The Worm That Turned : Part II
Read Time:3 Minute, 48 Second
The mother was known as ‘The Dragon’
All his friends….all?…his five friends called her that as he called her that. They had no idea why. They’d never seen her. He called her ‘The Dragon’ so they called her ‘The Dragon’
Dragon’s tend to be slayed in legend. Eventually.
She was approaching him, fists clenched. A beating was in the offing.
The little plastic Subbuteo football had landed in her lovingly made trifle.
He stared wide eyed at her. Terror was in every fabric of his being.
His memory flashed back.
Two fractured skulls. Both arms broken several times in several places. His friends at school asking him where the bruises had come from. The Physical Education Teacher refusing to even look at him in the changing room in case another boy had said “Sir! He’s got bruises!”
The 70’s. The decade that fashion forgot. The decade that hadn’t even began to comprehend what human beings could do to each other.
As ‘The Dragon’ approached the boy remembered MacTavish.
MacTavish was a dog. A West Highland White Terrier. A small dog. A dog with the greatest heart of any dog in history.
His grandparents had bought him the dog. It was already 1 year old and house trained.
The boy knew his grandparents had bought him the dog because they loved him and knew he wanted a dog.
The boy had no idea they had bought him the dog in the same way they bought him Subbuteo Table Football teams and all the toys he could ever want.
The boy had no idea what ‘guilt’ meant. Guilt was an adult concept.
He walked the dog. Within a few days he took off the lead and the dog didn’t run away. It stayed by his side always. It slept in his room always – usually laying across his legs.
The Dragon would open his bedroom door in the morning as she had always done.
Before MacTavish she would grab him by the hair and drag him out of bed and hit him around the head and say “Get washed you little bastard”. That was the norm.
MacTavish would growl at The Dragon.
She would open the bedroom door and stay there. She would say “Get washed you little bastard” but she wouldn’t enter the room anymore. She wouldn’t grab his hair anymore. She wouldn’t hit him and hurt him anymore.
MacTavish would growl.
12 months. One whole year. A lifetime to a child. For a lifetime The Dragon never came near him. MacTavish saw to that. The Grandparents had given him MacTavish. The Dragon daren’t hurt MacTavish.
And then she did. A year was more than The Dragon could take.
The boy was in the bath. He was 11 years old.
MacTavish was lying by the bath.
The Dragon came into the bathroom with a very large stick. A tree branch. She raised the branch and hit MacTavish. He whimpered as he bit her.
The Dragon locked the naked boy in his bedroom.
A while later she unlocked the bedroom and dragged him by the hair into the garage and locked him inside. He was naked and shivering with cold and frightened.
He peeped through the cracks in the garage wooden door.
MacTavish was tied to the garden fence.
Then the boy heard the sound of a car. A Cortina Estate car. The Dragons car.
The car ran over MacTavish and the boy screamed through the cracks of the garage door.
The car ran over MacTavish again and again and again and again.
MacTavish howled….and then…he stopped howling.
The boy howled…he didn’t stop.
The Dragon got out of the car. The boy watched through the cracks of the garage door.
The Dragon kicked the dead form of MacTavish The West Highland Terrier.
The Dragon looked back towards the garage door and smiled.
She put her hand down to the dog to sweep him up and remove him from her life.
The car had driven over him backwards and forwards 4 times.
As her hands went down to pick up the seemingly lifeless form MacTavish bit her on her hand. His jaws locked and she screamed.
MacTavish knew. With his dying breath he knew.
This is MacTavish. A heart bigger than life itself.
As The Dragon approached the boy, fists clenched and raised, he knew it had to be….now or never….
Later and let’s be careful out there…
As Bowie once sang on Ziggy…It ain’t easy…but it is cathartic….
x
…he’s never stopped howling….so it goes
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Damn, 4D. What a very sad part of your life.
The Dragon was quite a petty bitchy sub-human wasn’t she?
No one should have to experience crap like that. Nobody!
Someone once said “That person did give me a great gift. They showed me how NOT to raise my children.”
Sometimes that is enough…4D….sometimes that is enough.
You and I had the same mother apparently 4d, only I managed to get a better mom. We grow, we learn and we try not to do it to anyone else in life. So terrible and sad for your little Mac and the little boy that had to see his little Mac being murdered in front of him. WOW, I didn’t think I could use the word hate on anyone else, other than the dead bio mom, I found another use for it. The Dragon is someone I would hate and not miss any sleep over doing so.
fourdinners,
I’m so sorry for what the Dragon did. I am deeply hurt by what happened to MacTavish yet proud of what a wonderful brave dog he was and happy that the knowledge of that wonderful dog may have helped the boy become the good man he is.
God bless the memory of that dog, God bless that boy who became a man.
Since I read that a dog is hurt in this post I cannot read it. Too much critter suffering in the world.
Life’s a bitch Henny…you move on and upwards or you stop.
Never stop being you.
That’s all you can do.
One day you shuffle off and few remember you.
I guess the thing is…remember those you should whilst you can.
It’s the least they deserve.
The boy never forgot Mac and never will as long as there’s a breath in his body.
He told me so.
Nite America x
I almost couldn’t finish reading this when you introduced the dog, because I knew something very bad was going to happen.
Words cannot describe how angry I am on your behalf- at the behalf of poor MacTavish. If I were a religious person I would say that his brave, angelic little soul is waiting for the Dragon to die so he could finish the fight.
That horrible, horrible woman!
It is a good thing for her that I do not live closer.