My name is Daniel Hawkins. And this is the story of me and my “father.” Growing up, there wasn’t a single peaceful moment in my life. My father was an extreme binge drinker. I don’t think there was a single moment in my life when he was sober, up until the day I was face-to-face with him in court. Before that, it was absolute hell. And now, I’m going to tell you about it.
I remember when I was about four years old. Almost every day, my dad would hit me at least once for no apparent reason. Even things such as getting up late in the morning earned me a spanking. And they weren’t just any regular spankings. He was usually drunk and would reach for whatever was in arms reach to beat me with. My mother couldn’t do shit about it for fear of getting it worse than me. It was like that all through fucking grammar school. I was angry. Angry that he could do such sadistic things to just a kid.
Things got worse as I went through elementary school. There were times when my dad would drag me down to the basement by the hair and subject me to beatings and torture that could be defined as medieval. Several times a month he would tie me up and actually whip me. He had a bullwhip that he would use on me whenever the fuck he wanted to. Not a day went by that my back didn’t sting. I would lie to my friends whenever they patted me on the back saying I had just fallen down the previous night and was still kind of sore. Other things he would do to me were things like hanging me by my wrists with chains while he and his buddies beat up on me. There were times where I was tortured, electrocuted, and beaten for as long as whole night at a stretch. And by sunrise, I was covered head to toe in blood and bruises. My anger at him started to show as I drew near the end of elementary school, as I started taking it out on my schoolmates.
Junior high was perhaps the worst three years of my life. Not only were the beatings and torture getting worse by the day, but it started to show in my attitude. I had started listening to metal and punk music to try to vent my anger. I started looking the part as well, and started sitting in the back of classrooms. My teachers were worried, and not just because of that, but because I had seriously started to show my anger. I had pretty much become a bully by midway through seventh grade. I was pushing people around, beating them up, stealing their shit, you name it. I was in trouble every other week. This further drove my dad to beat up on me. It grew steadily worse by the week. Sooner or later, the teachers started noticing my marks and asked me where I had gotten them. I made up excuses like “I ran into the door” or “The cat scratched me.” They bought it for a while, but by eighth grade, they started to get very suspicious. I felt that they knew I was getting abused and beaten up, and my dad found out about it. He thought I had gone and told someone that he was hitting me, and the beatings grew even worse. They were so bad that I was surprised I was still alive!

I became a freshman in high school and found a little bit of enlightenment. I found Andrea Davis, a sophomore who was so much like me. She was an intelligent girl, she was into my type of music, and she was very beautiful. It was love at first sight, and we started going out. My dad didn’t like her, though. In fact, we went out to a party on Halloween night, and I didn’t get back in until before sunrise. My dad gave me one of his worse beatings. He had started using spiked knuckles on me, for he couldn’t find the whip. I had hidden it from him, and his drunken ass thought he had sold it for the knucks.
The beatings continued through the year, and I grew steadily more violent toward my schoolmates. Then came the day in April. I brought Andrea home to meet my mother, because I thought my dad was out somewhere. But when we walked in, in fact before we walked in, we could hear the shouting and cussing that told us otherwise. We ran into the room, and there he was, shouting my mother down, my mother doing her best to retaliate. We turned around to go to my room, but that’s when we heard a clear, hard smack. We stopped dead in our tracks and turned around. I thought he had hit her, but it was the other way around. Yes, she had hit him. We were all speechless. He stood there, transfixed, and she stood there, looking horror struck by her actions. Then, with all his strength, he punched her dead in the jaw, knocking her onto the bed. He took his shirt off and leapt on top of her and started ripping her clothes off. I ran to try to push him off of her, but he delivered a punch to me like he never had before. It sent me crashing into the wall and I slid down. I managed to get back up in time to see Andrea pummeling him with her purse, trying to get him off my mother. He pushed her away twice, and when she ran up to him for a third time, the unthinkable happened. He got up and punched her in the head as hard as he could. She went stumbling and he then grabbed her and threw her on the bed and started trying to rape her. And a moment later, it happened. I started having flashbacks from the past ten years of my life. My life was flashing before my eyes as if I were about to die. I saw once again, all the beatings, the whippings, the torture, the pain, the suffering. They were coming back to me faster than a bullet. And then, seeing what was before me in real life, my dad, trying to rape the girl that I love, the girl that I would go to the ends of the earth to defend, to keep from harm, the rage I had been holding in for ten years exploded out of me like a volcano!
I suddenly charged at my dad, and with the force of an angry bull, tackled him to the ground. Then, with all of my might and energy, I started to unleash ten years of rage on him. And it wasn’t just normal rage. It was a blind rage that I had never known or heard of. I punched and kicked him with all of my strength and was screaming at the top of my lungs, calling him every degrading name under the sun. he was crying, trying to fight back, telling me to stop, but that just fueled me to hit him harder. Then, the flashbacks of the torture he inflicted on me struck me once again. And as if she could read my mind, Andrea ran to my room and grabbed the bullwhip. I then grabbed my dad and took him to the basement door, after which I threw him down the stairs. I ran down the stairs two at a time and leapt back on him, bashing his head against the floor. Then I said to him in a menacing voice, and one in which I had NEVER spoken in, “You WILL respect me now, motherfucker!” Andrea came down and dragged my dad over to the hanging chains that I had been on so many times before. My dad was bawling and pleading for me to stop, but what I heard was, “You stupid, worthless prick I’m gonna take the bullwhip to your ass again ” At this, I took a set of his brass knuckles and landed body shot after body shot, while Andrea chained his wrists up and left him to hang. He struggled and struggled, but could not get loose. Andrea then handed me the whip, and I screamed at my dad, “THIS IS FOR THE LAST TEN YEARS OF MY LIFE, MOTHERFUCKER!!!” And Andrea and I backed up, my dad still pleading for mercy, but it was no good; I had been pushed past the point of no return. I flung the whip back and cracked it against his back. He must have never felt anything like it, because he let out a scream like no other. This and the cut that appeared on his back were pleasing to me, and it fueled me to keep going. My rage was so blind that I can’t remember how many lashes I gave him. All I know is, when I was done with whipping him, his back resembled a first-grader’s scribbling with a red marker. Then a flashback from just moments ago came to me again. I remembered the sight of him trying to rape my mother, and then trying to rape my girlfriend, and I got the sickest idea ever. I unchained him and hit him some more. Then I saw the lead pipe that he had so many times used to bruise me up. I grabbed it and then I threw my dad over a table so that he was bent over. I then proceeded to beat his ass with it, every now and then, dealing him a blow to his gut. I then turned to Andrea, and again, she seemed to read my mind. I handed her the pipe and went back around to my dad’s front. I snarled at him, “You wanna rape my mother, AND my girlfriend?! Well, now YOU’RE gonna feel what it’s like to get raped!!!” He cried and screamed “No! No! PLEASE!” But I gave Andrea the signal to do it. She yanked his pants down and then, with all her strength, rammed the pipe into him. He must have felt pain beyond anything I had ever felt. The combined pain of Andrea ramming the pipe into his ass again and again, and the punches I was landing on him, made him scream louder than ever. I felt like a true sadist; I delighted in his agony. It continued for a good half hour of so, until I grew tired. I dragged him back upstairs and into the living room, where I threw him onto the floor. It was only then that I truly saw the aftermath of my handiwork. I had seriously fucked him up. Ten years of rage unleashed in about three-quarters of an hour. And then, I felt an uncontrollable urge to hit him again, and I obeyed it. As I let out one howling drawn-out scream, I drove every ounce of energy I had into the punch, which finally knocked him out cold . . . and then for me, everything went black as I fainted.

Six months later, my dad was the defendant in court. He faced multiple charges of child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, and I had found out that a few days before I nearly killed him, he had raped two young girls. I sat in the courtroom, looking at him with a heavy scowl on my face, every inch of me just aching with anger. It was taking so much effort to keep myself from jumping over and beating up on him again. I had already been called to the stand, and I had said my bit. I was almost surprised that I hadn’t been charged with attempted murder.
I was lost in my thoughts as I heard the judge speak, and I came back to reality.
“You may address your son.”
My dad turned to look at me and began to speak in a shaky voice.
“Listen Danny, I know what I’ve done to you is wrong. All these years of beating you up, I wish I could take it all back. I wish I’d never started drinking. Look what it’s done to us, to me, to you. It’s all my fault. What I’m trying to say is…….I’m sorry, for all the beatings, the torture, the pain. I’m sorry.”
“Now then, young man,” said the judge, “Would you like to say something on that note?” I nodded my head slowly. So I walked up to him and stared him straight into his eyes. For some reason, I could not see any remorse, and so I stared at him in pure hatred and began to speak in a low, deathly voice.
“Dad, for ten years, I’ve had to put up with all of this. Look at what you’ve made me; a problem child. For ten years, you beat me, whipped me, tortured me, damn near killed me. And I despise you for that. Although you’ve made me that much stronger, that much tougher. I would thank you for that. But you know why I can’t thank you for that? Because you crossed the damn line six months ago, when you tried to rape my mother. And there was sure as hell no turning back when you assaulted Andrea, the girl that I love, the girl that I will go to the ends of this earth to protect. You know now what I’ve been holding in for ten years. Yeah, I bet you are sorry that you made me the way I am. But after what you did to the people that I love, I cannot, and will not forgive you, EVER!”
I went back to my seat and saw that he was silently crying. Again, I felt that burn of sadism within me; I felt no remorse whatsoever in seeing him hurt.

The jury eventually came to a verdict of “guilty” on all charges, and was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for fifty years. When they said that, my dad looked as if he were about to have a heart attack. I had to cover my mouth to keep myself from laughing out loud. As Andrea and I left the courtroom that day, we looked back one last time at the man who called himself my father. His head was hung in regret and despair. I didn’t give a fuck, though. He filled my life with pain, so now it was his turn to feel true pain. I had done what I had to, and now it was over. He was carried away in a police car, still being quiet and dark. And that was the last I ever saw of him.

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