Read Online Nightjack by Tom Piccirilli - Free Book Online

scar, where they had taken things out or put more in, said, “My father always told me, ‘God watches your every movement. Even your dreams, son, your basest desires. Heaven watches and judges the imperfections of your very soul. It sees the cracks you put there. The sacred storm of providence is always near, ready to descend upon you, my child.’ Our father who art infuriating.”
    Hayden said, “My old man would just go, ‘Shut up and sit down, you little shithead! Stop eating paste! Go finish your baked beans!’ He was a mean prick.”
    As if squirming in her father’s lap, feeling him under her again, Pia started to bounce. “He’d wrap his arms around me and press his face to my back as I stared out the windshield and he’d press harder on the gas pedal and we’d race through the streets. Sometimes he’d cry. My blouse would get soaked. Sometimes he’d hum songs against my back. My mother would bite her hands.”
    “And we’re the ones they locked up,” Hayden said. “The fuck is wrong with people?”
    Dr. Brandt gave Pace a sidelong glance, trying to welcome him into the fellowship of judgment. He refused to meet her eyes, whichever one was blue, whichever one was green this time.
    “Pia, it’s important you remember the facts,” she said. “Your father molested you and your sister for several years.”
    “What?”
    “It’s the truth. You know it’s the truth. You must not deny it to yourself.”
    “What?”
    Pace moved his hand to Dr. Brandt’s knee but didn’t touch her, just left it there hovering about an inch away. “Let her be.”
    “This is necessary.” She stared back over her shoulder. Her words were sharp and hard as sandstone. “You cannot revert to your benevolent fantasies about him. He was arrested and committed suicide—”
    “My daddy loved me. It was the others ones, the men in those foster families, who tried to force me into doing those things.”
    “Pia, remember our therapy sessions together—”
    “That’s why I had to cut them. If you don’t chop off an ear or two, they just keep coming at you.” Pia’s face was white except for two burning bright spots on her cheeks. “I don’t take that kinda shit off nobody!”
    Hayden laughed, opened a window and the wind blew across his sharp forehead. “What is it with all of you and the knives? This is America. Buy a gun for Chrissake.”
    “They come at me and they get a nice slash across the belly. They pull out their willies and I spike that sticky escargot right in the slimy head.”
    Hayden, no longer laughing, his eyes wide. “Goddamn, girl.”
    Dr. Brandt tried to keep her tone rigid. “Pia, your core personality is timid, passive, and depressed.”
    “Until one of those fuckers lays a hand on me. Only a frigid bitch like you wouldn’t understand. You could never appreciate the situation. You and your sanctimonious attitude. How often did your daddy bounce you on his lap?”
    “Our father who art inflated.”
    “Your aggression is only going to—”
    “I have parameters, Dr. Brandt!” Pia said. “You’re encroaching on my safety zone!”
    “I apologize, Pia.”
    “You just like to hear the stories because they titillate you. It’s why you try to get inside my brain, because you really want to get into my pants. Tell the truth, are you going to hypnotize me again, doctor?”
    “I’ve never hypnotized you.”
    “Oh yes, you did. You wanted me to recover repressed memories. You wanted to hear about the orgies. You wanted me to stop my self-mutilation.”
    Pace could see why so many psychiatrists wound up flipping over the big edge themselves. Always talking, and nobody ever listening.
    “You aren’t a self-mutilator, Pia. Hypnosis is often used to fuse the alters as part of the patient's personality integration process, but that wouldn’t—”
    “So why didn’t you do that to me?”
    “Because that wouldn’t—”
    “Why only to Hayden?”
    “I never—”
    “Yeah,” Hayden said