Darkness at the Edge of a Dream

I went to sleep and slept for most of the day. I woke up that evening and looked outside. I guess, I was expecting that at any second, Buck's Mustang would come roaring up the block and he'd get out and smile and take me in his arms and this nightmare would be over. I did see the paper boy playing on the street with some of his friends. I called him and the little bastard ran off.

"Where's my paper?" I screamed. I went back inside the house and turned the TV on and got the shock of my life. I tuned on the local news station and found out that we were the biggest story in town. They brought back the story of Steven's disappearance from school fifteen years ago and then segued into a new story. The second story gave the answers to the mysterious disappearance. I was painted as some kind of monster. Apparently the story had been picked up by the national press as well.

Then I found out something I didn't know. Buck and Steven had gone back to the town that Steven had been held in for all of those years. Steven had turned himself in. Buck had gotten him a really good lawyer. Apparently, the police in that town had dug up Cletus' body and after hearing Steven talk about the years of imprisonment and abuse had investigated the church. What they found in the church was like something out of a nightmare. There were all kinds of manacles and chains and other things on the basement of the small town church. Several of the items had Steven's blood or DNA on them. What he had gone through over the years had to have been hell. When I saw that part of the story, I knew that I was in trouble.

Over the next few days, I watched developments in the story and tried to find myself a good lawyer to handle my divorce case. Reporters started showing up on my doorstep asking for interviews or my side of the story. I had nothing to say. Once I did get a lawyer, he told me that if I wanted a good divorce settlement, I should avoid talking to the reporters. He told me that all of the publicity was going to make it really difficult for a judge to see me as a sympathetic figure, but the state guidelines would make sure that I got a fair settlement. I reminded him that I didn't want settlement, I just needed him to delay things for as long as possible.

"As soon as Steven goes to jail for murdering Cletus, Buck and I will have a shot," I said.

Over the next two weeks I got several setbacks. The first was that the prosecutor down south, ruled Steven murdering his father as being a justifiable homicide. To tell you the truth,I was surprised that the town didn't take Cletus, corpse and hang it in the town square. Once they investigated things and found out everything that Cletus had been doing, Steven morphed from being a tragic victim to some kind of hero. A lot of Cletus' doings came to light, including his rampant stealing from the town and the church. Cletus had also been sleeping with several of the unattached women in the town and a couple of married ones as well.

Steven was given a year on probation, to be served here in our town and two years of counseling. When my part of everything had come out, it told me why no one, not even my closest friends and colleagues had been calling me. Everyone considered Cletus and I to be equally guilty and with Cletus dead, I got all of the flack. My paperboy's parents had made him stop delivering to me. They apparently thought so badly of me that they didn't even want me to pay for the papers he'd already given me. Things are really bad when people won't accept money from you.

I was put on an indefinite, unpaid leave from school. It was a subtle way of getting rid of me without having to fire me. The reason cited was an abundance of teachers. Every time I left the house, I was followed by reporters.

About a month after the whole thing started, a familiar car pulled up in my driveway. That gum chewing blond process server was back. Since I hadn't heard from Buck since the whole thing started, I was dry eager for any kind of news from him. She still cracked her gum, but she looked at me as if I was somehow dirty. The first time I had met her she had identified me and then handed me my divorce papers. This time, she had identified me and then she just put the papers on the table by the door. The little bitch was wearing rubber gloves, like she thought she would catch something from incidental contact with me.

Buck was suing me for mental cruelty. I called my lawyer then. He too wondered why Buck hadn't simply added that to the divorce petition. Then the other shoe dropped. The DA was charging me with a bunch of other things including, endangering a minor. I suspected that he was pissed about losing out on the kidnapping charges so he was looking to use anything he could to put me behind bars. I called the shark lawyer back, but he refused to represent me again. He told me that my case was too public and that there was simply too much sentiment against me. Even if he won, he'd end up losing business because the hit to his public reputation would be too hard.

As usual, a lawyer was more concerned with his career and his ability to drum up business than in seeing that justice was done.

On TV I saw that Buck and Steven were back in town. Steven would be serving his probation here and he'd be assigned to a facility just outside of town for his counseling. I picked up the phone and tried calling him again. It went to voice mail.

I saw all of my hopes for a great life evaporate. My salary as a teacher, had been mostly wasted. I hadn't put much away because I had always counted on Buck's pension along with our investments to support us in our old age.

I also noticed that none of my friends and neighbors had called or come by. Even if I managed to hold onto Buck, we might have to move to another town. I realized again that Steven was the source of all of my problems.

* * * * * *

Steven

I never expected things to go this far. I guess I expected...I wanted to bring out HER part in making my life the way it was. I never expected my Dad to still want to be my Dad. I mean, I remember that we had always been close. But that had been a lifetime and a nightmarish lifetime ago. We'd spent five years together and three times that amount of time apart. Yet strangely, he HAD remembered those times as much as I did. And they seemed to mean as much to him as they had to me.

Even stranger was the fact that SHE, my supposed mother, hadn't recognized me at all. I had gotten right up in her face and spoken to her for almost an hour and she never recognized me. But as soon as he took one look at me, he'd known.

Our first days together were spent catching up. I had to tell him abut all of the things that I'd gone through. I filled him on on every detail from the day that I was taken until my escape. I had to tell him about the terrible things that Cletus, I couldn't call him my father, had done to me.

We also had to go into those things in detail for the DA. They seemed to want to talk about sexual things and I had nothing to tell them. There had been no sex things that I was involved in. But Cletus had a fascination with humiliating me and others. He had also often locked me up in chains in that basement until he felt like letting me go. There had been times when he would leave me shackled to the wall in the basement of the church for days on end. I would wallow in my own shit and piss, without being fed until I nearly starved to death.

I had learned early on that if I screamed or cried out the punishment was worse. Cletus also like to take a razor and make very delicate little cuts on my arms legs or back and then make me run or do jumping jacks until I began to sweat. Then the sweat would seep into the wounds and make them sting even more.

I tried to block a lot of the things that Cletus had done to me out and talking about them only seemed to make the pain worse.

Dad told me about what happened to him after I left too. I guess that what happened to me was always on his mind. For some reason he never got over losing me. He's spent the past fifteen years looking at every kid he saw and hoping. The fact that the two of them nearly got a divorce didn't surprise me. They simply didn't belong together. She considered me a mistake. For the first five years she was able to palm me off on Dad, but with the DNA testing coming up, she knew the jig was up.

The only options she had were to give me up, or give up Dad, so I had to go. The thing that surprises me the most is how trusting dad is. I mean that bitch has been cheating on him since before I was born and she's still doing it today. He's one of the smartest people I've ever met when it comes to things like math and book smarts, but he's just too damned trusting.

One of the things I've learned just from watching people is that people tend to project their own characteristics to everyone. In other words, cheaters think that everyone else is cheating so they don't trust anyone. But unfortunately honest people assume that everyone is honest so they get taken advantage of...a lot.

I remember very early on when Cletus would just sit there and listen to me crying. He would laugh at me. Over time I began to talk back to him. "My mommy and Daddy will find me," I'd say. And he would just laugh.

Finally, he just got tired of the game and he told me. "Your mother was the one who gave you away, dumb ass," he said. "You were just in her way. She hates you."

"My Daddy, will find me," I retorted.

He just smiled and in his deepest voice, said, "I AM your father." He would smile and ask me if he sounded like Darth Vader, but I didn't know who the hell Darth Vader was. At first I didn't believe him. I was sure that my parents loved me and he was just pulling my chain. But later on he showed me a few pictures of himself and my mother. In some of the pictures they were kissing.

I know that my Dad, Buck, loves her. He loves her a lot. So his decision to take my side over hers, is truly amazing. Like my hero, Captain America, he seems to do the right thing no matter what it costs him.

And I can see the cost. I see the pain in his face every day. It worsens every time he pulls out his tiny mobile phone and sees that it's her calling him. I wish she would just leave him alone. Hasn't she caused him enough pain?

Knowing him, I was almost expecting it the day after we left her, when he said that he had to go back to Arkansas. He said it was the right thing to do and everything would be alright. We hired a couple of very good lawyers, but instead of driving down there, we flew in a plane.

Dad and the lawyers stayed with me nearly the entire time, while I told my story to a couple of police officers and then to the local District Attorney.

The mayor of the town and several members of the city counsel were also called in. Then several high ranking members of the church were brought in. I recognized all of them and told them about themselves and their families. I even told a couple of them about Cletus and their wives.

That ignited an uproar and the women were brought in. At first the women claimed it had never happened, but when I recounted days and specific incidents, they confessed. Then I told them about the ways that Cletus had stolen money from both the women and the church itself. They were all pissed. At about that time they were all upset and wanted to know why they had never seen or heard of me. I explained all of that and told them about Cletus' habit of keeping me under wraps and chained in the basement when people were present. A couple of cops and the Mayor left then. They came back a few hours later. Even some of the men were crying. They spoke to the DA about what can best be describes as Cletus' dungeon in the basement of the church.

They took blood samples from me, but it took a couple of days for them to come back with the results, even though the state crime lab prioritized the study. They also dug up Cletus' body. They found it exactly where I told them they would.

DNA testing revealed that I was in fact Cletus' biological son, which only made him seem even more monstrous. After several days of talking and debating. What I did to Cletus was ruled justifiable under the circumstances. They were concerned about my lack of a formal education and my emotional stability. It was determined that probation and a stay in a mental health facility was inidicated. They even went along with the idea of having me serve it back at home with my dad.

I think that in some ways, they wanted to sweep the whole incident under the rug and make it go away. They were embarrassed for a number of reasons. The first was because Cletus had managed to move into town and fool the shit out of everyone there. He had fucked their women, stole their money and made fools out of all of them including the Mayor, the chief of Police and some of the town's leading citizens. But more than anything else, looking at me brought out a profound sense of guilt in them. They all considered themselves to be good Christians and smart alert individuals and yet a child was kidnapped, and tortured right under their noses.

I really didn't care about their guilt. I had my own. My Dad was putting up a brave front, but emotionally, he was suffering. He loved HER. And he was having a rough time being away from her no matter what she had done.

The two of us had to be each other's support system while we went through it. And she didn't just go away gracefully either. She fought the divorce as hard as she could. She asked for counseling. She claimed that she had a sex addiction. She even pointed out the fact that she had chosen even fifteen years ago to give up her own child rather than lose my dad. The judge didn't buy any of it. He gave Dad the divorce and let Dad keep the house and the majority of their assets. He did it in an unusual way. He started out by awarding them equal shares of their assets. Then he awarded dad penalty amounts for all of the trials and tribulations he's gone through.

He also suggested to dad's attorneys that in light of the sheer amount of time that she's been cheating on him, Dad could probably have filed for an annulment and not had to give up anything. Another good thing was the fact that since they both had good jobs in the careers that they chose, Dad didn't have to pay much in alimony. The judge ordered dad to pay her five dollars a week for two years.

I thought she would drop dead in the court room. Dad walked out of there a free man and SHE have me the evil eye. A few weeks later, Dad won the civil suit for mental cruelty because of what he went through after the kidnapping. Her lawyer tried to claim that Dad had no parental rights, but his lawyers told the jury that Dad had been with me since I was first born. He had been in the delivery room. He had caught me as I emerged and had cut the umbilical cord himself. He, had actually seen me and touched me before SHE had. She in her deception had allowed us to bond and then deceived dad and the whole town by claiming that I had been kidnapped, when she herself had given me to Cletus. They had been in and out of counseling for years when she could have simply confessed at any moment.

Lastly they brought up all of the town's resources including the police department and all of the volunteers who had tired to locate me, when she had given Cletus time to get me several states away before even mentioning that I was missing.

She was ordered to pay Dad a lot of money. Since, I haven't been in school in a very long time, I don 't really know numbers, but it was a lot more than she's going to be able to pay. She also has to pay the town back. She started cursing and screaming right in the courtroom.

The straw that broke her camel's back though, came two weeks later. The DA was able to get a conviction on child endangerment and as an accessory on several other minor charges. The bad thing was that he still couldn't get her on anything major. But the fact that she was facing jail time did save his job and his ass, because the people on town wanted HER behind bars. She ended up getting two to five years. With good behavior she would be out in eighteen months. She hissed and kicked and spat as they tried to take her away.

The judge had originally given her a few days to get her affairs in order before being remanded into custody. But with her tantrum after the sentencing, they took her to prison immediately. A week later I reported to the Mental Health Center.

The MHC was like a big highschool. The section that I was in catered to young adults, mostly college students with addiction problems. Basically what I did there was take classes towards helping me in three ways. The first was to adjust to society and the changes in daily life that I'd missed. The second was emotional counseling to help me deal with what had happened to me and my feelings about my mother and women in general. That part was necessary because I really didn't have a very high opinion of women. Who could blame me? Most of the women I came into contact with had been bad.

The last thing the MHC did was to help me learn enough to get my GED so I could go to a college or a trade school and get my life together. I worked hard and after six months there they cut back on the counseling and allowed me to go home. I still had to report every day for classes, until I was able to take the test and get my GED but I had the beginnings of normalcy in my life.

Dad, stepped right back into his place. We still did all of the things I'd loved growing up. Instead of reading the comic books though we went and saw all of the comic book movies. I loved the Captain America movie and the Avengers movie too. I waited with baited breath for Captain America the winter soldier. We went to ball games and joined a bowling league. We went camping and did so many things that I was constantly amazed by.

Dad didn't cut back on making me responsible though. He called in a favor from a friend and got me a job. Even going to school every day and my counseling session, I had to go to work six days a week. I worked three or four hours a day during the week and eight hours on Saturday at a local seven/ eleven. That was where I met Brenda. From the moment I saw her I knew she was different. We clicked immediately.

Before too long, she asked me out on a date. After several dates, we became an item. Then Dad really surprised me with an older, used car of my own. Naturally, it was a Mustang. And except for Brenda, that car was the light of my life.

My nightmare existence had morphed into the life of my dreams. The only thing lacking was Dad. He was putting up a brave front and he enjoyed the time we spent together, but the loneliness was killing him. I caught him several times looking at HER pictures. I wondered how she could have treated someone who loved her that much, so cruelly.

But then, when I least expected it, from a source that I never prepared for help arrived.

* * * * * *

Buck

Steven was doing fine. He was doing better than I had hoped for in fact. What I wanted for him, was that he would have a life that was as rich as he'd have had if none of what happened to him had occurred. I had a lot to make up for. And to be truthful, I really believed that a lot of what had happened to him was my fault. I had put my trust in a woman, who as much as I loved her, hadn't been worth it.

None of what happened was Steven's fault. Both of us were the victims of Molly's machinations and lust.

But I was determined that he would come out of it whole and healthy. Things were looking good. He was advancing swiftly in his studies. We expecedt him to get his GED in six months and then he could go to college. He could start out at a junior college and in two years transfer to a regular university. He had a job, a girlfriend and his first Mustang. Things were going well. But then I got a call from the MHC.