Cara drops onto her stomach when the men let her go, but they’re not done, not yet. They lift her dress and tear off her knickers.
“Whatever ya see, whatever ya hear, I want ya to know it’s not real because yer not really here.”
Cara’s words play over and over in Punky’s head as he watches the men take turns mounting his ma, riding her like Punky saw the stray neighborhood dog do to his Border Collie before his dad shot it dead.
As the men holler, biting and fondling a near unconscious Cara, Punky paints black around his eyes, not wanting to bear witness to his ma being defiled over and over again. Once they’re done taking it in turns, the area around Punky’s eyes is coated in thick black paint.
But he can still see.
One of the men lifts her limp head by her snarled hair and bangs her head onto the carpet. A jagged gash forms on the left side of her forehead, so Punky draws a small line to replicate his ma’s wounds.
The men laugh, cheering and high-fiving one another, proud of their efforts. Punky hopes it’s over.
But it’s not.
One of the men, the man who danced with her first, stands over Cara’s broken body and seems to examine the mess he’s made.
“I never wanted this for ya, Cara. But ya didn’t listen.”
Punky doesn’t know what that means. But he knows his mother did something bad.
The man bends down and lifts Cara’s head back by her hair, exposing her neck. Cara moans, her face barely recognizable. Her bloodshot eyes focus on the wardrobe door where she knows Punky is watching. She reaches out with a quivering arm, wanting to touch him, to tell him it’ll be all right.
She wishes he never saw what he did.
The bright light catches the sharp silver of the blade which slits Cara’s throat. Blood pours from the wound as Cara wheezes for breath.
Punky’s eyes widen, but he reminds himself it’s not real. He’s not really here. He focuses on Cara’s favorite rose brooch. His ma loves flowers. She loves nature. But she’ll never be able to feel the sunshine on her skin ever again.
He snares the bottle of black paint and squirts it down his neck where he runs his fingers through it, smearing it across his throat. Everything his ma feels, he feels too.
The man lets Cara go, where she flops onto her face, bleeding out.
He wipes the bloody blade on the back of her dress before coming to a stand. Punky peers up and up as the man is tall. When one of the men begins to hunt through Cara’s jewelry box, Punky sees a crucifix tattooed on his left wrist.
He draws one on his too.
The man who slit Cara’s throat focuses his attention on the wardrobe. Punky holds his breath. With no hurry, he walks over and inhales deeply, placing his hands on the door.
Punky reaches for the toy knife, armed and ready. Slathered in war paint, his face is a reflection of the injuries inflicted on his ma, and he’s ready to go to war.
The man, however, doesn’t want to hurt Punky. He simply unlocks the door.
“We’re away to the car,” he orders the other two men pilfering like common thieves.
They take one last look at the mess they made, snickering about the Kelly geebag. They’re out the door, but the man, the tall man turns over his shoulder, once again looking at the wardrobe door. He places his bloody pointer over his smirking lips, gesturing Punky isn’t to make a sound.
He’s gone a moment later.
Punky waits for silence, and although he promised his ma he’d stay hidden, he slowly opens the door. The song on the radio switches from Elvis to a song Punky’s mum sings to him to keep the nightmares away. But when he crawls toward his ma, he realizes his nightmares have just begun.
The song is “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King, and Punky begins to hum the chorus as he gets closer to his ma. There is so much blood, but Cara said it’s not real. She’s going to wake at any moment. She has to.
“Ma,” Punky says, reaching out with black and white painted hands, nudging her shoulder softly. “Wake up. I did whatcha asked. It’s time to wake up now.”
But Cara doesn’t wake. She never will.
“Mummy!” Punky’s pleas are a little louder, more desperate because he doesn’t like this game. “Please wake up. I wanna go home.”
Punky looks down at his hands, covered in his ma’s blood. He turns them over and over, not understanding what he’s seeing.
“Are ye sleepin’? Ye knackered, Ma? It’s Baltic in here. I’ll keep ya warm.”
Punky pulls the blanket off the bed and curls up beside his dead ma, tucking it around them. He’s suddenly so tired. He wraps her arm around him, snuggling close to the only person in the world who showed him any love.
Before he succumbs to sleep, Punky reaches out and dips three fingers into a coagulated pool of blood just inches away. He then runs those fingers down the middle of his forehead, leaving three bloodied slashes in their wake. His face is a grotesque picture of everything he saw—a black, white, and red imagery, reflecting the death of his childhood.
Three men changed his life forever, and as long as it takes, no matter what Punky has to do, he’s going to find those men and paint their faces too…before he rips them from their mutilated corpses.
A kaleidoscope of black and white lays before Punky, but he’ll soon realize…nothing in life ever is.
“How hammered are ya?” asks Orla Ryan as she drags my wasted arse up the stairs of her parents’ home. Strangers look on, gossiping behind their hands.
I moan in response, sinking further into her as she tightens her hold around my waist.
Orla has had a crush on me since I cut off one of her pigtails in primary school. I never understood why. I still don’t. I don’t understand why most girls have a crush on me.
My mates tell me it’s because I’m dark and mysterious or something naff like that. With a hooped piercing in my nose and one in my lip, I don’t really look the part of Prince Charming, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I thought my tattoos would steer them away, but again, it only enticed them all the more. This has worked in my favor for many reasons—just like right now—and I hate it.
My long fringe flips forward as my chin drops to my chest. My dirty blond hair is cut short on the sides and long on top, and I wear it this way just to see my father ragin’. Just thinking about that fucker has me clenching my jaw.
He’s the reason I’m here. He’s the reason for all this.
Focusing on Orla and where she’s taking me, I shake my floppy head. “Yer parents’ room,” I mumble, semi-coherent.
“Yer so bad, Puck Kelly,” she whispers excitedly and changes course, obeying my command.
She opens the door and flicks on the light, still clinging to me, and leads me toward the bed. We both collapse onto it, a trail of giggles spilling free from her. I’m on my back, and Orla doesn’t waste a second as she straddles me, lowering her mouth to mine.
She kisses me softly, cupping my cheek and coaxing me to reciprocate, but that’s not why I’m here.
I don’t like intimacy. Honestly, I hate it. I don’t like being touched. The only person whose touch I crave is dead, and when she died, I died with her. To the outside world, I look relatively “normal,” but it’s a whole different story on the inside.