MY STRANGE PET AND I

TW: sexual abuse

MY STRANGE PET AND I

PART 1

One often likes a pet when they decide to keep one. One often decides to keep one, but I was given no such luxuries of either decision or of needing to hold affection for my pet. I had to keep it.

I don’t know if it is was the pet that needed me or I that needed the pet, but one thing was certain, we were both slaves of each other neither wanting to be here but both needing to be.

This creature I was given for a pet had horns, and as if that wasn’t odd enough it had or more proper, was losing its face. Each passing day made it harder to recognize the beast for its face gradually faded into a pale blankness. Beyond that fading face, the creature was as well slowly dying, like that of a withering flower.

You’d think that considering the fact that I took no liking to this creature that I would be happy that it was dying but instead I employed much of my time and efforts repainting its face. On a given night I would repaint its face over and over again where it faded, often painting lies onto it; Things that did not originally exist like whiskers and probably those horns. Other than those painted lies, I employed much effort into keeping the creature alive, even to feeding it more than I should. And to top up on its health, I took it on my walks, and into work and basically every which way I went.

The creature had a magnificent ability that either was a figment of my imagination or was ever so real. Whenever day came that beast was no longer a beast but a beautiful thing, even more adoring that a cat and ever more lovable than a dog. People awed when it smiled, or did a little trick. They thought it so beautiful and alluring and worth all the love in the world but had they met the creature when the sun was no more, they would have been haunted by pictures of a thing that can only be from a nightmare; with pictures of fangs, whiskers, horns and fading faces.

If I am too be honest, and I intend to be, there was a part of me that loved the creature. For not only was I evidently was I unable to get rid of it but I had managed to see this creature for what it truly was and still kept it. And to me, it held my truest friend for it was the only thing I had besides myself. It was the only thing that kept around when I was alone, lonely when I cried.

Some part of the creature reminded me of myself, for I was-just like it in that I too was one thing when day broke and when night came I was what was real about me; I was seen for what I was, stripped of down to my nakedness, stripped of my pride, courage, and false confidence. When I no longer held that glow of joy and laughter that shimmered on my face. When I was without that part of me that everyone was willing to love and yet was the part of me that hardly the truest of me. I was truest in the darkness and night, covered in tears, depression and hate; Hate for myself, this creature and being alive. Even life was a thing I dragged around, though not wanting it neither liking it but keeping it anyways.

PART 2

I suppose the reason I had to keep, this abomination of a pet, was largely because my father gave it to me before he died. Unlike mother who left me with nothing that wasn’t an object, father left me with a living thing. Ugly but still alive.

He loved me, father, he did. In many ways he did, till his death he did. More than momma’s love, papa loved me even more; more real and more unforgettable.

Once he loved me too much and I had no choice but to kill him.

I know what you’re thinking but please try to understand that father, like that pet I kept, had seen my naked parts in the night. Stripped, but stripped by him; not once or twice or enough times to fit on both you’re fingers and toes. Stripped before I could even count to 10.

Father loved me how he should have loved mother in bed, in the darkness, and mourning; Him mourning with pleasure and I with pain. So much pain. Is this what love was, I often asked myself, pain? So much pain? And blood? So much blood? And this pet, this creature?

I too was going to give papa love, that love of pain. While he slept, having had tired from loving me, I drew from the kitchen a knife. In a stinging wobble, I walked towards where he slept. He was breathing heavy and snoring. His chest rose and dropped and rose again. I raised the knife and thought of love. I was about to love him too, with pain, because true love is a painful. Down went the knife, and into his chest where his heart was. And came blood and him screaming, mourning. Ah! I thought, blood and mourning, it must be true love. Penetrating love. In and out and in and out again went the knife. I loved him a hundred times, enough to fit ten people’s fingers and toes. Ah! The pleasure came. Love! And came his last breath.

It was at this last breath that he gave me this creature, this pet; a memory that I would never get rid of. A memory that I didn’t like but kept it anyways, and a memories do, it tried to fade away or die but I could not let it. I fed it and I took care of it and I carried it every which way I went.

That memory was my creature, my monster, my trauma, my depression my tears. It was mine and I was with it and was it forever. And together the creature and I, we would pretend happiness and perfection during the day and in the night we became what was true about us both: Monsters, murders and man-made evils.

But we were all we had, each other. My strange pet and I.