A Night With My Grandmother

Strangely my childhood is not one that I remember all too well, some children recall everything even saying they remember being born. Me thats not quite true with, I didn't have a remarkable childhood nor did I have an unremarkable childhood, I would say from the pictures I have seen that it was happy, one filled with birthdays and bicylces, trick or treating, and christmas presents. However unlike most people who experience traumatic events and then can't recall them due to shock or horror, I can honestly recall every instance of the worst night of my life. Even thinking of it now makes the hair on the back of my neck stand upright, and the shiverees to bubble all over my forearms. I'm going to tell you about the night my parents left me all alone with my grandmother, the night they didn't come back till I was completely hysterical. I never really liked my grandmother which is not atypical for a young boy, all of my friends used to tell me how much they loved their grandmothers and how they would bake them cookies and knit them sweaters with their names on them, not mine, she drank scotch, loved Yahtzee, and smoked Marlboro reds from 8-80 from what I heard my mother say when she was not around.
My grandmother was a powerful woman, one of those women small in stature but powerful in spirit, she could move mountains with a lift of a brow, and freeze pit bulls with a stare from her cold blue eyes. She was at times someone I loved although I couldn't tell you why, she had no real endearing qualities, I think it was that instilled love the kind you have because your expected to love the person because of their hierarchy in your family, but no I definitely never liked my grandmother. Strangely my parents always left me with her when they went away, like she was a loving moral authority figure! It was likely due to the fact that at the age of 88 my grandmother moved in with us after a minor heart attack, but i think it was because my parents were too lazy to get a babysitter.
This particular night like all upsetting stories occurred on a dark and stormy night, one where the wind was howling and the moon was full and all manner of creatures stalked the night searching for souls and young boys to eat. That last line was one directly from a story my grandmother used to tell me before bedtime.
Sneaking out of bed, I peeked through a crack in my door at my grandmother who was sitting in her rocker in the next room, her gaunt face concentrating on the fire crackling in the hearth, with each rock she took another drink of her Johnny walker scotch, slowly lowering the levels of her drink and the color from a rich caramel to a dirty brown. I prayed she had forgotten about me, sometimes she would when her drinking was in excess, sometimes I prayed, please let it be a sometime! My breathing was that of a small child trying to control their breath inexperiencedly which only resulted in the holding which eventually caused the deep louder breathing that was being attempted to be masked in the beginning.
Wait....the rhythmic creak of the rocker stopped.....I look again through the crack into the mad drunken eyes of my grandmother! A loud yelp slides out of my tightly sealed lips, and I bolt for the bed and the protection of my covers, strangely my feet and hands are pistioning but I'm not moving any closer to the bed...if anything I am moving further and further away! Whimpering I realize that my night shirt, my favorite one with the motorcycles on it is around my shoulders pulled against my neck and I'm being drug through the living room to the fireplace.
The mad woman cackles and oh god! How the feeling of fear permeated from my body, it was worse then the scary movie your afraid of most, the time you got pulled over when you were drinking, or when your dad was on his way home to whip your ass for doing something to piss off your mother. Those mad eyes locked with mine and bubbles of fear pocketed on my skin, those clammy hands wrapped around my throat cutting off my ability to breath. She moved her mouth close to mine and the smell of the drink flowed from her mouth to mine, I felt intoxicated but it did not do its job in numbing the lashing I received from her with the hot iron poker from her fireplace, from her favorite spot in all the house she hit me over and over across the back with a hot fiery red poker. Screaming for her to stop, she spat obscenities about me spying on her in her own house, and how no rotten boy deserved to live where she broke bread. Over and over I felt the pain rise then fall till numbness...then blackness....M
My parents found me lying in the floor half a bottle of johnny walker at the foot of the rocker next to me, a now jet black cool poker laying next to my bloody back. They rushed to my side begging me to tell them what happened? I tried to speak but words could not form, I was in shock, but it was the shock that locked those awful memories into my mind forever, locked eternally the fear of my grandmother into my very being. Finally I spoke, revealing the truth, that my grandmother had been the one that beat me savagely. Eyes looked at me with crazed amazement! For you see my grandmother had died the day of her heart attack, she moved in not so soon afterwards, and strangely I was the only person that had ever seen her. I know have a residence in a hospital for the disturbed and the insane, no one has ever believed my story although I know my mother still finds half empty bottles of johnny walker by the fire and the rocker on a regular basis, I'm sure she just passes it off in her mind that its my father, but you and I know better.