Michael Collings - The Slab

Yes, he had learned much.

But most importantly, he had learned one more crucial thing.

Hatred.

Hatred of himself.

And hatred of the monster that Daniel Warren had kept so carefully hidden during the months he and Miles had been partners and friends at Helping-Hands, during the weeks the three of them had lived lovingly together in Warren’s apartment. Those few weeks were now the only time Miles could remember feeling like part of a family; he felt a nostalgic, yearning warmth for that cramped apartment and his lumpy bed on Daniel’s sofa that sometimes frightened him with its intensity.

When he had first seen the house at the top of the hill, first chosen which of the four smaller bedrooms would be his very own, first carried his brand-new suitcase (a gift from Daniel) packed with his clothing across the threshold his house and into his very own room and hung his things in his very own closet, it had seemed as if his wildest dreams were coming true. He would live there with his mother, the woman he loved more than any other person in the world. He would live there with Daniel, his only buddy, his only real friend, and now-unbelievably-his father as well. They would be a family, together forever. For a lonely, often frightened ten-year-old, it truly was a dream come true.

The dream became a wildly distorted nightmare that very night, when Miles woke from a deep dreamless sleep to feel a hand constricting over his mouth and nose. For a horrifying instant he wondered frantically if someone-robber mugger thief murderer-had broken into the house and was trying to suffocate him. But at that instant, his numbed, terrified mind registered the movements of another hand, and then more horrifying movements, and in the hour it took for his brand-new Big Ben alarm clock on the nightstand next to his bed to tick tick tick tick slowly through the attack and tick tick tick tick even more slowly back into reality, he learned more about Daniel Warren-the real Daniel Warren, the repulsive, brutal skeleton hidden so carefully beneath the smooth, handsome skin-than he ever wanted to know.

Daniel’s did not visit the back bedroom every night. That much the boy was spared. Sometimes Miles would lay in his own bed, straining to hear the first faint sounds of steps on the carpet in the hallway outside, and he would hear other sounds instead, muffled moans and murmurs coming from the master bedroom at the far end of the hall. Sometimes he could hear them even though the doors to both bedrooms might be closed. He could hear them even though the intervening room sat empty except for Elayne’s sewing machine, stacks of patterns and folded material waiting to be transformed into clothing, and her dressmaker’s form standing on its single leg in the corner like a headless, deformed, shrouded corpse. He could hear them even though the heater might be on in the winter, or the air conditioner in the summer. In spite of everything, sometimes he could hear the panting, animal gasps his mother made when Daniel did to her willing body what he also did to her son’s unwilling one; and then, only then, Miles could relax slightly, maybe even fall asleep without staining his pillow with tears or grinding his teeth in impotent fury and humiliation until his jaws ached.

No, Daniel did not visit nightly. Not even weekly. But somehow the stuttering irregularity of the boy’s nighttime degradation ultimately made the situation worse rather than better.

As Miles grew older-reaching eleven, twelve, thirteen-there would be erratic breaks in the sequence of Daniel’s visits. Each might last as long as a week or two. Once Miles enjoyed a respite of almost a month; by the end of the third week Miles had nearly convinced himself that he could believe (although it took little forcing) that the visits were finally over…that the “games” Daniel wanted him to play were finally, mercifully over forever. That Daniel had finally decided that he preferred playing the games with Elayne’s body.

Almost-a-month extended with a frightening slowness into a full month. Then to six weeks. Seven. For the first time since he moved into the house on Oleander Place, Miles found himself drifting easily to sleep. It became gradually easier to keep the secret-he had promised Daniel that first time that he would never tell anyone what they did, what games they played, partly because Daniel had made him promise and Daniel was an adult, but mostly because Daniel had made it frighteningly clear what would happen to Elayne’s love for her shameless, deviant son if she should ever find out. If Daniel treated Miles like he did (and Miles instinctively knew that most fathers-even most stepfathers-did not treat their sons like Daniel treated him) then there must be something wrong with Miles as well, something twisted and deeply, deeply perverse. The boy’s inner fear and terror and humiliation that someone might discover exactly what he was became more of a guardian over the secret than Miles’ naive boyhood promise had ever been.

Then, at the beginning of the eighth week…the whispered movement of the door, so quiet as to have been almost silent but even so more than enough to awaken Miles to a panicky tightness in his chest and a clammy sweat oozing through his pores. Then he felt the familiar, hated hand tightening over his mouth. The other hand (even more familiar, even more hated, if that were possible) scrabbling at the waistband of his pajamas.

Miles had refused to wear only underpants to bed for nearly three years, regardless of how hot it might be. No matter how much Elayne had argued about it as she bathed swathes of prickly heat rash along his shoulders and stomach during the frequent 100+ temperatures of July and August, he refused to sleep in anything lighter than full-length, long-sleeved, winter-weight flannel pajamas. Elayne could not understand why. Miles himself could probably not have explained why. Perhaps somewhere, deep in his mind where the horror remained submerged hour upon hour, he held out the frantic hope that the thick flannel might somehow protect him.

But it never did.

Now, after almost two months of blessed loneliness, when the soft, damp hand touched his quivering skin he knew that everything he had hoped to believe had been a lie. The visits were beginning again.

Only now, it was much worse for the boy. Since turning thirteen, Miles’ unwanted but undeniable physical reactions to Daniel’s depredations had intensified. He didn’t want them to; God knew that he despised himself more each time, condemned himself to a deeper level of his own private hell every time his body leaped from his conscious control and responded wildly, almost eagerly to the man’s filthy touch.

But it did respond.

Now even his always fragile sleep was infected by the nightmare visits. He would awaken to hear Daniel closing the door. Knowing that this was real, that he could not awaken from this nightmare, Miles would look up to see Daniel glowing ghostly in the leaden moonlight, leaning over his bed. He would feel Daniel’s rapid touches like a million insects crawling across his naked skin.

And then later-hours later sometimes, each tolled second by wearisome second by Miles’ Big Ben alarm clock ticking metronomically on the nightstand-Miles would finally stumble into fevered sleep…

And in that sleep, something new, a phantom Daniel, ghastly and loathsome in the stark shadows of slanting moonlight in the corner bedroom, would return.

Age thirteen shaded imperceptibly into fourteen. There were few changes in the Warrens’ lives, mostly superficial. Daniel contracted for a company to come in and convert the two-car garage into a wide, roomy family room, and to construct an adjoining garage along the side of the property. The garage held Elayne’s aging station wagon, sitting sedately next to an series of new, sporty vehicles for Daniel. Miles had a bicycle that was new when they moved in but that was now covered with a thick layer of dust and rested rather sadly against the far wall on two long-flat tires.