Read Online A Guardian of Innocents by Jeff Orton - Free Book Online Page A

powerful hand slap me across the face. I felt a great weight on top of me as a pair of brick-like fists pummeled my kidneys. I felt myself being tossed around the kitchen as though caught in a whirlwind with my baby son crying in the background, seemingly far away.
    I heard smashing and breaking and stomping. I saw a big man with a broom handle. I felt shards of broken glass cut my face as I sat in a car desperately fidgeting through a set of keys with hands too adrenalized and shaky to find the right one.
    The distinct smell of alcohol upon hot breath was making my eyes water.
    But what finally broke the trance and sent me to their bathroom to vacate my stomach was the last vision. Despite all that Jack had done to me growing up, he had never done that .
    The words that I could hear were difficult to make out, but the ideas and the whole gist of what had happened two years ago was made all too clear.  
    Galen was already well into his bottle of vodka only ten minutes after arriving home from work. Kimber had recently discovered her husband was not only an abusive alcoholic, but also had developed a taste for teenage male prostitutes, an interesting hobby for someone who so convincingly plays the role of a tough guy.
    She’d been taking his abuse for years by then, but this was somehow worse to her, far worse. AIDS was out there for God’s sake! What if he contracted it or some other fucked up disease and gave it to her? She’d heard it could lay dormant for years before any symptoms surfaced.
    So when Isaac had been in his room for awhile, absorbed into the fantasy world of Sega, Kimber confronted her husband and got righteously indignant on his ass. In a low, whispering but hate-drenched voice, she told Galen everything she thought of him as she stood over him in his chair. She advised him there was going to be a quick and painless divorce or everyone he knew would be told exactly what it was that her loving husband liked to do for fun.
    As Kimber not only read, but preached the riot act, she saw shame appear on Galen’s face. The sight of which only stoked the flaming coals of her anger even hotter and provided her the courage to stand up to her husband all the more.
    She resorted to name-calling: sickfuck, dirtybastard, cowardlypeesuhshit. But Kimber’s near fatal mistake was when she spat the word faggot from the mouth of her reddened face.
    That was when Galen’s expression changed. The I’m-so-ashamed-I-want-to-curl-up-and-die look vanished and the drunk meanness she knew all too well returned to his eyes.
    Before she had time to react, he was already standing up and had a fistful of her deep auburn hair. Galen wrestled his wife to the floor, pinned her by placing one knee just below her sternum and began to repeatedly punch Kimber in the face. He usually didn’t go for the face but this time he was so enraged, he just didn’t give a shit.
    She was sobbing with her eyes clenched shut, trying to fight him off and hardly noticed Isaac was out of his room and screaming for Daddy to please stop hitting Mommy.
    Amazingly, he stopped. Then he answered his son, “Isaac, Daddy has to punish Mommy. Do you wanna know why?”
    Isaac only stood there crying, afraid to give the wrong answer.
    “Because your Mommy. . . just called Daddy. . . a faggot !”
    At that last word, Galen twisted the handful of hair and Kimber felt hundreds of locks being uprooted.
    As his wife whimpered with pain, a look of satisfaction and delight fell upon Galen’s face as an idea struck him, “Son, I want you to go sit in Daddy’s chair.”
    Isaac, pleading through his sobs, asked, “Please let Mommy up, Daddy. Please letter up.”
    In a violent scream that seemed to shake the walls of the house, his father hollered, “I SAID GET IN THAT CHAIR, BOY!!!”
    The shouting makes Isaac cry all that much harder and he walks slowly over to the chair, dreading what unknown punishment is to come. He knows not what it is, but knows by the horrible