LiTTLE CHERiNE Book 03 - post098
He whispered, “Are you immortal?”
“No. Just very stupid.”
“I don’t believe I am going to say this. Robert, will you sit and have a beer with me?”
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1709
“If you have a spare cigarette. Coffee and beer only taste half as good without one.”
They sat talking late into the night, drinking too much and trying to remember every joke they have ever heard. He could not compete with Robbie, not with his Cherinian memory, and Robbie could not compete with the way Jan tells his jokes - Robbie has a rotten sense of timing and sometimes laughs while he is trying to tell a joke.
In the morning, as Jan took him to the centre of town, close to the station, he felt himself rid of the hangover and feeling fresh and full of life. He grinned at Robbie. “Could be useful having you around.”
Robbie began to turn his daily excursions into a routine. He would walk a neighbourhood, pretending to be looking for a job, though he would only knock on doors where there were persons needing his help. He would cure the servants if they needed him, but he mainly concentrated on the white community. All he needed was to be able to see the person to send his healer. There were cases where he would not be offered the opportunity and he was philosophical about it.
One day he came to a house and he stopped, tensing up. He had sensed a child that was not only ill, but in terrible pain, physically and mentally. He knew what this meant and knew he could not walk away. He knocked on the door till a woman opened it slightly.
“Go away! No work here.” He saw the bruises and used his healer to force her muscles so that she opened the door. He only gave her a small tight smile out of politeness and went straight for the bedroom of the child. He stopped at the door and looked at the little blonde boy of about five.
“It is alright, the pain will go away now. Close your eyes and go to sleep.” The healer took his pain away and sent the combination of chemicals to his brain so that the child fell asleep.
“What are you doing?” his mother asked, her voice trembling.
“Come with me and see.” She would not have, but he forced her. Tenderly he turned the boy over and pulled his pants down. It was hardly necessary to pull apart the tortured cheeks. He pulled up the top so that the bloody weals could be seen from his buttocks all the way to the frail shoulders. His skin was criss-crossed with the scars of older beatings under the fresh ones. His anus was still bleeding and gaping, black and bruised around the entrance.
“You allow him to mistreat you it is your business, you are an adult. A mother to allow this, it is monstrous.” He sat on the side of the bed and watched as the weals and scars disappeared. Then the anus was repaired till there was only a normal small boy lying there. “I cannot heal his mind...but this ends today, never again!” He pulled up the pyjama trousers and pulled down the top. “Let him sleep.”
He moved to her kitchen, his hands trembling. “A coffee please, do you have any cigarettes?”
She was in shock. As she brought him the cigarettes and made the coffee, she timorously asked, “Who are you?”
“Just another kaffir. What time does your husband return?”
“Half past six.”
He sighed. “So it has arrived. It could not be avoided.”
He sat there for hours while we watched with our hearts in our mouth.
# “Is he going to do what he did to my daddy?” Wendy asked.
# “He does not have his protector with him Wendy love.”
# “Oh!”
1710
On time, the sounds of a car parking and then of the door opening were heard. Now that her husband had arrived she became terrified again and ran to him.
“There is a black in our kitchen. I could not stop him.”
“Is he armed?”
“No.”
“Well, there are knives in there. Keep him occupied while I get my gun. Why did you open the door you stupid cunt?”
“He made me open it.”
“Jesus, your brains have turned to hogshit!”
Robbie heard, but waited calmly. The man entered with his pistol in both hands. He grinned.
“Got you, you black bastard. I can shoot you and tell the cops you were attacking me. They will believe me, else why were you in my house. Did you rape my wife?”
“Sorry, didn’t think of it. She looked as if she had been raped enough. Why don’t you shoot.”
The fingers relaxed, palms pulled apart and the pistol fell to the floor. The astonishment on his face under other circumstances would have been funny.
“Follow me.” He went to the bedroom where the healer still kept the boy asleep and the father was forced to follow. Robert showed him his son’s body. “I think you remember what he looked like this morning. All the damage, it has to go somewhere. Nature likes a balance to be kept.”
His healer hated this part, but was forced to obey, the mind of Robbie a cold and hard will that it could not defy. He orchestrated the damage, stifling the screams until the man fell unconscious. He forced the healer to bring him back and continued, methodically destroying the body with many times the sum of suffering the child had gone through. When he was finished the man was alive, but totally destroyed.
The wife had been watching, licking her lips, her eyes gleaming. When she left, Robbie did not pay attention. She returned and fired the gun. Round after round slammed into his body. Urgently now the healer fought to repair the most critical damage. He turned over and asked, “Why?”
She was certain he was dying, so she answered. “I love pain. Being hurt, but even more, giving pain. It was exciting watch you fuck up my husband. Now he will not be able to stop me hurting him. Did you think he did it to our son alone? I whipped him while his father fucked him. You’ve spoilt it for me, but you also made it more exciting. Now we can start all over again.” She looked at her husband. “Guess I’ll have to use something else now.”
Robbie sat up. We felt the tearing sensation within his heart. He has never hurt a female, how could he do it now? Not to, was to condemn the boy to years of suffering. He had badly miscalculated. As he rose to his feet she stared at him in terror.
“You have to die. You can’t get up!!”
“You saw my powers and thought you could stop me with bullets?”
She saw his eyes and her bladder let go. This might have made him stop, but he saw also a fierce hunger, eagerness for pain.
He lashed out, destroying her as he had her husband, and then he deprived her of the physical senses. No pain will ever be felt again. He took her sight, her sense of smell. With both parents as they are, the boy will have to be taken away. He sent a prayer to the God he does not believe in, pleading that the child be given a new start, a family that will care for him.
He picked up the child, carried him to the bedroom of the parents and left him sleeping. He stood in front of the mirror and looked at himself as he talked to us.
1711
“I am guessing you watched and are sickened. Alki, you asked if I would ever commit again the crime I did with the father of Wendy. I guess you have your answer now. I hope it does not fill your heart with too much sorrow.
If you have been watching all along since I arrived in this world, you will have wondered why I foretold my death. It may not be that extreme, but it will be ugly. I had not expected to lose my healer, but I pushed it too far by my destruction of the mother. It does not respond to me anymore.
Dommi, Cherine, all adult Cherinians. I plead with you, stop watching, block your minds. If you do not then my little girls will also refuse to. Torture is not as painful as watching the gruesome details and feeling the agony of the one you love while also feeling helpless to intervene. I beg you, please stop watching until this world is left behind.
As to reasons, what is the lesson? I guessed it from early on, if you understood also then you will understand why I ask you to stop watching. I cannot bear the thought of my loves, that includes all the young ones of all my Cherinians, watching this and having their hearts scarred. Please do not make me pay the price twice.”
# Dommi whispered, “He warned us that it would become a curse! I chose wrongly.”
# Cherine turned on her fiercely. “How dare you think that! Is there one of us who would not wish to suffer with our Robert? When he returns we will need to understand the changes that have been forced on him. How can we if we did not share this with him?”
# “And he will see the changes in us and grieve.” Dommi wept.
# Alki decided it was time he step in. “Roberto was present when you were faced with the decision. What he said now only shows that he is not thinking clearly, who would, knowing what he faces? Dommi, he will not blame you and I believe sharing the experiences will mature all of us. It is not only Roberto who needs to learn these lessons. If we put pressure on him at a moment of crisis and he listens to us, it could end in catastrophe for all of us. Do not worry, he may sorrow that you have all changed, but then every parent has to go through that - there is not one parent who does not have moments of regret and grief at the loss of innocence in their child. It is a part of growing up and becoming responsible adults.”
There was the sound of a car arriving and voices talking loudly. There was a banging on the door, voices calling out about having drinks with them, so open the door, in a coarser language of course. Robbie took one last look at the child, settled in his heart that on the scale of the way he sees things it is worth it. Quietly he closed the door and went to the kitchen and sat waiting. When the door did not open, lurid comments were made about them stopping their screwing and letting them in and then they started going around the house trying to see in. There was a shout as the couple were seen on the floor in the boys’ room. Robbie heard a call being made on a mobile phone and the caller urgently asked for the police and an ambulance.
Robbie smiled and getting up made his last cup of coffee. When the police broke in the door he was just finishing his coffee and putting out the stub. He stood up and raised his arms.
We expected him to get beaten, but he explained that the madam had let him in. When the husband returned he was left waiting in the kitchen. He openly told the policemen that he has lost his papers and could not leave once it was past six. When asked why he did not open the door he explained that he was afraid because he knew that he was about to be arrested and beaten up. The young cop who handcuffed him was not overly rough, showing that he understood the fears of Robbie.
“Do you know what happened here?”
“I heard the madam and the baas shouting and screaming so I stayed in here afraid to go see. Baas, when the madam let me in she was already full of bruises.” One of the friends who was present confirmed that they all knew he sometimes beat his wife.
The damages to the parents was such that none of the policemen thought it likely Robbie was to blame so they put him in their van without beating him.
1712
At the station it was a different matter. This was the year 2005 and as a result of the international boycotts, terrorist activities and hostility of the whole world, with the rest of Africa threatening to attack South Africa, the country had turned into a police state and compassion with logic were not part of the culture at the moment. The death of Mandela in the prison cells a couple of years earlier had entirely isolated the country, leaving it with no friends. The only support they got was covertly from fascist groups in America and some other countries. This was not a time that anyone would wish to be in the shoes of Robbie.
They placed Robbie in a cell with some other blacks. When questioned he explained he does not have any documents. They gave chilling and graphic details of what is about to happen and fished for information from him. He was quietly approached by some of them who claimed to belong to some extremist groups that want to kill all whites. They offered to take out messages for him. Gently he replied that he does not belong to any group. As he was obviously a foreigner, none believed him. Robbie was certain that all of them were planted there by the police.
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I hope you enjoy reading this story of fantasy, adventure and love - and should some of it be true for our reality, I hope you will love our Cherine.
Αλέξανδρος Ζήνον Ευσταθίου
(Alexander Zenon Eustace)8th November, 2019
* posted: 8th November, 2019
If you wish to read from an earlier book, from Book 01 to Book 04, use this link button to open the LC Book Index:
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