Please be advised, this has a trigger warning and no one under 21 years of age should be reading this alone.

I drilled the hole and climbed inside.  The space was at first small but then opened to darkness.  I was drilling into my father’s head after all. I closed my eyes and pressed my energy out around me. A light shown out from my body a few feet ahead of me. I knew the cellar door was nearby. I could smell the rot and decay. I walked forward tripping over this memory or that one trying to stop me.  They were nothing but memories that didn’t belong to me, so I paid them no mind. I kept hearing the screaming. The same screaming I had been hearing for years.  Faint always from the outside, but here it was a guide. My father always said I was crazy and there was no screaming.  I walked toward the sound and there it was… the cellar door!  Finally, I have my chance! I found it… the door that led to the room of horrors inside my father’s mind. So many victims, but I am the key. The skeleton key to his closet. This skeleton key is finally going to release the truth upon the world; open this chamber of horrors to the public. Let in the lights, sounds, and people from the outside. A spotlight of sorts on all the wrongs that my father has denied.  He cannot shut me up any longer.  He has no control of what happens next. We are in the ether; we are in MY REALM now. MY RULES!

I touched the padlock and it crumbled into so much dust, more than I expected. Still fighting silly man! I threw open the doors and climbed down the stairs. My hand on the ornate carved handle of the staircase.  My father was a wood worker. He did have some great talents to share if he wasn’t such a nightmare. At the bottom of the stairs, I almost missed the nest of spiders. And still, he continues to fight me. I have arachnophobia that is so severe I nearly vomit. I must remember just wave my hand, think “be gone” and it all goes away.  Nothing left but mist. The mist tried to turn to smoke like from his pipe, but I just waved my hand again. Only the familiar smell lingered.  I did have to stop and realign my senses.  Smell is the sense that holds onto memories the strongest for me. Confidently, I stepped down onto the well-manicured hard wood floors and made my way toward the west wall. The wall that was painted as a mural of all the horrors I had endured at my father’s hands and bidding. Each etching I looked at would start to move and the memory would start to happen right in front of me. I turned away quickly so as not to relive.

I had my focus on one specific memory, one truth I had to know.  I walked to the left toward the beginning.  The beginning of my life.  My mother had told me even as a baby, a few weeks old, I would scream when my father came near me or tried to touch me. I know while I’m in the ether I will be able to feel what I was thinking as a baby.  Why was I crying? Why did I scream. I am almost certain of the answer, but I must see it with my own eyes.  Prove to the world that I have had my gifts even before I was born! As I approach the beginning of the mural, I start to look for it.  A holiday gathering of my father’s family.  Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter… the times when we would go to my father’s parent’s house and “celebrate” a holiday.  I decided I also wanted to know what the rest of my family was thinking at that time straight from their minds, not through my father’s or mine as a baby. The ether lets me see and hear whatever I want.  My Karma is so high from all the torture and then all the good deeds I have done in my life. I survived and then helped other survivors. Helped others who were lost in their lives if they asked for help.

I stopped. Here it was, Christmas, the year I was born.  The mural started to move, and I used my guiding spirits to find myself. I was in my mother’s arms. She was sitting in a rocking chair with me wrapped in a blanket.  I couldn’t stop the tears. The closeness I felt coming from my baby mind. I had just come from her body, and we still had that unique and hard to describe connection that a mother and daughter have. I was warm, held tight, my mother was softly talking to me.  She was telling me she would try her best to protect me, but she may fail sometimes, and fail she did.  We have forgiveness with each other now, so I pay that no mind. She stopped talking and looked up.  She held me so tight I could hardly breathe. My infant head turned and there he was. My father, the way he really looks.  Demon is not strong enough to describe. Not dark enough. Not enough malice.  He has very little form, just a moving, crawling shadow. As he moved closer, my baby body tensed as if I had been slapped.  My baby self started to cry!  This was the moment I had been waiting for and it was very real.  I fell to my knees, in this moment I opened myself completely to my baby mind and I was petrified. I buried my face against my mother and continued to cry. My mother held me and rocked me as best she could, but I would not hold still.  In my baby mind I was running before I even knew what running was.  Trying to get as far away as possible.  My father was right upon us now.  He touched my head and I screamed! And there it was… the screaming I had heard my whole life when near my father. The screaming he said was not real. I knew it existed somewhere in my life. In the real world, in my dreams or in the ether. My baby self kept screaming as if calling for help.  I was screaming as if I knew there would be an answer, and there was.

From the next room I heard a voice I knew.  A voice I loved and made me smile. “Andy, what is wrong with Katie?” It was my father’s mother.  My Grandma Ann was a beacon in my life from the moment I was born.  I felt protected with her, not like with my mom, it was different. She loved me deeply and that was all I needed to know. My father answered by saying, “How the hell should I know.” I could feel my Grandma’s anger but it was directed at my father and that was soothing. For me and my Mother.

I had found my answers.  I could feel other souls around me now.  My other relatives and their thoughts came pouring in.  They all knew.  They knew my father was a demon. They knew he abused us.  They knew and THEY DID NOTHING! 

Finally, I now know my anger has always been justified toward my father’s family.  They knew and they did nothing to protect us.  My grandma could get him to walk away at her house, but she would not help us any more than that.  My other relatives sat with their feelings of guilt and shame. GOOD! Those feelings were deserved, and I know what the future holds for them. They all have horrible karmic retaliation.  My father’s brother, brain cancer.  His sister, disfigured and unhealthy grandchildren. My Great Aunts and Uncles, death beds long and full of pain.

Karma has always been a strong truth in my life.  She has shown herself so many times.  Helped me, taught me, pushed me, and kept me believing in myself. That is how I lived all those years in the presence of a demon and now I am the skeleton key that will tell the world the deepest darkest secret he keeps.

My father has no soul.

© 2022 “I see… what others refuse to see.
I am… what others refuse to be”
Lady Kate Phillips