Filthy Daddy

It was not long after eleven on Friday night. I'd just finished the washing up, changed out of my work clothes into pyjamas, and sunk gratefully into the sofa. It had been a long day at work, and a rough commute home. True, I could have left the dishes till the next morning and turned in early, but what can I say: habit of a lifetime.

And truthfully, I was a bit glad to have an excuse to delay bed. You see, my daughter Della was out. She'd been shut in the bathroom when I got in, no doubt doing hair and makeup and all that, and hadn't emerged for an hour. At that point, though this was the first I'd seen her since she arrived, she was straight out of the door without two words. Oh, all right: with exactly two words, "Bye, Dad!" shouted from the hall and punctuated by the front door slamming. I barely caught a glimpse of the back of her head. I opened my mouth to say "Have fun!" but too late: Della was gone.

Now don't get me wrong. Me and Della had what I thought was a pretty good relationship. Every time Jim at the office gets into moaning on and on about his girls (twin fourteen-year-olds, poor bastard!) and how they treat him as a combination bank and taxi service, I thank my stars for Della. We'd gone through rough times when she was a little kid; divorce is hard on a pre-teen, especially an only child. But she'd never turned bitter towards me, which is more than I can say for my ex.

The point is, things had always been easy-going and affectionate between me and Della. The proof? She's legally an adult now, and no one can make her stick to the custody split that the judge ordered way back when. But she was still coming by, regular as clockwork, to spend each weekend with her old man.

Are you bored yet?

I mean, it's all pretty tedious, right? There's got to be a million guys with mostly OK family lives who'd tell you the exact same story. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the Extra-Regular, No-Frills, Middle-Aged Divorced Dad. But I've got to share just how aggressively normal my thoughts on life were that Friday, because that was the last untainted, everyday, normal bit of thinking I ever did.

But where was I? Della, ah, Della! I think that, in part, she kept on spending the weekends because things with her mother had gotten a bit strained. Della never complained, though. She just showed up after school every Friday. Saturday and Sunday would be for her homework, but Friday night was time to relax. Now that she was that bit older, most weeks that meant a night on the town with her friends. I'd no objection. Weren't we all doing the same at that age? I did miss the boardgame nights and DVD marathons we'd had when she was younger, but I had quickly reconciled myself to her being all grown up. My Friday night comforts now were the sofa; one cushion under my head and my aching feet resting on another; the contents of the TiVo; and if the urge took me, a dram or two of scotch.

Like I said, nauseatingly unexceptional musings, nauseatingly unexceptional dude. As of her eighteenth, my deal with Della was: no curfew, so long as she never made me regret not setting one. She had to be responsible about getting home safe and sound. Her deal with me was that I was allowed to wait up for her so long as I maintained plausible deniability that that's what I was doing. I didn't expect her back till gone midnight.

So the knock on the door at ten p.m. was unexpected. Loud too - it made me jump almost out of my skin and entirely off the sofa. My mind instantly jumped to dark and fearful possibilities. I didn't even pause to pull on a sweater - I just ran to answer.

"Mr. Dalton?" said the man at the door.

Our name's not Dalton. I guess Della gave this policeman a fake surname. Smart girl. Now I'm telling this, though... was that guy actually police? I don't think he was in uniform, and the saloon parked on the drive was no police car. No blue-and-red lights, no sirens, and no partner - don't the cops always come in pairs? Yet somehow, I just got such a strong sense of POLICE off him. I mean, sure the man was a bit hard to focus on. It's hard to place a guy when, even when you're staring right at him, you can't get a decent look. Some people just aren't easy to remember, I suppose. Whatever the case, it was like my mind kept sliding away from his appearance. I do recall he wore a hat - unless he was holding it in his hand? Yes, it was in his hand. Or maybe that was his phone he was holding. Now I think, definitely a phone. It was just tricky to hold my eyes on him when they were getting drawn to that police/not-police car, and to a slight figure I could make out sitting in the back seat...

"I've brought Della home," the man was saying. "I was at the bar where - well. Anyway, she's a bit..."

"Della?" I croaked. The headlights of a passing van briefly illuminated the inside of the patrol car, and my stomach dropped. It was Della back there all right, though all I saw in that moment was a small pale face amid her now badly mussed-up dark, wavy hair. Was that fear on her face, or confusion, or misery? I couldn't tell. I started forward.

"She's in a bad way," said the man, "or at least, she was when I pulled her out of there." I turned sharply back to him. Weirdly, it almost felt as though I'd not noticed him till just that second. For some reason my eyes had begun to water a bit. "I'm afraid, Mr. Dalton," he continued, "that Della weas out of control, behaving - ahem - very badly with one of the young men."

"Young men?" (Why was it so hard to follow his meaning?)

"Yes, the young lads at the bar. I think they were taking, ah, advantage of her. Certainly she was putting it all out there on offer - "

Della? I thought. It didn't add up. What had happened to our deal, the whole adult responsibility thing?

" - or, at least, she was putting it all on offer after I had... that is, she seemed to be opening up to, well, never mind. To make a long story, er, shorter, I thought it was past time she was taken home, and as I was available for the task... May I ask, are you angry with her?"

"Angry?" This conversation was making no sense to me. An overriding concern had blown up and filled my mind. I set off along the drive. "Della!" I called. "Are you OK?"

"Wait!" said the man. I came to a dead halt. He walked across to me, and pressed my left hand in a quasi-handshake, soft and moist. Reflexively I pulled my hand away. "I think you'll do better with that adjustment," the man was saying, but he was now almost totally out of focus. And besides, I didn't care any more. As I strode forward again, the car's back door opened and Della half-stepped, half-slid out. She stumbled towards me. The man said something like, "I'll be seeing you both," as he strolled past us, but he just didn't seem important now.

What I was acutely aware of was that my left palm was feeling - well - grimy. Like there was a kind of mucky damp patch on my skin. Do you know that feeling you get when you've touched something filthy, like a cat's litter tray or an oily engine part, and then you're just so incredibly conscious of that hand being dirty that it's almost a physical sensation - and you're holding it stiffly so you don't touch anything with it and spread the dirt - and that consciousness is stuck in your mind till finally you manage to soap it up and rinse it clean? It was that feeling, but turned up times ten. Without me willing it, my four left fingers were already prodding obsessively inwards at that grimy spot on the palm. But I had to push that aside. Because right now I was staring at Della just a few feet from me. She was a total fucking mess.

Della's a classic pale brunette and her wardrobe has always been heavy on the deep colours: navy, dark crimson, all that. And she owns more pairs of black jeans and leggings than I can count. But the way she was dressed now was... so far beyond that. Her get-up was part Goth, part cheap tramp: short black skirt, torn fishnet stockings, a shiny black mesh blouse (worn over a fancy black bra and concealing absolutely none of it). The whole lot was topped off with a black elastic choker and pendant. And those shoes - Christ, those shoes! Shiny black, like patent leather (though surely only cheap plastic); strappy platform heels, higher than a girl of Della's height could possibly walk on stably. Sure enough, she was swaying and staggering even just standing on one spot.

"Hi Dad," she said. Behind her, the man who'd brought her home was reversing out of our drive and away, but I'd almost completely forgotten about him. And my attention was engaged elsewhere. Della's speech was slurred. The word "Dad" had come out half-nasal. I knew what that meant: drunk. So much for responsibility! My right hand clamped down hard on my left wrist as that whole lower arm tingled with the unclean sensation. My Della had gone out dressed like a - well, dressed like this - and she'd got drunk off her face and acted out and - oh God -

Her eyes were just slightly unfocused, dully pleading. My heart raced. For just a moment I thought I was about to throw up. Her face, what the hell had she done with her face? She's pale-skinned, yes, but she'd made it almost white. For her lips, and around her eyes, she'd used a combination of black and deep purple, all whorishly overdone, and by now badly smeared. How did she get in such a mess? something inside me screamed. Another part of my head - a part throbbing along with the pounding of my blood - knew exactly how the little tart had ended up in this state.

"Well, you look like a fucking disgrace," I said flatly.

Della blinked, and her glazed-over eyes moistened. "But Daddy - " A tear tracked particles of mascara down her cheek.

"No!" I shouted. "I don't want to hear it." Which was true: all I wanted right then was to scrub my hands under the cold tap until they no longer felt like their touch could contaminate. "Get in the house. Move it!"

She shot me another one of those big-eyed, puppy-dog glances - oh yeah, this little miss knows how to get her way all right - as she pushed past and tottered to the door. God, yes, tottered: nearly fell. But the things those heels did to the shape of her calves - you know, the hit to her mobility was probably worth it. Hell, definitely. My eyes swept up the backs of her fishnet-clad thighs to that scandalous skirt - bugger me, it looked like was moulded onto her! But then Della stepped into the pool of light from the door, and for a second I didn't know what I was seeing. Two grey patches on her skirt, one over each buttock. Then it clicked. Cheapo imitation leather. "Young men... took advantage," someone had told me. A dive bar. Rough brick or bare concrete construction. Della pinned against a wall by some faceless boy with more muscle than sense, held up so her crotch was level with his, his jeans undone and slightly down. Both of them rutting back and forth to the beat of deafening music, so the poor fake leather wrapped over Della's arse scraped against rough cement on every thrust, the shiny top layer of the cheap garment quickly abrading though - Della screaming - God that ass -

I pushed the image away. My hands were wringing each other so hard it hurt. What was wrong with me? I'd seriously been checking out my own daughter's backside as she walked in front of me, and as fine a piece as she was, that was just not right - let alone conjuring up that scene of Della engaged in energetic stand-up sex.             

(Did I notice how my thoughts were right then rocking back and forth across the line between normality and absurdity, sanity and perversion? Like hell I did.)

I went inside and straight to the kitchen, where I plunged my poor stinging hands under a stream of icy water. I felt better at once. With the pins-and-needles receding, I squeezed out a dollop of liquid soap and began scrubbing. The scrub, rinse, repeat ritual calmed me, though my heart was still racing away. What I in shock? I'm not sure. It was so bloody strange: images in my mind - all the images in my mind, a life's accumulated fears and desires - were flying apart like playing cards from a deck, only to reshuffle into a new order, a different order certainly, but a better order, a worse order?

By the time I felt calm enough to dry my hands, things had changed. The jarring, rancid feeling of muck all over my hands hadn't gone - it had shifted. No longer an awareness of dirt on the skin, now it was rivulets of the filth reaching deep into me. I could sense pockets of vileness, little pustules of putrescence, beginning to swell on the tips of those thread-like infiltrations. A wave of nausea hit me as the throbbing in my head mocked me pitilessly: you didn't wash it off, you fuckwit, you forced it in.

"What's happening to me?" I asked aloud. It came out as one long, guttural moan. In an abrupt moment of clarity I knew: this new, awful thing wasn't on my skin or in my body - it was inside my mind, inside my self. "In me, no, in me, get it out... in me, filthy, get it out, in me..." I heard my own voice mutter. Get it out? Get what out? What was I just thinking? In the chaos of my reshuffled brain I'd lost track. Never mind. "God I need a drink," I said. Better: my voice was firmer, steadier. I reached up to the glass-fronted cabinet where my half-full bottle of scotch lived along with three or four heavy tumblers. I put a glass on the counter, and poured myself a double measure. On autopilot I moved to put the bottle back, then hesitated. Ah, fuck it! Instead I banged the bottle down in a corner of the counter. I wondered briefly if Della would like a glass. Where did that come from? Not her poison at all, obviously. Without really thinking I lifted my glass and knocked the contents back in a single fiery gulp.

Better. That was better. Things were steadying now: the headache, the feeling of rotting from within, the racing of my pulse. It all seemed to be calming down. I took a deep breath, and looked inside myself. The rancid grime had collected and pooled together as a single deep mass of sickness, tight in my heart and around my stomach, but not actively bothering me. It was like a scabbed-over abscess, indefinably putrid, but closed off. That would do.

Feeling more myself, I let a different thought coalesce: Della. For some reason to be determined, my teenaged daughter had taken it into her head to play wild child tonight. She'd gone out barely dressed and made up like a low-class piece of trash - I wasn't mincing words in my thoughts, and I didn't intend to with Della. Then, not only had she got herself drunk, she'd let those blockheaded boys take her like goddamn animals. Della had some explaining to do. Deliberately I poured myself another double. Then I went through to the den.

Della was sitting on the sofa where I'd been lying (was it only?) a quarter of an hour ago. Perhaps not as drunk as I'd judged her to be outside; relieved of the effort of keeping balance, her face was all but clear of the alcoholic fug. If anything, she looked nervous beneath her smudged makeup. Her legs were together, her hands on her knees so her arms at least partly hid her small-cupped bra. That shiny fake-leather skirt had ridden up, revealing black rubber trim at the tops of her ripped and ravaged fishnet stockings. And, for some fucking reason, she was still wearing those ridiculous stripper heels.

"Well," I said, sitting down in the armchair opposite her.

She shot me another of her oh-no-please-protect-me looks. Even with her mascara and eyeshadow smeared every which way, those eyes were killers. My daughter is a looker. No mistake.

"Is there an explanation for all this?" I asked. "What the fuck were you thinking, Della? What is - this?" I waved my glass at her get-up, not bothering to hide my disgust, drinking up before I set it down. "For God's sake!"

"Daddy," she said, "Daddy please don't shout - I - "

"Are you interviewing for the position of town bike? Because honestly Della, if you are, it's in the bag. Is this how we brought you up?"

I swear I'd not meant to get so angry. But all I could see was the little harlot piece of shit that the daughter I loved had turned herself into, and I could barely keep my temper leashed. As the rage bubbled up, that pocket in my abdomen of filth and putrescence came alive as well. It was leaking out, a foul oily residue forming a film on top of my thoughts and feelings. But I didn't let it distract me.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Della was wailing. "Honestly I don't know what it was. It's never happened before. I was like just there, and this guy kept buying me drinks, and he looked, oh God Dad, I wanted him so much..." She was staring into the distance intensely now, this Della I've never met. She parted her knees slightly and that short skirt slipped up yet further. No panties. What a little whore. "I wanted him inside me, Daddy, I wanted him to fill me up, hurt me, use me." She stood up, with only one glance down to steady herself in those heels. Step by step, she moved nearer. She seemed almost in a trance. "Oh God, it was so fucking good when he pushed me against the wall and screwed me. I never knew a fuck could feel that way, Daddy. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me?"

This was not the conversation I'd been expecting, and I was getting angrier by the second. "Della..." I croaked as she approached within arm's length.

"He ripped my cunt open and used me like a come-rag," said Della, "and Daddy, it was so good, it was so good!"

I backhanded her in the face, hard. She tumbled over, clattering to the floor. I saw it all, my hand, her face, her arms flailing as she struggled in vain not to fall. I didn't remember there being a moment when I'd decided to hit her. But her words had met the leaden rush of my rage, and the rancid film that had formed over it - and my arm had snapped into motion. For a moment my mind was blank as she came to a halt, half-lying with her face away from me, hidden by the tousled mass of black hair. Then her head swung round and I saw her gaze of fear and accusation. My heart leapt. What had I - I'd hurt my baby!

Redness was rising on her cheek. That was going to bruise. But worse, there in the gloss-black horizontal gash of her painted upper lip, a slash of pink flesh and a tiny bead of blood.               I opened my mouth but couldn't find words. My girl, Della, my beautiful daughter, lying hurt and degraded on that hardwood floor, with the marks of my anger on her face. It was in the same instant both the worst and most shameful act of my life, and a scene so unthinkably erotic that every cell of my body was aflame with lust.

I stood silent, and Della looked at me. A thousand years might have passed as I swayed at that point of balance. Duties and desires ripped at me, rage and filth pulling one way, love and guilt the other. I didn't want to hurt her. I wouldn't, I couldn't. But I did, and now look at her, that piece of shit little tart, I want her, I want her lips, her breasts, her ass, she's mine -

- I can't be thinking this, I'm sick, I need -

- God how those little tits would feel in my hands, I'd twist them half off, just let me -

- I have to help her, I have to get her away, away from me, oh God help me -

- she fucking wants it does he? I'll show her, I'll teach this tramp what a man can -

- oh baby, oh my girl, run, run now, I love you, don't -

- I'll take her, and use her and break her, and pour out all this filth over her pure white flesh, and she'll scream my name as she begs -

- love you Della, please forgi -