Requiem: Chapter 10

I want to add this paragraph as a warning for the explicit and descriptive scenes in the first part of this chapter. These scenes describe  an abnormal behaviour between a mother and her son. The sadistic, masochistic actions of mother and son in this incestual relation will be the base of a distorted main character in the chapters to come.

If you, as a reader or as a parent, would take offence in such description, please jump to the second part of this chapter, knowing that one of the main characters from his youth will flourish under the influence of violence and wrong sexual behaviour.

 10

   

            His mother glided between the sheets like she had done already a few weeks since his fourteenth birthday. He knew what to do. On that day, the day of his birthday, his mother had come into his bedroom. She sat beside him on the bed and had looked at him with an inscrutable glance. Her eyes glinted in the light of his reading lamp.

            ‘Congratulations on your fourteenth birthday. You’re slowly becoming a real man… my dear boy.’ She smiled, took his head in her fleshy hands and gave him a sound kiss right on his lips. He sensed a weak smell of alcohol mingled with a trace of perfumed soap and some other odor he couldn’t place. It had to do with the smile in her eyes. ‘I’ve got you a present. Do you want to open it or must I do it myself?’ He directed his gaze suspiciously at her empty hands. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, okay, I see I’ll have to learn you a lot,’ she reacted secretly.

            She stood upright and pulled her nightgown over her head. Like this, his mother stood there stark naked before him. With her heavy breasts and big brown areola’s she provocatively paraded beside his bed; a few moments to gauge his reaction. His eyes wandered over her breasts and nipples, slowly descending and looking at her abundant bushy hair of her pubis. He knew all the names out of his little books. He had even looked in a dictionary to find the right words. His breathing became heavy and fast.

            His mother slid between the sheets and took one of his hands and laid it on her breast. ‘Don’t be afraid, they’re not fragile. Pinch them good.’ He looked at her and felt the tension in his loins. ‘They’ll not fall off, you know, yes… that way… harder now,’ she panted. Suddenly she took his masculinity in her hands and began to satisfy him, demanding him to inflict her pain. He came to his climax faster than an excited stallion in the summer. It made her mad and a hard box on the ear was his reward.

            Yes, it did hurt. But his hands, freely wandering over her body gave him a new hard-on. It was a strange feeling, nonetheless the pain he liked the sensation. These new feelings awakening in his puberty. The knowledge, that his mother needed him in one or another way, made him feel good. The manner she needed him, still more.

            The ritual repeated itself with intervals. He learned to restrain his lust and to give her a longer period of pain, a thing she wanted from him. She even asked him to bite on her nipples or to slap her on her meaty behind or pinch it. However, she warned him, not to hurt her. Otherwise, he would feel her reaction. His mother was insatiable and could take a lot of pain. But now and then he didn’t meet her standards and he received a painful encore. The beating stimulated him to do better the next time or to play it harder. He stoically accepted the punishments by his mother. He tried to be the man she expected him to become.

            Invariably he tried to work out his hidden anger against his mother upon something else. His body, his mind asked for it, it was a real relief in the beginning. The first time it happened, his victim was one of the neighbor’s kittens he had abducted and caressed with mixed feelings. Afterwards, he had, with a short snap, broken the neck of the mewing kitten. He was always so smart in erasing his tracks. He buried his little victims on a backwater and was watching for it so that nobody saw him busy with his macabre digging works. The neighbors were puzzled. At many places in town, small animals disappeared in those days, mostly kittens or one time a little dog when he became stronger.

            Sometimes he processed his angry feelings by bullying younger boys he was waiting for and terrorized them. He knew to pick them. They would never tell, they feared him too much. He didn’t touch them, but he knew their weaknesses and ridiculed his little victims. He pulled their pants on their ankles, just as his mother had done with him, so they couldn’t escape him. Humiliated them with words. He just carved wounds in their mind. Besides a feeling of relief and satisfaction he experienced with snapping the neck of young animals, he also felt the power he possessed by seeing the young bullied children in tears.

            One day, his mother being in a good mood, he asked her if he could join a local club. Members of this club learned all sorts of martial arts from old Japanese schools as there were Iaido, Koryu and Kenjutsu. Ways to defend oneself in a society that is full of violence. A society where only the strongest ones survive. He thought it was necessary to possess the skills to defend himself in a hostile environment, he explained to her. His mother understood his way of thinking and agreed without hesitating. He chose for an old Eastern fighting school Kenjutsu, a traditional Japanese martial art.

            Miyamoto Musashi, one of the best-known samurais who lived as well in the fifteenth as in the sixteenth century was the developer of this teaching. He was the underlying force of Kenjutsu and this samurai had explained this teaching at the end of his life in the ‘Go Rin No Sho’ or ‘A Book of Five Rings’.

            The five rings represented the five chapters of this book, each talking about one of the elements that are water, the wind, fire, the earth and emptiness. It was of the utmost importance that the pupil memorized these writings by heart and also to persevere in his training… for years. This rule made him still more impatient and it was also the reason he often got some reproaches from his master.

            Sometimes he had to perform for his mother the movements he had studied during the training or Keiko. Preferably in the nude, before they moved to their daily sexual ritual his mother called ‘her nightcap’. After all, what’s in a name?

            And so, he grew up and felt stronger than ever. He became a good student in Kenjutsu. The pain during this training was nothing compared that he was used to. The dominant position of the boy and his mother shifted in the advantage of her son. Pain was a known fact for him, a way to obtain something, to become something. Mother and son were a match for each other. Till the day he ordered ‘her’ what would happen and she servile obeyed him. He had just become sixteen.

……….

            Four keys. Who are you? Furious!!!

            Stephen March had a lot of time he could spent during his travels from the Old to the New World. Countless hours in trains, planes and helibots. To pass these dull moments and to do something else than reading diplomatic papers, he always had a digital word search book with him. His father, Thomas had told him his mother Maddy Silverstone was a fanatic word-searcher. At that moment, there was still the paper version of these puzzles in all variants and difficulty grades. Nowadays, to save on paper and to be busy with your hobby in a responsible way, ecology has put his stamp on these kind of puzzles. Digital was in, digital nature friendlier than excavate whole forests.

            FURIOUS!! FOUR IS U!! Four that is you! Using the U as the letter replacing the word ‘YOU’, a common use of acronyms. It was not immaculate School English, but according to his feelings it had to be right. Would it be so easy? He put on the viewer and loaded the saved game. He was again standing before the door with the name on. The voice asked him one more time: ‘Who are you?’ Unaware he was holding his breath and with a relieved sigh, his answer came: ‘Four, I am four.’ The door went open and his virtual character could enter the room. After him, the door closed with a metallic bang and he turned around very surprised. On the inside, there was an old fashion kind of handle, but when he tried to move it, he felt the door was locked. Stephen startled at the voice he heard. It was Suzy’s voice.

            ‘Hey, Stephen. To be sure, I want you to give the name and the number of your collection in the input field. You know what I mean… the number of items you confided in me during your last visit. An assurance that I have the right person before me. Fingerprints and eye scans can be counterfeited. Memories and personal secrets are a better way to check someone’s identity.

            Stephen speechless, but compliant typed the word ‘comics’ and the number of items he possessed. Meanwhile, he had ten more, but he could not count them in. It was a collection of immeasurable value because nowadays there were no more editions on paper. The number 1302 flared up above the input screen. Before him, a 3d virtual image of Suzy smiled at him. He had to swallow. Just as before, when he entered the apartment, he felt the sorrow and the feeling of absence and tears were stinging in his eyes. He had to pull himself together. There was a reason for all this. Suzy probably had a message for him.

            ‘You will ask yourself why all this secrecy. But I can’t be too careful. Like I said before, technology is wonderful, eye scans and fingerprints are counterfeited before or obtained by force from the owner. With all these booby traps, I know for sure it’s you. If you had given me the wrong answers, all the saved games would be erased and the player would have to begin from scratch.’

            Stephen watched with open mouth at the images he virtually got through upon his viewer. In what trouble Suzy had got herself, so she had to take such precautions to tell him something. It had led to her death, that’s for sure. She obviously had estimated the situation as dangerous and constructed something to warn Stephen or…

            Suzy went on after a short breathing space. ‘Stephen, you know I’ve always carefully kept mama’s things. Sometimes after I went to her last resting place I looked at those things and… got a bit sentimental.’ Her glance became unsure, she closed her eyes and he didn’t know if he had imagined it, but he saw lower lip trembling for a moment. She swallowed, coughed into her hand and went on.

            ‘Ma had a little music-box she nurtured very a lot during her life. Maybe you remember the little gem. One moment I had it in my hands and suddenly in my clumsiness I dropped it and it lay in pieces on the ground. I was aghast by it and also sad that I had broken a memory of her. But to my great surprise, I saw a rolled-up paper between the pieces. Not a thing that should be in a music box, you would say. If you hear what was on it, you will be just as baffled as me at that moment. I will read it for you.’

            Stephen was hypnotized by Suzy’s voice and image, but her appearance and her story were so lifelike he almost pulled her nearer to comfort her. However… it wasn’t really Suzy.

            ‘Here we go. Ma wrote the following text.’

My dear Suzy,

            I wrote you this letter because I’ve lied to you. It’ll be a surprise, but I’m bound to say this and I can’t just confront you with it. When you were young you wouldn’t have understood it and now… You just postpone something and at some point it’s too late. It became more and more difficult to explain. Beside that I feel terribly guilty for what I’ve done. In this way, putting my words on paper, it’s a start for me to get even with this situation. An encouragement to tell it at some moment or to hide my secret in this music box forever.

            Suzy, I’ve told you, you were my only daughter. Alas, this was a big lie. You have yet another sister, an older sister. Three years before you were born, I’ve got my first child, also a girl. I was far too young, too inexperienced. I have given her up for adoption. At that moment, I wasn’t a good mother. I was attracted to the wrong men. Your father also wasn’t one of my best choices, but you know that already. However, I wouldn’t let my second baby take away from me, not a second time. The father of your sister never knew I was pregnant. When it showed, he had already disappeared out of my life.

            Both my mother and father helped me tremendously during that time to take care of me and to look for a good family for my daughter. They have appealed to an organization that screened the adoptive parents in a professional way to be sure the child arrived in a good home. To protect the baby and the biological mother, the identity of the new parents had been kept secret to me and my parents. I only can hope from the bottom of my heart she’s fine. Every day I still think of her.

            The only thing, that I can tell you, is the name of the organization my parents used for the adoption of my child: LCR. I think it’s the abbreviation for ‘Lucky Child Relocation’. My parents didn’t tell me more and you know that the relation between me and my parents after your birth wasn’t so good anymore. Meanwhile, they have passed away. I’m so sorry. Your birth has me happy again and with Thomas and his son Stephen I found my little bit of luck. However, it’ll never be perfect and it is my own fault, my own punishment.

            I wish you knew this. I love you so much, my child. Forgive me!

Kathy Chang

            Stephen had followed her reading very attentively, but he didn’t understand why Suzy had kept all this as a secret behind closed doors and passing words. He assumed she would still elaborate on that matter.

            Suzy emotionally folded the letter and put him in her inside pocket of her coat. ‘You probably ask, why all this secrecy around this case? At first I was startled when I read my mother’s letter. We had no secrets from each other, I thought. All in all, I was a bit angry at my mother. However, after a few days, a little thought nestled itself in my mind and it grew to a big and pressing question: How is she, how is my half-sister? Could I trace her? Maybe just to say my mother always had regrets she gave her away for adoption. Or would it only make her unhappy? If her new parents never had told her she was adopted, I would be received as a spoilsport.’ Suzy stopped for a moment and then went on talking.

            ‘But my curiosity won it over my common sense and I began looking for this organization LCR. Meanwhile, they had already dissolved the company and I informed about the former management. From that moment on I got the feeling that strange things were happening. There were moments I thought I was being followed. I’ve never been able to discover someone, but my sixth sense told me I was right. When I saw the scratches on the security console of my apartment, I was definitely sure someone had tried to break in. Luckily they didn’t succeed. I made the calculation… the search for my older sister and my questions to find her, I suspected it was all about that. Therefore, this message as a precaution, if something had to happen to me. Maybe I’m just becoming paranoid. You cannot exclude that either, can you Furious?  Her insecure laughing could mean anything!

            Stephen listened with a surprised look to her explanation. He thought about the attack of the red autobot. Could this be looked at, in the same way? Was her death the consequence of her quest after her older sister? Instead of answers, he only got more question. Why had they aimed Suzy? Who was her half-sister?

……….    

  

            At the Bureau of the Security Service, it was very hectic. All the desks were fully occupied. The administration department had to do overtime to edit the info in the data banks so that the inspectors could use it as soon as possible. At regular intervals, arrested persons were brought forward and taken away afterwards. At this moment, all the interrogation rooms were used. Between the normal noises of telephone calls, you could hear a protesting prostitute shouting and the muttering of an aggressive drunk brought in by policemen.

            The press, principally the ‘Daily Sanctuary’ had written in block letters on the front page about the last murders. The Security Service and the police who are working together had to endure the worst. How was it possible that ‘one’ person could continue his reign of terror and that an organization that was in the possession of the most modern resources still was groping in the dark?

            There originated a concealed turmoil between the populations. People felt unsafe, especially in the evening and during the night. The police had proclaimed a curfew and had forbidden gatherings. In special cases, one could ask for an exception to these rules. The city police already were understaffed and possible evening escorts were impossible or you had to be a very influential person or have the right contacts. Everyone was under the spell of this serial killer who had until now abducted two persons at the same time. It was inconceivable that one person could take more than two people at once.

            So hoped Norino Vastai. He sighed. Obviously lately he did that a lot. He watched the oversight screen of the file with all the facts about the Akai-murders. The former whiteboard, where so many famous cases were displayed on, was replaced by his digital version. Norino thought the method of nowadays was far more efficient. Not alone because the data file itself found references to similar cases and sorted them out, but also because it was far more interactive with the user. Since the beginning, they had endured already eleven murders… and they hadn’t a clue yet. His adjunct Shi had just arrived and he waved at him to draw his attention.

            ‘What do you think, Shi, the last two cases were the last drop for the mayor? An hour ago I received a call from him with the emphatic wish to find as soon as possible a useful trace and preferably one that makes us pick up a potential suspect.’ Being tired, he rubbed his eyes. ‘The only similarity in all these cases is that the victims were all Akai and that they were slashed to pieces with a sword, a Nihonto so say our latest reports. Who can have a grudge against these people? They are the most peaceful persons on this earth. They adore the nature and talk more about peace and understanding than the Pope of the Old World. It’s not only words for them, their daily life is full of this intent!

            Shi shrugged his shoulders in a despaired gesture. ‘Maybe we have to take a closer look at all the cases… once again. Who knows, we have more luck today.’

            ‘Okay, okay…’ Chief Inspector Norino Vastai answered. ‘Case 1…’

© Rudi J.P. Lejaeghere 24/01/2015