My Dad the Dick

I had been searching for a quick post to throw up when thankfully my friend Mrs D/3 Men and a Lady, wrote a terrific post today reminding me of a long suppressed forgotten ‘ghost story’ of my own…     

See, my dad was sometimes a dick, to put it mildly. He was a heavy drinker, with a penchant for terrorizing his son practical jokes.     

    

I was at the tender age of 13 when he recommended King’s Pet Semetery. I was already an avid reader (I had already read The Talisman and loved it), plus I loved animals…so why not? He’d call me just to ask where I was in the book which I found pretty odd since he rarely called me before.     

During the time I was reading the book, he and his new girlfriend stopped over my mom’s house unexpectedly to tell me, with tears in their eyes…that his cat had been hit by a car. His cat (which was black) had apparently made it home in terrible shape and died an hour later. They had buried it in the backyard. I was upset.     

Two or three weeks after I’d told him that I’d finished the book he invited me to spend the night at his house. I always loved that because they would let me drink two beers with them. His girlfriend was only 19 BTW. He was not always a stellar dad…     

After the two beers did their magic on my underage bladder I had to use the bathroom, which was in the basement. He told me that the all the lights down there were out and to take a flashlight with me. I didn’t like this since the basement was already windowless, dank, cobwebby and spooky as hell to begin with.     

I made my way down the wooden, creaky stairs slowly and saw that the door to the bathroom was closed. When I opened the door I saw to my horror that the tiled walls and floor were covered in blood. Then there was the cat….the dead fucking cat….covered in blood, practically leaping at me to get out of the room he was locked in. I didn’t really comprehend that the cat was rushing towards me to escape the bathroom of course; I thought he was going to try to eat my brain.     

That's a dead cat

I froze in shock and panic for what seemed hours but was probably 10 seconds as the bloody, dead, brain eating cat shot out between my quivering legs and took off like a dead, bloody, brain eating cat out of hell. First I screamed. Then I ran.     

My dad’s house was almost exactly one mile from my mom’s house. At that age I was running a mile in the low six minute range. That night I probably ran the world’s first three-minute mile, followed immediately by excessive vomiting.     

My dad did eventually apologize and told me it was all fake blood, and a set up. The cat was fine of course. But it did take me a little while to forgive him. And I started bringing a friend or two when I was going to spend the night. While I do forgive him and know that he was a ‘fun guy’ if a little misguided, I also do very much remember that he could be a real dick. So much in fact, that this may be the first of a long running series with this title. Not that I’m resentful or anything….