Witness

I feel it, all over again.

Saturday night, I’m chocking, chocking.

“Dad!” I cry. He can’t hear me. I try again, and again. He won’t listen.

He’s looking at me now, blood filled sockets into tear stained orbs, and I’m three years old again. “What happened, Daddy? Why are you looking at me that way?”

His arm outstretches bloodied and bruised. The skin no longer a tanned olive colour but instead green and blue and purple. Bruises. Bruises and cuts and rotting flesh, maggots hanging from ripped pieces of his skin. The sorry excuse for an arm continues to extend towards me a hand unfolding from a fist and grasping my throat tightly, gripping, gripping, and I’m chocking, gasping.

“Why are you doing this Daddy? I don’t like this game anymore, why are you doing this?” I cry and sob.

His wheezing breath ghosts over my face, proof, I think. He’s still alive, he must be, if he’s breathing. The foul stench that blankets over my nostrils and invades my mind, ripping and clawing at every single of my brain cells telling me that; no, no, something just isn’t right here, something just isn’t right. And he’s still gripping and I’m still crying.

His mouth, in front of my face once more, allowing me to see now discoloured teeth, and smell that foul stench once more. This isn’t air that he is breathing, it’s poison, he wants to suffocate me, crush my windpipe while I breath in this foul textured air. It’s like the mouth of a garbage van as it chews and grinds all of the rubbish between those large metal teeth, a smell being released that always makes you cover your nose as you walk past the bulking vehicle.

“Daddy,” I whimper as I begin to flop forward lifelessly in his hand, dizzy with the lack of oxygen being allowed to flow through my throat, the Carbon Dioxide having to lodge inside my lungs, with no-where else to be released.

“You did this, son,” he bites out, spitting as he hisses out anything with the letter ‘s’.

“I-I…No!” I cry out, my hand closing around his, trying to pry it from my throat now no longer the tanned olive colour of skin I inherited from him, but instead a bruising purple and blue, and the pain, oh the pain.

“Yes you did.” He hissed out once more. “You let them get me. You’re the reason I’m in the ground without a grave,”

“No,” I whimper as his hand unclasps from my throat and he drops me, but my feet don’t hit the floor that was there a little over two minutes ago, instead I’m simply falling. Falling down into nothingness, into darkness, into black. I see his face wicked and grinning now his revenge has been done, it gets further and further and smaller and smaller as I fall towards the inky darkness.

* * *

I’ve never felt anything worse, than what I felt that night sitting in the car, watching their meaty hands grasp at his body, pulling and throwing him around as if her were a rag doll, curling them into fists and pounding into his face and stomach, kicking the wind out of him, throwing him off balance.

He fell with a sickening thud to the floor which I heard, even from the, almost, safe edge of the car park. I could see his car and a shadow inside. A hand curled around my shoulder, pain rippling from every nerve ending as it twitched and spasmed in protest to the raw pressure being applied, dirtied and broken finger nails being curved into my skin, blood trickling down my arm.

“Don’t you forget this, son, don’t you forget it,” Dads now raspy voice whispered in my ear harshly. “Don’t you forget,”

“I won’t forget,” I whimpered back, shaking my head.

“It’s your fault, look, look at you hiding away there you stupid, stupid boy,” the hand moved from my shoulder, and hit me hard round the back of the head, pushing me down to the pavement below, my face welcoming the cold cement.

* * *

“Such a shame, just such a shame,” a voice murmured from a little above my head that was still placed on the cold, damp cement below. The voice was low, smooth and silky, and I recognized it. “Hey sleepy-head,” it greeted as my eyes fluttered open. I sat up and came face to face with Gerard who was smiling down at me.

“Good sleep?” he asked, a cheeky grin on his face.

I nodded slowly, and looked around, seeing police tape: Do Not Cross, as well as men in white body suits, masks and bright blue shoe covers carrying around various see through bags and test tubes. An ambulance was there also, a gurney, a sheet with the faint outline of a body beneath.

Something silver glinted in the light, a gun sitting next to my left ankle. I sat up straighter, leaning over and picking it up to examine it in the early morning light.

“Don’t mess with shit like that, Frankie,” Gerard warned, raising an eyebrow and lowering my wrist until I put the gun back onto the floor.

“What happened here?”

“Death. Murder. He was a Father and a Husband, poor guy. Feel sorry for his kid, you must know how that feels, right Frank?” I nodded slowly. “How’d it happen?”

“W-what?”

“How did your father die?”

“U-Uh…Car accident,”

Gerard just shock is head slowly, a dark and disappointed expression on his face. It was just as I went to raise one of my eyebrows that I noticed a sharp pain in my forehead, ripping slowly down through my skin. “Wrong answer, Frank,” Gerard said firmly as I lifted my hand to clutch my wet forehead. “Try again,”

“C-Cancer?” I asked, more than answered, the pain spreading across my forehead once more, my eyes becoming lazy as the pain completely over-took me.“Drowning!” I screamed, just making up different ways in which someone could die, that would maybe get me out of having to admit the truth, admit who I really am. Something that I’m not only not allowed to do, but I’m also far too terrified to do!

“You’re lying to me, Frankie. You’re lying. I know you are,” his voice mocks as pain consumes me. “What’s your name, Frankie? Tell me your name,”

The wet on my forehead began to dribble and run down my face, invading my eyes, blurring my vision. All I could see was red, thick, sticky red all over me.

Crimson, falling onto the floor in almost tidal waves, splattering across Gerard's porcelain cheeks as he sat, unaffected by the fact my forehead had practically exploded right in front of him and the fact I was screaming in complete agony, he just kept that stony and disappointed expression on his features.

I fell to the floor, screaming out, why, oh why was this happening to me? What was happening and how do I make it stop?

* * *

A hammer, and a “Court, please come to order,” sounded out across the room. My eyes were closed, my head resting on a cherry-wood desk in front of me.

“I call the witness to the stand,” a low male voice said, pointing an almost accusing finger at me.

I stand, and walk sheepishly across the room, my hand instinctively running across my forehead where I feel bumps of curled skin that shouldn’t be there, but the wounds have to cover up somehow.

“Guilty!” The judge cries, before I even open my mouth to speak. The jury jumps up, yelling things at me in a tongue I do not recognize, everyone wants me locked away, but what am I guilty of?

That same rotting hand curled around my shoulder, the stench finding my nostrils once more. “You did this son, it’s all your fault,” he spat at me, raising his voice. “Police, police, arrest this boy for my murder, lock him away, never let him see daylight, the same fate I must suffer,”

“No!” I cried. “No, I didn’t do it!”

“Liar!” The judge pointed accusingly at me.

“It wasn’t me!” I screamed once more, trying my hardest once more to resist the meaty hands pulling at me. I knew their faces, I’d seen them before. They’d killed my father.

“Your finger prints were on the gun, there was nothing I could do,” Gerard said from above me, smiling cruelly. “I told you not to mess with shit like that,”

Once again, I’m falling and crying and screaming and sobbing, flailing my arms and throwing my body around just to grasp some control of this nightmare, this horrible, horrible nightmare that’s slowly devouring me, destroying me, eating me alive from the inside out, like the maggots are doing to my father…

I sit up, with a yell and a scream, my eyes darting over to the mirror opposite my bed, where I see scars. I see the scars I’d felt in the court-room, four neat cut letters across my forehead.

L-I-A-R.

I scream, and grab the cup of water that’s been placed next to my bed, throwing it across the room at the mirror causing it to shatter into several smaller pieces all showing my lying reflection as they fall.

I scream again, clawing at my forehead just to remove the letters, just to make them go away.

“Anthony?” A shrill voice says, a brighter light filling my vision as I claw and scream and cry and break.

Because I’m feeling so broken now, so torn and so alone. There’s no-one for me anymore when I’m not the same person that I was a week ago. “Anthony? What are you doing?!” The voice sounds once more as arms encircle me, and all I can think is the blue, the green the rotting of flesh and the smell of death.

“No!” I cry, resisting until I see my mother’s face, concerned and watery eyes filling my own as I continue to claw at my face, crying and screaming.

“Get it off,” I sob. “Make it go away,”

“Frank, baby, there’s nothing there,” My mother chokes out as I continue to claw. She tries to rip my hands away from my face, concerned at the damage I’m causing, but I just can’t stop, I’m a liar, I’m a liar, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.

“What’s your fault?” My mother tries to ask, but I’m just so much a wreck that even if I could hear her, I wouldn’t be able to form a coherent enough answer.

I’m still crying, I’m still resisting, I’m still clawing. The pain, oh the pain. The stench of death, the blue and green and purple. The rotting flesh and the maggots. You’re lying to me Frankie, it’s all your fault Anthony.

What’s your name Frank, what’s your name?

Your finger prints on the gun, nothing he could do.

You’re a liar. You’re a liar.