground below him.

Not until the woman called Momma Cass shouted his name, Mikey, did my dreaming mind perceive the child as myself. Her voice was sugary and pleasant, though its sweetened qualities were about as natural as Splenda and twice as sickening in even the smallest of doses. The young woman insisted upon sporting a copious amount bright red lipstick which bore a label that claimed she was a Vibrant Vixen to potentially add to her self-important charm, yet they did nothing but bring me to despise her more. Five-year-old Mikey hated the color and despised the name even more because I knew damn well that neither Vibrant nor Vixen meant red, and they sure as hell were quite the pretentious adjectives for such a revolting woman. Little me wished they made an icky green color called Vile Verde that I could get my hands on and replace it with the obnoxious red because it fit the distasteful theme of alliteration, and it actually had a color listed right in there which would have worked marvelously for displaying her repellent personality. Imagine that, I had known what vibrant, verde, and vile meant before Momma Cass had even signed me up for kindergarten, though I was less certain of the word vixen. I knew well enough, however, to recognize it as a horrifically inaccurate description of the woman who had been appointed as my guardian after I’d become a ward of the state for the eighth time in my five short years of life.

“Mikey!” she’d hollered again, voice amplifying to convey just how imperative it was that I heeded her calls before something bad happened…but something bad happened regardless of whether I obeyed her straight away or not.

Little me bolted across the abandoned lot and clambered atop a dismantled washing machine, bringing my body level with the open window of Momma Cass’s townhouse next door. Wriggling through the narrow space, I felt mixed sensations of euphoria and terror, debating whether or not a burglar felt this way as he snuck into the home of some hopeless, unwitting sap. I then smiled to myself, certain that burglars couldn’t possibly be as stealthy as I. Fuck that, I was a ninja with how noiselessly my shoes made contact with the linoleum below and how effectively I evaded Momma Cass’s grumbling form as she scoured the house in search of my disobedient body. I hid just outside the room of my destination, veiled in shadows that only dusk can bring, and waited for my state-appointed mother to exit. The moment she did so, I slithered into the room unnoticed and unscathed, resorting to the seemingly comfortable confines of a wicker hamper filled with dirty clothes to further hide my filthy self.

It was two hours and forty-five minutes of excruciating leg cramps and panic attacks before Momma Cass re-checked the laundry room. If she hadn’t found me by the second sweep of her almighty kingdom, she might have called the cops…but that meant explaining to them why I had attempted to escape from her in the first place. That was a can of worms and a half she simply did not have the balls to confess to.

Light poured into my odd little hideout as Momma Cass removed the cover, reflecting off the already blinding shade of her lips as they peeled back into a grin so wide that Mikey pissed all over himself in fear as to how much worse his punishment would be for defying her twice in one day.

“You look like them goddamn nigger boys that live down the street. Is that what you wanna be, Mikey? A nigger?” she hissed, face pulled into a look of outright disgust at the thought of raising a black child. I vigorously shook my head, attempting to match her expression.

After being raised by that woman, it was a wonder I hadn’t been indoctrinated into a pint-sized raging racist.

“Then stop playing in trash and fucking mind your momma when she calls for you!” she spat, placing the cover back on top of the wicker basket. I was once again consumed by darkness.

“Y-yes, Momma,” I squeaked. Though it was merely a dream, the stench from my urine-soaked undergarments was so prominent that my sleeping form choked and spluttered along with Mikey as it engorged his nostrils with its unbearable odor.

“Now you’re gonna stay in here and think real hard about what you did wrong today before I turn you back into a good little white boy,” she announced, and the wicker hamper groaned with a sudden weight resting upon the lid. I pressed up against it with all the strength my tiny arms could muster, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Momma Cass had resorted to perching herself on top of the basket to ensure my imprisonment.

“Lemme out! I’m not a nigger, Momma, I swear!” I howled, the muscles in my legs tightening as three simultaneous cramps rippled through them. It felt as if someone had replaced the blood in my veins with hot wax and allowed it to simmer until my legs were nothing more than overcooked, useless slabs of meat.

“Then prove it, baby! Strip and Momma’ll draw you a bath to wipe that black scum off your skin. Sound good?” she questioned, but it was a trap.

Baths meant no clothes, and Momma Cass did bad things when Mikey wasn’t wearing them.

***

All recollections ended there as both eyes peered about the room without so much as a single inch of woven wicker to hinder my view. My legs no longer felt lifeless and numb beneath my shivering body, and the smell of piss had long since left both my mind and my nostrils. All reminiscent perceptions disappeared the moment I was able to discern Mikey from the fragile adult I’d grown into, permitting a surplus of new emotions to come whirling back to me with such a forceful sense of peculiar affection that I felt compelled to cry.

My body was pressed firmly against Billie Joe’s, spooning him despite being unable to recall at which point of my nightmare I rolled over and burrowed myself as closely into the older man as possible. My torso was naked due to a surreptitious, yet welcomed, stunt which began with a passionate kiss with one hand raking through my hair and another wandering upon the fabric of my t-shirt, eventually bringing me to question why the small of my back had grown uncomfortably sodden. The old bastard grinned into our kiss but did not pull away. I then recalled what had initiated our lust-drunk, fumbling embrace, and it became abundantly clear what was being soaked into my ripped shirt.

“You just wiped cum all over my back, didn’t you?” I giggled, pulling away just long enough to appreciate the attractive way in which Billie’s eyes shone when he was being particularly devious.

“‘Course I did! What else was I gonna do with it ‘sides share it with you?” he quipped, licking his swollen lips while he watched me shrug out of the pathetic garment and toss it off to the side. “Damn thing was ruined anyways.”

“You just wanted me to take my shirt off, you perv,” I muttered, shivering as Billie Joe ran a teasing finger along my chest to my stomach. He chuckled but did not deny the accusation.

“G’night, Fairy,” he sighed, caressing my exposed torso once more and placing a quick peck on my forehead before he rolled over to his side of the bed. I was dumbstruck and hard, utterly stunned that the old bastard hadn’t taken the situation any further when he’d been so eager to do so mere moments prior to the sudden make-out session.

“That’s it?” I demanded.

“Sure is. You ain’t the only tease here.”

***

The previous night’s escapades engrossed my rousing mind, and with my legs entwined with Billie’s and my face buried in his neck, I felt myself growing hard yet again at the notion of having his hands all over my body and his lips suctioned to my neck. Desires intensified, drowning out lingering traces of the disquieting bête noir from my mind. It was no wonder the old bastard woke smirking at the feel of my erection poking his backside.

“You’re up early,” he mumbled. “Does that mean I get ‘nother spongeless bath?”

Bath. Naked. Elliot. Momma Cass.

I was limp before I’d even drawn breath to reject him.