Only The Stains Remain by Ross Jeffery

Author:Ross Jeffery [Jeffery, Ross]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cemetery Gates Media
Published: 2021-07-20T04:00:00+00:00

“What you playing at, Jude?” Uncle Dwight’s voice pulled me from my stillness.

I was standing before him. I glanced down at the jerrycan of petrol in my hand before I peered up and saw him before me.

“You show up at my house, invite me outside – then thwack me over the head with a fucking crowbar? Are you mad boy? I ain’t seen you in years, then you turn up and do something stupid like that – you still sore about your brother? Or are you hankering to party like we used to?” Dwight licks at his bucked teeth and sniggers at me. “Uncle Dwighty’s missed you, boy!”

I placed the jerrycan on the floor. Dwight watched my movements from his seated position. His eyes darted around the clearing, looking for a way out or some kind of weapon. But there’s no way out, and no weapon he’ll be able to use.

I shuffled forward and circled his forlorn form. The fence post I crudely hammered into the ground wouldn’t budge, I was sure of it. I’d buried it five-foot-deep, the other five foot sticking out from the forest floor like a transplanted tree.

I crouched down behind him. The miasma of cigarettes, whiskey, and body odour were fetid that close to him, it combined to smell like rot.

I reached out my hand and grabbed at the handcuffs, lifting them up. His body rocked forward as I craned his arms higher and higher. I jangled them before letting them fall back down again; Dwight let out a groan of discomfort.

I glanced down at my branded arm, taking in the ruin on my skin.

I leaned towards his head. That close to his ear, I noticed the blood from the head wound I’d inflicted. It’d stopped bleeding, but formed a rusty path from his scalp which snaked down his neck all the way to his bloodstained shirt.

“Every day, I see the evidence of your betrayal etched on my skin. The blueprints of your torture, deception, and abuse. What you didn’t realise, Dwight, is that you made this boy a man far too soon, and I’ve been planning your penance and my revenge for a long, long time – I’ve been thinking about this moment every day since that first welt bloomed on my skin.”

Dwight pulled his head away from my whispering lips and his restraints jangled.

“You let me go. Now. And if you do, I promise I won’t tell your uncles or your father what an idiot you’ve been. You go your way, and I’ll go mine. We’ll let bygones be bygones.” Dwight’s voice had an air of pleading to it, but he was too proud to beg. Yet.

“Pleading ain’t gunna work, Dwight. It certainly didn’t work for me, did it? I begged you to stop, so many times that I lost count, but luckily for you, I’ve a tally-chart right here…” I moved around to stand in front of him and rolled up my sleeve, exposing the lengths that he’d gone to seal my silence.

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