The devils inventiveness a study english literature essay

To break a child’s soul is, by all accounts, difficult with all of the layered, ” agape” or un-measured, unconditional love a child is born with. To break that soul requires pain which spreads a plague destroying the proud, black soul turning it inside out. I am a junkie. I am an alcoholic. I dig into your skin like the Holy Ghost saves lives. I am your average male; however, I was raised in a prison cell with bars of light radiating from the sanctuary of God. Each day is a half-remembered nightmare like a footprint in the sand. You see my ” daddy,” I could not refer to him as father, was a relentless religious zealot, a tyrannical poster child, and a Southern preacher destined to deliver the divine love of God to imprisoned and decrepit lost souls. But in my case, he wanted retribution for the heinous crime of being an eight-year-old kid. I was lead past dead lamps down the hallway again; it lies in shadows but contains brightness compared to the coldest and meanest room in the back of the house. My screams could not be heard from there. I went into a pseudo seizure, flaying my hands, arms, feet and head in every direction. I dragged my feet and my leader, who had octopus hands, held my wrist tightly as if I were handcuffed, so I could not escape. The color black is killed by the click of a switch producing artificial light—his shadow was a giant. The white frame of horror was insulated with cheap hollow, mahogany paneling and functional modern furniture. I noted in the ” family room,” as he called it, a very comfortable easy chair where I watched cartons: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the whole loony tunes gang, and to my right was the television set, which was built into a creamy, tan-almond cabinet, and a crisscrossing checker pattern, cloth couch was in front of me along the wall. I smelled Old Spice and sweat. The only sound in the room came from a small golden German clock—four golden spheres spinning right round keeping precision timing like a metronome— housed under a curved piece of unique glass. After years my anthem became ” Tick Tock motherf*****!, tick, tock” My father, with his sixth grade education, never wept but raved: ” Pull down your pants son” he said in haste.” Please ” daddy” don’t; I’ll be good” I said in between heaving, breathless cries. I wished there was a merciful door between us. I unbuttoned my jeans at an idiotic pace, and to bide time, I tried to turn around to talk with him; plead with him— but I was too afraid to look into his dark liquid eyes. The spine of the black, leather serpentine belt was crackling as I heard my father unfastening it from his trousers. I could hear him fold the belt in half and snap it, striking the two leathers pieces together sounding like lightning bolts, and I knew the faithful instrument was alive. His hand fell on my shoulder and he said, ” This is going to hurt me more than you son,” he convinced himself. This statement would soon become a horror of horrors.” Daddy I love you why are you doing this!” I said as warm tears had inflamed and morbidly swollen my eyes. Then, as I had my back turned and my pants were around my ankles, I heard, then felt the belt uncoil and sink its teeth deeply into my flesh on my right hamstring and left calf. At first it felt like a million baby hornet stings, transcending all throughout my body crashing into bundles of nerve endings, pulling and ripping.” Pull down your underwear” he barked in his daunting bravado voice. Even more tears flushed from down my swollen red cheeks. As I obeyed his request, and as soon as the Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear slide down my now exposed bear bottom, I immediately felt the torrents of pain. It came with such intensity that my legs wobbled, and I immediately placed my hands behind my back to cover my now exposed and bleeding skin, before the next lashing. I imagined Red fire ants gnawing on the entrails of my exposed nerves to my black dying soul at the innocent age of eight. I had only one thing on my mind and this was to go somewhere to escape the pain, so I briskly went into the darkness and crossed the black river. I won’t let you break me.” Please daddy no!” ” Please, Please, Please!” There was now a warm pressure of tears. I screamed in between lashings, hyper-ventilating, breathless sobs from a dissolving face. There was no interlude. The only possibility that could save me was chance. The chance of him having a heart attack or better yet a stroke. I knew about strokes; that’s how my Grandfather died. But my screams grew more and more remote. Jerkily, I could hear him recoil the black, soulless belt and poised it like the tongue of a snake and then it came hurling forward slicing the air as it found its grove. The thrashing and lashing turned quickly into slashing, peeling open the skin like exposing the ripe skin of a bloody pink grapefruit. By now my skin was illuminating an artificial-looking blaze of an invisible sun. Spasms of hatred for my father filled my head slowly in a world of total evil. Ripples of pain, without reprieve, became a vortex of windless air. My brother could hold out no longer, and ran away at only 16; my sister married at the age of 18 to escape. I was next in line to receive God’s just and bountiful wrath. The years passed and the abuse finally stopped. I found the emergency brake of time, but too late. Now I am a grown man; a junkie; an alcoholic. My smothered memories are now limbless monsters of pain. I am a junkie. I am an alcoholic. I am bent but not broken.