Injustice for All (eBook)

Prologue

I sat in the passenger seat, watching as my mother frantically steered the white Oldsmobile Cutlass through the snow-covered streets. The windshield wipers on the old car moved quickly, but it was still very difficult to see through the blizzard-like conditions out the window. The wind was pounding, the snow was blanketing the area, and visibility was nearly zero. The road was packed with ice and snow, making travel scary, but the road conditions weren’t what worried me.

“What do we do?” I asked in terror. I pulled my Mickey Mouse blanket closer to my chest as I trembled in the front seat of the car. My seatbelt was tight around my waist, but I had pulled the chest piece around my back because it would rub against my skin, leaving an itchy red patch.

“Don’t worry,” my mother said, trying to calm my fear. “We’ll be OK.” She smiled at me quickly then turned her focus back to the road.

I didn’t believe her. Not that she was a liar, but I was young, scared, and deep down inside I knew how this night was going to end. We were surely going to die. I wasn’t scared of the snow or the ice-covered roads. I wasn’t worried about us going off the road and getting stranded in a ditch.

I was deathly afraid of the man on top of our car.

He was without shoes. In fact, he was without much of anything. He wore blazing white knee-high socks with two large red rings that circled the top and they dangled off the roof. They would slam into the windshield every few seconds, sending a chill up my spine. Goosebumps popped up all over my arms and neck tonight.

His body would occasionally slide around, revealing only his blue and white underwear. That’s right, this man in the bitter cold of a winter storm was wearing socks and underwear while he rode on top of the car.

Was he crazy? I would often ask myself, not just on that day, but almost every day. Someone like that had to be crazy. That was the only thing that made sense to me. I was only six, but I tried to justify the reason things happened the way they did.

I closed my eyes tightly, hoping this nightmare would come to an end. I found myself thinking about a life without this man. I thought about my mother and me sitting on the couch watching Fraggle Rock or even the nightly news (which wasn’t something I even cared about), just enjoying the time I had with my mom. I was getting tired of worrying about him coming through the front door.

Unfortunately, my visions of happiness were short lived. “Stop this fucking car!” he screamed from atop the roof. He was now looking at us through the windshield. Somehow, he managed to turn himself completely around without falling off. I should have known he could. He was strong, with forearms bigger than Popeye’s and veins that would stick out in a really scary way. He wasn’t super tall, but he didn’t really have a neck and he always talked about how strong he was anytime we were watching a show on TV, comparing himself to the “weak pieces of trash” as he called them.

All that ran through my young mind was, How was he going to get me? How could he hurt us? Now he’s right there.

This was my nightmare. This was my fear. This was my horror. And there was only one way this was ending. I looked over at my mom and could see it in her eyes. All this driving, for what seemed like hours, was really only around the block, hoping he would fall off the car, but the reality of the situation was nothing but a vast and black hole filled with terror. She knew the same exact thing I did: we weren’t going anywhere but back to the house.

I knew why, but I didn’t want to accept it. She wanted to protect me first and foremost and driving around on ice- and snow-covered roads with limited visibility would only lead us into a ditch somewhere between Americus and Emporia. There was no one out, leaving the roads empty, and us alone.

I knew what she had planned, in fact we lived in a world where we were alone and the only person my mom could count on was her six-year-old son and, in a way, that gave each of us strength. Who was I kidding, this wasn’t going to end well for either of us, but we had to try. We had to make it to the next morning, because that’s what this was all about, surviving the night. That was always the only thing that mattered. We had to make it through the night.

Again, I was pulled from my thoughts. Mom turned down the street toward our house and that’s when he slid down the windshield. He continued his screaming, but I tried to block it out. There was an old football field on the right with a small park and a trailer park on the left where my best friend, Dusty, lived. I almost wanted to scream out the window but knew that would only give him a chance of getting into the car.

Mom held the wheel so tight that her hands were bright white. It wasn’t just her hands, all the color had disappeared from her face, too. For the first time in my life, I knew my that Mom, the strongest person on the planet, was scared to death. Only a few blocks away from the house and she knew, deep down inside, she wouldn’t see the sun tomorrow.

I slid across the seat and wrapped my arms around her. I told her that everything would be OK. I felt her tears hit my shirt, but I wasn’t going to let go and I wasn’t going to shed a tear, not tonight. My mom needed me, and I was going to be there. No matter how scared I was, I knew I had to be strong. I knew I had to be the strength for both of us. I knew my mom may not be there for the sun to rise in the morning if I wasn’t.

Mom said, “We have to run. Run as fast as you have ever run before. When we get inside, we have to lock the door and push the table in front of it.”

“Do you think that’s going to do anything?” I asked.

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.” She knew it wasn’t going to do anything, just like I did. It didn’t matter though. She, we, needed something, anything.

We had a small mudroom, so what mom really meant was get behind the wood door to the kitchen, not the crappy glass one that brought you into the mudroom. The wood door opened to our kitchen and dining room which had a nasty black-and-white checkered laminate floor and the worst wallpaper you could imagine. The sink and fridge were on the right wall and the door to my room was on the back wall. Along the rest of the back wall, I had built up a little remote racetrack. It was crap, but it entertained me while I listened to Mom and him argue night after night. On the left side of the kitchen were cabinets and the entry into the living room.

The living room was a different sort of monster, with orange-ish walls, a weird yellow couch, brown recliner, and free-standing gun cabinet. There was also an old, giant box TV positioned on the floor. You know, the kind that doubles as a shelf because it’s surrounded by a wood cabinet and it’s big enough to hold up a house. I hated the thing because the knobs never worked. Well, that was our house, more or less.

We were close now, only feet from the driveway. Mom swung her door open before she ever turned the car off. I watched her jump out and quickly followed. Running from the car to the front door felt like forever, or running through the mud at my grandparents’ farm.

“Don’t look back!” she screamed as she ran.

Of course, the first thing I did was look back and I’m glad I did. I turned back just as he fell from the hood of the car and slammed his bare butt onto the ice and snow of our gravel driveway. I quickly turned back around, but with a smile on my face.

I continued to run, and my little legs were hurting something fierce. That’s when I heard him screaming like crazy. He was even more angry, so I dropped the little blanket I had in my hand and jumped for the door. Mom grabbed me, threw me inside, and slammed the glass door shut behind us. She quickly locked it as I moved behind the big wood door of our house. The mudroom was all that stood between us and that demon man heading our way.

Mom shut the door quickly and held it shut as I used all the strength in my body to push the kitchen table over. She looked through the small window of the wood door and there he was staring back at her. He wasn’t trying to get in. He was trying to show that he had us right where he wanted us, back in his house.

We pushed against the table together, my mom and I were acting as one.

BAM!

The door pushed slightly, but we pushed back.

BAM!

The door pushed again, and we were there to match it, but that’s when it happened.

“Run baby,” Mom said. “Run!”

I looked at her, not knowing why she would send me away, but she did. The door flew open, pushing both of us to the ground. I crawled into the living room. I turned to see him grab her hair and lift her to her feet. One hand tangled through her long blonde locks, the other wrapped around her neck, and he held her there. He looked over at me and smiled.

I yelled for him to put her down, but he just continued to smile at me. Mom fought back with everything her ninety-pound body could give, but this man, this demon in a human costume was the strongest man I had ever seen. He had veins on top of other veins and muscles on top of other muscles.

He shoved her down onto the kitchen floor. I watched as his leg came back and then slammed into her side, sending her into the wall. I wanted to do something, anything, but what could I do? I was smaller than his leg. I was weak. I was scared. I was a child.

He...