Mum's always had the worst taste in men. My dad walked out on us when I was 10, and she ended up with one pathetic git of a loser after another.
Don was the worst as far as I was concerned. He stuck around for almost 5 years. He's the reason I ended up leaving home. He was a complete arsehole bastard.
Fancied himself a hard biker, even though he was just a clerk in Tesco. All he had was a small Suzuki. I bet that's not the only thing he had that was small.
I hated him.
We never got on. When he had a bad day at work, or after more than a few drinks, his temper would come out and so would his belt.
The worst was the summer when I was 14. Mum had to go up north for a bit to stay with her sister who was preggers and about to drop another brat. That left me alone with Don, and I knew that it wasn't going to be fun.
It was Friday night. He'd gone round to the local with some of his mates from work, and I stayed home playing video games.
He was drunk when he came in. Big surprise.
I looked up from the screen to see him standing at the door to my room. I hadn't heard him come in. I'd been too busy trying to save the planet from alien invaders. I could see that he was in a bad mood.
He had a mean look on his face. "Where'd you put them- you little _s_h_i_t_?" he snarled at me.
"What?" I just gave him a dirty look, shrugged and went back to the game.
He walked over and yanked me out of the chair by my shirt collar. His face was only inches away from mine and I could smell the beer and tobacco odour on his breath. He stank.
"My Oakleys- I couldn't find them anywhere tonight."
I resisted the urge to be a smartarse and ask him why he needed sunglasses when it was dark. I knew from past painful experience that it wasn't a good idea to mouth off at him when he was pissed.
"You're nothing but a bloody liar- I know you nicked'em and I want them back-now," he said, slurring the words.
I was insulted and angry. I took a swing at him. Big mistake.
"Oh sod off, you arsehole." I managed to connect with his shoulder.
He staggered but recovered, and then slapped me hard enough across the face to knock me down and bring tears to my eyes. "You'll pay for that one," he snarled. "When I get through with you you'll wish you'd never been born."
He unbuckled his belt. "Get your jeans off-now."
I wiped the tears out of my eyes and glared at him.
"No _f_u_c_k_ing way-you sodding perv." I wasn't about to take my clothes off in front of him. He grabbed me and reached for my fly. I tried to fight him and he yanked my right arm and twisted it behind my back until I screamed.
He roughly pulled off my jeans and y-fronts and threw me half naked and face down on my bed. Then he walked over to my desk and turned the radio up to top volume. That scared me.
I felt the familiar burning pain as the belt cracked across my bum, but I gritted my teeth. I promised myself I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of hearing me cry out.
He repeatedly lashed the belt with all his strength across my arse and thighs, pausing just long enough between strokes for each one to produce fresh, burning pain. It hurt like hell. I bit my lip to keep from screaming and he kept whipping me. He aimed the belt at the crease where my bum meets my thighs and I started crying. He wouldn't stop-just kept cracking that belt over and over, and the pain became so intense that I couldn't help it. I started to scream.
He kept laying that belt across my thighs and I started kicking and twisting and trying to get up. He punched me hard in the side, and it almost took my breath away. I lay there crying. And then it seemed to be over. He walked out of the room and I felt a sense of relief. That didn't last long. He came back in a few minutes with some rope. He raised my arms above my head and tied my wrists to the metal headboard. By this time I was so terrified that I couldn't speak. When he finished tying me to the bed, the whipping began again- in earnest.
Lash after lash landed on my already burning bum, each new blow producing agonising waves of pain. He moved from one side of the bed to another, to make sure that there wouldn't be a spot on my bottom that wasn't covered with welts.
By this time, I was screaming almost incoherently from the pain. He kept whipping me and I kept begging him to stop, pleading with him --promising that I'd never be any more trouble- just please, no more. And he wouldn't stop.
I had screamed so much that I was starting to go hoarse. My throat hurt too. He started on my thighs again, and began methodically whipping every inch of my 14 year old body up to my entire bum. I was shaking with the pain and sobbing hysterically. At that point, I was just a solid mass of excruciating, burning throbbing nerve endings. I didn't know it was possible to hurt so much.
I don't know how long the beating lasted. It seemed like it went on forever. I'm fairly sure that the only reason he stopped was that his arm got to tired to hit me any more.
He untied my wrists and walked out of my room without saying a word. I couldn't move. I lay there crying. The slightest motion was agonising. I think I lay there for hours, just crying into the pillow and hurting more than I ever had in my entire life.
I could barely walk when I finally staggered into the loo. Each step was excruciating, and I leaned against the wall for support. I couldn't keep from crying out in pain.
I was a scary sight when I looked in the mirror. My eyes were all red and puffy, and snot ran down my nose. My bum and my thighs were the real mess- puffy, swollen, a solid mass of welts and bruises of a variety of colours- red, purple, black and blue. There was dried blood on my bum and my thighs. I cried when I tried to clean it off. My body was so badly bruised and so tender, that even the slightest touch with a soft flannel resulted in pain so bad that I almost became nauseous.
I spent the weekend lying on my stomach in bed. I got up only when I had to piss so badly that I was afraid I'd wet the bed if I waited any longer. I didn't get much sleep. I mostly lay there, crying in pain and thinking how much I hated him and running revenge fantasies through my head.
The worst of the pain lasted for almost a week, and I ate my meals standing up for another fortnight after that. The bruises and welts didn't completely heal for more than a month.
Don was lucky it was summer. If school had been on, and the masters had seen what he'd done to me, I know that he'd have ended up in gaol.
I've never hated anyone the way I hated him. And that weekend, I hated my mum too- for bringing him into our lives, and mostly for not leaving him. She knew that he beat me. I know that she'd heard me scream many times before, when he'd whip me for some minor infraction of his rules or misbehaviour that would leave me so sore I couldn't sit down comfortably for days.
He'd whip me and I'd scream and she did nothing.
About the Oakleys. Turned out that he'd lost those _f_u_c_k_ing sunglasses over at the local. They'd apparently fallen out of his jacket pocket outside the gents. One of his mates had picked them up and forgotten about it until Monday at work, when he gave them back.
I left home for good when I was 17.