I have the name of a demon... | Short Story

He would arrive late at night smelling of alcohol, sweat and cigarettes. That smell, like his voice and his steps, made my mother and me shudder.

My mother told me how they were engaged, they were a common couple; they went to the movies, to eat, they went dancing together, but soon after the wedding everything changed, he became very jealous, they started arguing, he always called to ask her where she was and with whom, he did not leave her alone.

In the family reunion she could not talk to a cousin or an aunt, not even to my grandmother, since he was always very close as if he thought they were talking about him and he had to come closer to listen, he always wanted to know what she was talking about with whoever. Several times he missed work to follow her and see what she was doing, he thought my mom was flirting with all men.

One day while my father was following my mother, she ran into a childhood friend, they started talking and I guess he didn't like that very much because he went without hesitation as fast as he could and in one hit he threw my mother's friend into a wall, the dazed man didn't know what was going on and my mother kept screaming and repeating "I'm sorry", my father took her by the arm with a lot of strength and screamed that if he saw her talking to a man again he would beat her to death.

Shortly after that incident, my mother became pregnant with me. She told me that my father did not want children, but when I was born it seemed like a miracle, since the man who was abusing and harassing her so much had calmed down. He had stopped following her, But he had started coming to the house very late because as soon as he finished work on construction he would immediately go to the bar. My mother stayed in the house all day taking care of me, pampering me as much as she could, taking me for walks in the garden and telling me stories of her youth and how happy she was, she told me that in spite of everything she was still happy.

The happiness didn't last long, it ended one day when my father went to the bar after work and there he gambled with some drunkards all night, he lost all the money he had been paid that day, the money of a whole month.

Everything went very fast, he arrived at the house, kicked the door and went running to the room to yell at my mother that why she didn't get a job instead of whoring around with the neighbors, my mother, scared, couldn't understand what was happening. I ran into the room, the screams had woken me up, there I saw my father angry and my mother terrified, I'll never forget her terrified face, the face of the woman who once smiled while I was read a story in the garden and she died of fear before the demon my father had become. He started shouting at my mother, telling her that she was a prostitute and that I was probably not his son but some tramp she had slept with, my mother didn't say anything, she just cried. I don't remember very well what happened, I only know that I went to ask my father to stop shouting because the neighbors would hear and come, he turned around, looked at me and slapped who threw me to the wall that was two meters away from me, I was only 8 years old and very thin, that was the first of many blows. My mother went crazy, threw herself at him and started scratching him as much as she could but my father was very strong and He gave her a hook strong enough to throw her just a few inches away from me. I couldn't believe what had happened, the man who did nothing but ignore me, work, and rarely said anything beyond "I'm hungry, make me dinner", "get out of here, you little brat", had turned into a monster. I was in shock and my mother the same, at that moment I remember that she didn't feel any pain, maybe it was because of the shock of everything, but I couldn't stop seeing my mother who seemed to think that we were going to die, her face was something that I can't explain with words, I think that what she feared so much became a reality, I remember clearly how her eyes lost all the shine that they possessed. My father left the room but not before saying "If you leave, I will kill you".

Our life became a lottery, we didn't know who would come to the house at night, man or beast, one day he could come to eat and then go to sleep or another day he could come drunk and beat my mother for reasons that he only invented, I could have stayed all those times in my room and not go out but I couldn't abandon my mother, I always tried to protect her from that monster.

When he wasn't around, my mother and I would talk, we would think that he had another family since sometimes he wouldn't come back for days, but even so my mother didn't have the courage to leave since she thought that he would find us and kill us.

All that ended when I turned 12 years old, it was Saturday afternoon and my mother made me a little hotcake with a little candle, she sang happy birthday to me, all this had to be secret since my father didn't like birthdays at all. As we were returning from the garden to enter the house, we noticed that my father, as always, was on the couch in front of the television, we thought he was asleep since he had dropped the glass of whisky from his hand but still had the cigarette very firmly between his chubby fingers. It was a while before we realized that he was not waking up, he had taken a while to ask my mom to cook something, when my mom came to see him, she realized that the red eyes of that man had lost all the life he had, he had died, he had had a heart attack.

Anyone would think that everything was over but it's not, my mother still wakes up at night screaming and scared, I always go and lie down next to her, I will always be with her.

I didn't feel anything when my father died, just emptiness, as everything in the house became very quiet.

Only once I visited his grave, I was only 14 years old, I don't know very well why it provoked me to go, maybe out of curiosity to see if I felt something, I only felt hatred, I hated knowing that I would spend the rest of my life with the same name that was written on that grave.