“It’s not like that, old man,” I tried to argue.
“Sure it is.”
“It’s not!” I threw my beer with all my force, shattering it against the wall.
Old Greg didn’t flinch.
“Name one,” he finally spoke.
“Excuse me?”
“Didn’t stutter, boy. If you ever gave a shit about any of the girls who came before her, why don’t you name one. Name one of your conquests. And don’t make up a name – I’ll know if you’re lying to me.”
I sat there, seething with anger.
Holy fuck.
He’s right.
Old Greg’s face slowly, surely contorted into a wide grin. “You can’t. You can’t name one fucking girl that you’ve coerced into that viper pit of a bed, can you?”
No. He can’t be right.
“You fuck and forget. My granddaughter wasn’t the first. There have been so many. And you think she’s the one with a goddamn memory problem?”
A parade of faces flew through my head.
Featureless husks.
I couldn’t remember their details.
Dozens of them.
No… It was more than that.
Old Greg stood up from his chair, confident in his complete victory over me. He coughed for a second, and then slid his beer – nothing but dregs now – over to me.
“This is what you are, punk. You’re the filth at the bottom of the bottle. You take what you believe belongs to you, and you distort it. You make it lesser. I can see it plain as day across your face. That is your legacy. You think I want my granddaughter to remember a sack of shit like you? You don’t even know her name.”
“Her name is Angel.”
“Oh yeah?” Old Greg toothily snarled. “Angel Who?”
I stared deep into the next table over. I knew her name… It was Angel… Angel………. Fuck.
He’s right, I repeated to myself.
This is who I am.
I’m going to hurt her no matter what I do.
Old Greg brushed up the shattered beer, dropping it into the garbage. He poured himself a glass of water, gulping it down thirstily before finally turning back to me.
“215 Wilde Grove Drive. Beaten up old house, green, tucked away behind the trees. Dirt driveway. If you pass the tree with the old tire swing, you’ve gone too far.”
I looked at him incoherently.
“She ain’t here, which means she’s there. It’s the only other place she knows.”
“Why are you…why are you helping me?”
Old Greg leered close to me, his rotting breath invading my nostrils.
“Because I’m a dying old man, you sack of shit. Because sometimes – just sometimes – people change. You’ve already gone down swinging for her sake, so I think you have the capacity for that. If you do…then you’re my best chance at keeping that girl happy and safe.”
I stood up from the table, coming to terms with the insights that this arrogant geezer had given me.
I hated them.
I hated him.
But as much as I hated to admit it, the old decrepit fucker in this ramshackle little bar was right.
“But that ain’t the whole reason.”
I turned to him, catching his cold and calculating eyes.
“If she’s there…Angel is in danger.”
30
Angel
I’m not sure how long my stepfather had been abusing me. The time prior to the accident was a complete blur, and probably always would be. When I first saw Roger in my hospital room afterwards, I didn’t know who he was…
…But I knew that I was very afraid.
I was high on morphine the first night he came to my bedside, my mind firmly half in and half out of this world. It would be weeks before I could talk, and months before I’d take my first walk across the hospital room. Maybe he thought I was damaged forever… Maybe he thought I wouldn’t remember, or that I didn’t realize what was happening to me. The sick fuck thought he could get away with it.
The bastard did what evil men always do.
He took advantage.
Thank god that I was in a moderately monitored hospital room. Nurses were in and out, keeping a lazy eye on me but never around enough to rattle his confidence. Still, I knew that if I’d gone into outpatient care at home, he probably would have been far more dangerous.
But that still didn’t stop him from doing what he could get away with. He saw me. He sometimes took pictures of me. He touched me, splintering my fragile, drugged mind into shattered, dirty pieces.
My memories didn’t ever really come back, and I know it’s because of him. My bastard stepfather descended upon me while my brain was trying to put everything back together. If I hadn’t been so focused on forgetting what he was doing to me, maybe I would have pulled my former life back... but while the memories were gone, so too were most of the nights that he came to visit me, his mind sick with desire.