By Douglas Goff
Do you believe in monsters? I do. I was having one of those truly deep and comfortable childhood sleeps, that as an adult you were never quite able to return to.
“I told you to be quiet!” he screamed as he spanked my behind quite hard. I had been torn from my deep slumber into a confusing and painful reality.
“Now go to sleep,” he growled. He had blown through like a tornado, the whole thing ending as quickly as it had started. One of my siblings must have been talking and he had mistakenly thought that it was I.
That was one of my earliest memories of Dean Paul, occurring somewhere around the age of six or seven. Dean Paul was my stepfather. My real father had run off with his secretary a year before, and had “conveniently” forgotten that he had kids.
Soon after, Dean Paul had come into our lives. When he married my mother, our church had hailed him as a hero for marrying a woman with four small children, when he was already raising two daughters of his own.
Dean Paul was a short stocky man, with short black curly hair. He bore strong facial features and he had a habit of licking his lips in a lizard like fashion. When he concentrated hard, his mouth would involuntarily form the shape of an “O”. He would answer us children with grunts, as if his words were too precious to waste on the likes of us.
He had worked at the local rail yard for several years, unloading boxcars. This had given him a tough muscular body. He was a very strong man with very strong hands. Those hands were large hairy monstrosities with big knuckles. Those hands were just barely too large for his arms, and at first glance, something seemed to be off. Have you ever entered a room where a picture was crooked? You know that something is askew, but you just can’t quite put your finger on it. That was Dean Paul, something askew.
I can remember the way that he would double up his leather belt and wrap those big hands around each end. Next, he would “flex” the belt creating a snapping sound. He would do this every single time before he would spank us. A hint of sadistic pleasure would dance across his face when he snapped that belt. I grew to hate that sound.
Dean Paul was a very religious man, yet there was something lurking within him, just below the surface. Something angry that was always straining to burst free. Something that he could barely control and when he lost it and it was free, then you had better not be the closest one to him.
That something was a monster. Adults could rarely see it, but all six of us kids knew. All of the neighborhood kids knew. They would stay away from our house. Even animals knew.
Our cats would run away when they saw him coming. Probably had a lot to do with the fact that he threw them in the pool quite often. My brother and I would get very scratched up rescuing them. He tripped over our favorite cat, Snowball, once. He put that cat in a plastic trash bag and smashed it against the wall in front of us. I also had the horror of watching him stomp baby rabbits to death that had set up a burrow in our garden.
Dean Paul was a devout enigma. Always two doses of church on Sunday and a healthy dose of wife beating on Monday, followed up by verbal abuse for us children the rest of the week. Dean Paul never directly punched us kids when we were young, but any minor offense and he would unleash the monster on the end of that belt directly to our bottoms. My brother and I also became real friendly with a few walls that Dean Paul enjoyed bouncing us off when his belt wasn’t nearby.
Dean Paul got home from work at five and dinner had to be on the table at 5:30 or mom was in for it. Tuesday was liver and spinach night. We kids hated it If you didn't finish every bite you sat at the table until 9 o'clock bedtime. For years my tuesday ritual was spending three and a half hours sitting at the dinner table. I still can't touch liver or spinach to this day.
Dean Paul would have made Hasbro proud because he was good at games. Mind games. One time my mother let us watch a variety musical show called The Captain and Tennille. Dean Paul believed that the Captain was a minion of the devil, and to prove his point, he shoved my mother hard. She flew across the room, landing on top of my younger brother, nearly fracturing his leg and causing a severe ankle sprain.
Ten minutes later, after the monster had returned to its cage, Dean Paul came back into the living room with a white sheet over his head and said “Boo, I am a ghost.” I guess that was his way of making up with humor. We didn’t think that he was funny, but he sure did. He never laughed though. It was more like a half-snarl, half-snort sound that I couldn’t mimic, even if I tried. That was Dean Paul. Abusing one minute and joking the next.
On one occasion, when I was nine, my mom sent me out to work on the car with Dean Paul so that we could "bond". He looked me right in the eye and said, "Ya know, I always wanted a son."
I couldn't believe my ears. He was going to finally acknowledge me and say something nice it was a break thru!
He finished his statement with, "Too bad I got a sniveling snot-nosed pansy like you." I just walked away. Words scar at that age.
Dean Paul was also a sneak. He would attempt to creep up the stairs to our rooms when we were supposed to be sleeping, anxious to punish for any real or imagined offense that he could find. His knee would make a popping sound as he climbed those stairs, alerting us to his presence. The six of us kids would lie there, as quiet as church mice, listening for the popping of that knee and all that it brought with it.
Dean Paul’s talents didn’t end there. He was also a world class spy that would have made James Bond proud. He was paranoid that we were always doing something to spite him. When one of us children stepped out of line and Dean Paul didn’t know who the culprit was, he would put us all together in my oldest sister’s room. He would meticulously monitor his watch and enter the room every ten minutes and spank us all until somebody would confess. He called it the Round Robin.
I can remember one particular session of Round Robin that lasted two hours when my younger sister had dropped a roll of toilet paper into the toilet and had tried to hide it in a trashcan. More than ten spankings each. What a price we paid for that 30-cent roll of toilet paper!
Years later, my mother told me that Dean Paul had picked my oldest sister’s room so that he could listen to us through a vent in an adjoining room. He must have really enjoyed those terrifying conversations between the six of us trying to get the guilty party to confess. The fact that he still spanked all six of us, even when he knew who the guilty party was, really showed his true nature. He relished in misery and fear.
Dean Paul would act very abruptly and irrationally at times. He had a rule that we could not leave our bikes in the driveway, so as you can guess, we would rather cut our finger off than leave a bike in that driveway. Unfortunately, my new best friend Duane did not know about the bike rule, nor did he know about the monster that resided at our house.
One day, Duane left his new BMX bike in the driveway. Dean Paul ran that thing over three times with his old Dodge van, snorting at a crying Duane, “I’m guessing that you don’t leave your bike in my driveway again!” Needless to say, Duane didn’t want to be best friends anymore.
The one encounter with the monster that really haunts me is the Great Basketball Incident that occurred when I was twelve. I was actually fairly good at basketball and liked to play with my brother. Occasionally, Dean Paul would make us play a game of 21 with him. He would run around, knocking us down, calling every basket that he hit his Bread and Butter shot. It was his scheme to shoot long shots, keeping the game close, and then he would run in for an easy basket to steal our victory at the last moment.
I was unaware of how angry the monster was that day. Dean Paul bowled my little brother over and ran in to finish the game with an easy lay-up…and missed! Call it fate, or misfortune, but the rebound landed right in my arms and I could see Dean Paul bearing down on me like a raging locomotive.
I just tossed the ball, more out of fear than anything, towards the basket. 'Swooosh!' It was hardly even an attempt and should never have gone in, but it did. How I wish it hadn’t. At the moment, I was happy to have won. The joy was short lived as a flash of orange whizzed towards my head. Instinctively, I ducked and the basketball narrowly missed me, slamming into the garage door.
He had thrown the ball so hard that the force of the impact shattered three of the four windows on the garage door. Before I could react, Dean Paul grabbed a fistful of my shirt and screamed in my face, “I let you win! Say it! Say it! I let you win!”. After I said it, he stormed off screaming back at me that he had let me win and no twelve-year-old could beat him at anything. He never played basketball with me again.
One time Dean Paul beat my mom so bad that he injured her back and she ended up in the hospital. That was the straw that broke the…well, you get it. We packed up and left a short time later. He stalked us through our teenage years, but eventually found a new wife.
I no longer associate with Dean Paul. I had heard that he remained a board member at our old church until he punched one of his teen-aged daughters in the face and broke her nose during service. They asked him to leave the church after that. I heard it from a reliable source, the daughter who got punched.
He also used to steal off the train cars a lot, and I was told that he got caught stealing some fur coats from a boxcar and he busted up the guy that reported him pretty good. The last sad thing that I had heard was that his new wife had tried to kill herself a few times.
So, I spent seven key years, six to twelve-years-old, living in pure terror. My days of being raised by a wife-beater, thief, sneak, spy, abuser damaged me. I am an introvert. In high school I was anti-social and had not one friend. Not one. I didn’t interact well with males, especially in positions of power. I suffered from a medium level of repetitive OCD. I have also been prone to bursts of anger and severe impatience, which have caused me some problems in life. I have conquered many of these issues with age, experience, and faith.
Now back to my original question. They don’t have googly eyes or antennaes on their heads. They aren’t covered in fur and have hideous faces. They don’t hide under our beds or live in our closets. They walk amongst us. So, do you believe in monsters. I do.
(Dean Paul is his first and middle name. Last name not presented for obvious reasons)
| Author Notes | These were some tough formative years. I often say the USMC was my daddy. I believe enlisting saved me from jail. As a youth I made Crime Stoppers a few times and was on a bad path. Now I am a retired federal agent, and have a beautiful wife and six kids. One graduated from Wayne State and one is currently in college. So, life may dish it out, but I think a lot depends on what you decide to eat...but that is a story for future pages...Also I think that writing about this is the final nail in the monsters coffin. |
By Douglas Goff
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(Dean Paul: The Punisher.
Biographical Series About My Childhood.
This Story Deals With Domestic Violence Issues.)
Dean Paul settled into our family like a hurricane slamming into the East Coast. He was a strict authoritarian dictator. We learned quickly that we were living in his house. He set the rules and disobedience was dealt with swiftly. Often these were physical punishments.
The way Dean Paul would double up his leather belt and wrap those big meaty hands around each end haunts my memories. He ‘flexed’ the belt creating a snapping sound. He did this every single time before he spanked us. A hint of sadistic pleasure danced across his face when he snapped that belt. I grew to hate the sound.
Dean Paul never directly punched us kids when we were young, but any minor offense and he would unleash the monster on the end of that belt directly to our bottoms. My brother, Ken, and I became very friendly with a few walls that Dean Paul enjoyed bouncing us off of when his belt wasn’t nearby.
When one of us kids stepped out of line and Dean Paul didn’t know who the culprit was, he would put us all together in my sisters’ room. The brutish man would meticulously monitor his watch and enter the room every ten minutes and spank us all until somebody confessed to the perceived offense. If nobody confessed, he left, only to return in ten minutes for the next round of spankings. He called it the Round Robin.
One particular session of Round Robin lasted two hours when my sister Joni accidently dropped a roll of toilet paper into the toilet and tried to hide it in a trashcan. More than ten spankings each. What a price we paid for that 30-cent roll of toilet paper!
Years later, I found out that Dean Paul had picked my sisters’ room so that he could listen to us through a vent in an adjoining room. He must have really enjoyed those terrifying conversations between the six of us trying to get the guilty party to confess. The fact that he still spanked all of us, even when he knew who the guilty party was, really showed his true nature. He reveled in misery and fear.
It may find this hard to understand, but sometimes his words were worse than his punishments. On one occasion, when I was nine, my mom sent me out to work on the car with Dean Paul so that we could ‘bond’. He looked me right in the eye and said, "Ya know, I always wanted a son."
I couldn't believe my ears. He was going to finally acknowledge me and say something nice. It was a breakthrough!
Dean Paul finished his statement with, "Too bad I got a sniveling snot-nosed pansy like you." I just walked away. I learned at a young age that sometimes words scar deeper than a belt.
| Author Notes | I had to switch horses mid-stream. My fantasy fiction needs a lot of work so I am going to finish this Dean Paul series. |
By Douglas Goff
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Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
(Part Three-Dean Paul: The Ghoul.
Biographical Series About My Childhood. This story deals with extreme violence against animals.)
***TRIGGER WARNING: This is not a trigger warning to lure you to read. This bothered me, alot. If you are an animal lover and sensitive then it is BEST you skip this one.***
Dean Paul presented himself to others as a hard-working fatherly man, but something was lurking within him, just below the surface. Something angry that was always straining to burst free. Something that he could barely control and when he lost it and it was free, then you had better not be the closest one to him.
That something was a monster. Adults could rarely see it, but all six of us kids knew. My stepsisters Diane and Joni knew. My brother Ken knew. My sisters Julie and Lisa knew. All of the neighborhood kids knew. They would stay away from our house. Sadly, even animals knew.
One day, we were working in the garden and a large rabbit ran from a nearby burrow. Dean Paul, who was wearing gloves, stuck his hand down the hole, pulling out several tiny baby rabbits.
I watched with great horror as he stomp the baby rabbits to death, one by one, with his big work boots. All the while snort laughing as he glared at Ken and I. I was only ten years old and my brother had just turned nine. After that, each time I was forced to go back to the garden I got sick to my stomach.
The rabbits were just the tip of the iceburg. Dean Paul was in a constant war with my sisters’ cats. There were three. Pookie, Snowball, and Tiger. Pookie and Tiger were stripped silver and black Tabby’s.
Snowball was a pure white rare beauty with light blue eyes. Not a hint of any other color on her. Pure white cats with blue eyes are extremely rare and come in at less than 1.5 percent of the feline population. She was a kind and loving animal.
My stepfather’s hatred of the cats intensified after he had spent several months training a blackbird to eat from his hand. He named the bird Fernando. One of the cats also developed a strong like for Fernando, and ate him.
Soon, our cats would flee when they saw Dean Paul coming. This had a lot to do with the fact that he had started throwing them into the pool whenever he caught them. Chortling in his half-snorting, half-snarling way.
He would launch the terrified animals off the back deck of the house, flinging them twenty-feet into the air, hissing and mewling as they hit the deep waters. My brother and I would get all scratched up rescuing the panic-stricken animals.
One day Dean Paul tripped over our favorite cat, Snowball. He put the squealing animal into a plastic trash bag and smashed her against the concrete block garage wall in front of us. I still have trouble coming to grips with that.
Tigger and Pookie disappeared a short time later. I’m not sure if Dean Paul killed them or if my mother took them away to save them. I have always hoped it was the latter. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
Okay, I planned to write more in this chapter, but I am having trouble continuing. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t cry as I wrote this series, but this addition has proven me a liar.
I think I’m going to have to take a break here and clear my head from all the bad memories. The next installment we will get into Dean Paul’s holiness.
| Author Notes | Now you can see why it has taken me so long to finish these. Some is repeated. Trying to organize this. |
By Douglas Goff
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Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
(Dean Paul: The Deacon.
Biographical Series About My Childhood. This story deals with domestic violence.)
My mother was a religious woman, and Dean Paul followed suit soon after they married. He moved up rather quickly in the Missionary Church that the family started attending.
Meanwhile Dean Paul was bringing home treasures from the railyard that he was stealing off boxcars. There was a cornfield next to the church, and on a few occasions, he would have us kids steal corn from the field before we left the church parking lot for home.
In the beginning, Dean Paul was good at compartmentalizing and hiding various aspects of his life. This led to his promotion to the church board as a Deacon. Deacon Dean was very proud of his position.
Now, when he spanked us he would spout scripture. He would sit us all down and spout scripture at us for hours. Dean Paul and my mom went to Ecuador as missionaries.
They wanted to take us children on the next trip so they brought in an eighteen-year old woman named Carmen to teach the family Spanish. That ended when my stepfather started sending Carmen love letters and the pastor had to step in.
A boy from church named Bobby started ‘courting’ my older sister, Diane. During one Sunday sermon Dean Paul caught Bobby and Diane kissing in the sanctuary balcony. Deacon Dean chased Bobby through the parking lot screaming, “I’ll Kill you, you mother *&%#$*. I’ll murder you you dirty son of a *&%#* ! Half-the church observed the un-Godly spectacle.
On another occasion, a man gave his emotional testimony in front of the whole church about how he had defeated pornography and his addiction to masturbation. Christians are a forgiving people.
Dean was not. After the service, he announced in the lobby, with much ado, that he would not be shaking the hand of the former masturbater. Comical now, but embarrassing then.
Initially, we had thought that mother was unaware of Dean Paul’s violent nature. But she had seen things. On a couple of occasions someone had beaten Dean into a parking spot. Oh boy!
The first time it happened the person had left the car running. (It was the seventies.) Dean Paul got into their car and moved into the driving lane and took the spot. The second time, he pushed the car out of the spot with his bumper.
On the third occasion, he chased a young man into a grocery store and started beating on him until my mother pulled him off. They had to flee the store for fear he would be arrested,
When Lisa, the youngest child turned five, she got ahold of Dean Paul’s tape measure and was playing with it. We were not allowed to touch anything of his, but she didn’t know any better.
Lisa saw his rage and ran from him, but he caught her on the steps and started beating her backside with his fists while screaming incoherently. My mother had to pull him off the kindergartener.
A few years into the marriage, mom became the focus of his anger and Dean Paul started hurting her. It began mildly with harsh grabs of the arms that left bruising but graduated into full-on choking that nearly left her unconscious on many occasions.
Dean Paul was a devout enigma. Two doses of church on Sunday and a healthy dose of wife beating on Monday, followed up by verbal abuse for us children the rest of the week.
| Author Notes | A bit less harsh this week . . . . |
By Douglas Goff
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Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
(Dean Paul: The Madman.
Biographical Series About My Childhood. This story deals with domestic violence.)
The brutish man was paranoid that the family was always plotting something to spite him. He would attempt to creep up the stairs to our rooms when we were supposed to be sleeping, anxious to punish for any real or imagined offense that he could find.
Dean Paul’s knee would make a popping sound as he climbed those stairs, alerting us to his presence. The six of us kids would lie there frozen in fear, as quiet as church mice, listening for the popping of that knee and all that it brought with it. He thought himself a world class spy that would have made James Bond proud.
Sometimes Dean Paul would act very abruptly and irrationally. He had a rule that we could not leave our bikes in the driveway, so as you can imagine, we would rather cut our finger off than leave a bike in the driveway. Unfortunately, my best friend Duane did not know about the bike rule, nor did he know about the monster that resided in our house.
One day, Duane left his brand new BMX bike in the driveway. Dean Paul ran that thing over with his old Dodge van, then backed over it again for good measure. He snorted at a crying Duane, “I’m guessing you don’t leave your bike in my driveway again!” Needless to say, Duane didn’t want to come over to our house anymore.
Tuesday was liver and spinach night. We kids hated it. If you didn't finish every bite you sat at the table until 9 o'clock bedtime. For years, my Tuesday ritual was spending three and a half hours sitting at the dinner table.
One time I tried to force it down and threw it back up onto my plate. Dean Paul expected me to eat it. I still can't touch liver or spinach to this day without getting sick to my stomach.
On another occasion, when I was 8, my mother let us watch a variety musical show called The Captain and Tennille Show. It involved the couple engaging in singing and dancing.
Dean Paul believed that the Captain was a minion of the devil and Tennille was a whore because she wore dresses above the knee. To prove his point, he shoved my mother hard. She flew across the room, landing on top of my younger brother, nearly fracturing his leg and causing a severe ankle sprain.
Ten minutes later, after the monster had returned to its cage, Dean Paul came back walking down the stairs. He was covered from head to toe in a white sheet as he slowly descended. My eight year-old mind trembled in unmitigated terror, knowing this was it. This is how we die. He’s about to kill us all.
He walked into the living room with a white sheet over his head and said, “Boo, I’m a ghost.”
I think he was trying to make up with humor. He snort-snarled out a laugh, but we didn’t join in. Seven sets of eyes stared at him in fear.
He pulled the sheet off his head and asked, “Why don’t you guys like me? Please tell me? I won’t get angry, I promise.”
My brother Ken, who just turned seven-years-old and had always been the bravest of us, answered, “Well . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .”
“Just tell me,” Dean Paul prodded, a genuine look of confusion on his face as he peered at my mother who was still lying on the floor and my brother who was holding his injured leg.
Ken paused, then went for it. “It’s because you're crazy!”
Yep. We’re all dead.
Dean Paul’s confusion was quickly replaced by a mask of rage. He screamed scriptures at us about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with holy spittle flying from his mouth, then stormed out of the house. He called our pastor who told him to stay away from home for a bit.
I was certain seeing that maniac come down the stairs under a sheet would be the scariest moment of my life. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
| Author Notes | My siblings and I still talk about this incident often. We all believed we were dying that night when he slowly ascended the stairs in that sheet. |
By Douglas Goff
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(Dean Paul: The Doctor
Biographical Series About My Childhood. This story deals with domestic violence.)
Early on in the marriage of Dean Paul and my mother, the four youngest of us children had earaches and complained of bad pains. Dean Paul was certain that we were all faking and insisted that mom put us to bed and not worry about it.
As we got worse, my mother ignored my stepfather and took us to the hospital. It turned out that we all had ear infections and were running temperatures over a hundred.
This became an ongoing theme the entire time we lived with my stepfather. If we ever got sick, he just knew that we were faking and he would start calling us names like fakers, pansies, and sissies. Dean Paul mostly worked midnight shifts, so he would be home if we were ill from school.
On those occasions, we were made to stay in our beds all day, until mom came home. Ken and I had beds that were elevated and attached to the walls by two end chains. If Dean caught either of us out of bed he would pick us up and throw us against the wall, where we would slide down into the bed.
It didn’t take long for me to develop migraines from the household stress. I can remember numerous occasions, lying in my mother’s bed, with my head pounding so hard that I literally just wanted to die. Dean Paul was always stomping about in the background, shouting that I was a dirty faker who was just trying to get attention. It was awful.
There was no safety in our home, especially when we were sick. We children needed escape. We sought it out. School clubs, band, Dungeons and Dragons; anything we could find. My mother would walk around the block for hours just to get out of that house.
At age ten I developed OCD which presented in repetitive words, actions, and constantly retracing my steps. It only eased up later in life, when I learned that I was using it as a means of having control in an environment where I had none.
Things were spinning out of control as it was becoming apparent that if we didn’t escape, somebody was going to die.
| Author Notes | A shorter chapter. |
By Douglas Goff
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Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
(Dean Paul: The Competitor. Biographical series about my childhood. This story deals with domestic violence.)
My brother Ken and I had an electronic football game that you could play head-to-head. It was advanced for the late seventies. Dean would often insist that we played it with him.
When it was his turn his mouth would form into a rigid “O” and his tongue would slightly protrude as he concentrated. On the few occasions that he would lose, he would throw the game across the room and scowl. “This thing is broken! Besides, it’s not real!”
No, it wasn’t real. Real was worse.
The one encounter with the monster that really haunts me happened while playing basketball. It occurred when I was twelve. Indiana is basketball land, and all children that I knew played.
I was actually fairly good and liked to play with my brother. Occasionally, Dean Paul would make us play with him. His favorite was a game called 21.
21 is basically an all-against-all game. If you make a basket during a scrimmage, then you get two points and receive a free throw opportunity for one point per basket. First player to 21 wins the game.
My stepfather would run around, knocking us down, calling every basket that he hit his ‘Bread and Butter’ shot. It was his scheme to shoot long shots, keeping the game close, and then he would run in for an easy basket to steal our victory at the last moment.
I was unaware of how angry the monster was that day. Dean Paul bowled my little brother over, his mouth ‘o-ringed’ with his tongue sticking out, and ran in to finish the game with an easy lay-up…and missed!
Call it fate, or misfortune, but the rebound landed right in my arms and I could see Dean Paul bearing down on me like a raging locomotive.
I just tossed the ball, more out of fear than anything, towards the basket. 'Swooosh!' It was hardly even an attempt and should never have gone in, but it did. How I wish it hadn’t.
At the moment, I was happy to have won the game for the first time ever. The joy was short lived as a flash of orange whizzed towards my head. Instinctively, I ducked and the basketball narrowly missed me, slamming into the garage door.
Dean Paul had thrown the ball so hard that the force of the impact shattered three of the four windows on the garage door. Before I could react, Dean Paul grabbed a fistful of my shirt and screamed in my face, “I let you win! Say it! Say it! I let you win!”
Have you ever been so scared that you couldn’t move? I was frozen like a fear popsicle as I dangled there. His spittle landing on my face while a trickle of my piss released involuntarily.
After I stuttered it out that he let me win, he stormed off screaming back at me that he certainly had let me win and no twelve-year-old could beat him at anything. Dean Paul never played basketball with me again. Thank God.
By Douglas Goff
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Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
Dean Paul: The Rattled. Biographical Series About My Childhood. This story deals with domestic violence.
My stepfather had been bruising and abusing my mom for several years, throughout the late seventies and into the eighties. She suffered in silence and seemed to lack the willpower and resources to leave. Not that she hadn’t tried.
On a couple of occasions she pled her case to the church board. She spoke of the family turmoil and the chokings she was receiving. She told the men that she feared she would be killed. The pastor’s adult son, Bruce, told my mom, “If you stay in the marriage and Dean kills you, then you’ll go to heaven.”
There was another time that I was standing in the church foyer after one of these requests for assistance and I overheard one board member talking to another about my mom. He said, “I guess she still hasn’t learned how to keep her mouth shut.” (I was 11)
After one of the board meetings, my mom had to drive home with Dean Paul, who pulled the vehicle over and choked her so hard she nearly passed out. On another occasion, he drove my mother out to a cornfield and started strangling her. She believed he had driven her out there to kill her, but my mom managed to talk him out of it.
The church’s desire for the marriage to work and the family to stay together seemed to conflict my mother. The church leadership refused to accept that divorce was an option. That was, until my stepfather went after one of them.
One Sunday, our car was stolen from the church parking lot. It was found a couple of blocks away. It turned out that the pastor’s teenage son, Danny, had taken it for a ‘joy’ ride. Danny made the mistake of admitting to his crime and mischievously smiled at the monster. Big mistake.
Dean promptly jumped on the boy and began strangling him. Several people had to pull the enraged man from the pastor’s son. This was the turning point where some adults began to realize that we needed an exit strategy. Besides, I think it was getting harder and harder for them to ignore the bruises.
Me? I was way past that. I was always looking for an escape route when Dean Paul was around. Towards the end, I lived like an animal waiting to bolt at any sign of danger. Survival instinct, my constant companion. Fear, always there.
By Douglas Goff
Warning: The author has noted that this contains the highest level of violence.
The storm raged in full force.
“No! Stop it! Stop it, you’re hurting me! “ My mother’s screams rang throughout the house.
I sat terrified in my hiding spot. My knees were clenched tightly to my chest, my tiny hands trembling.
The anger swept over my stepfather like the darkest of tempests, black clouds covering his face in a spittle-strewn mask of angry rage.
“Please stop hitting me!" My mother’s fearful pleas went unheeded in the howling rage of the madman’s torrential outburst.
“Shut up, bitch!” It was a guttural, demonic growl, barely retaining any semblance of a human voice.
“I-I-I can’t breathe.” The hoarse whisper sounded almost like a whistle. He was really hurting her this time.
He’s killing my mom. But what can I do? I’m just a kid. If I make a sound he will find me and unleash his fury upon me.
“Pleeeeease . . ." Now her voice was a mere wheeze. She was begging the raging tornado for her life, but my childish mind felt she was calling directly to me
God damnit I’m just a kid. I’m just a kid. I’m just a kid. He’s going to kill me if I make a sound. But, he’s killing my mom. Fuck it.
“Stop it!” My words burst forth loud and shrill. Louder than I had hoped. Louder than I had wished. The reaction was immediate. Everything stopped.
His heavy footsteps thudded across the floor, followed by their door opening. Then he was in the hallway.
Panic and terror were my only companions, ever-present and unrelenting, permeating my very existence. His work boots, one unlaced, came into sight three feet from where I was hiding.
The raging squalls were quiet now, but this was far from my first hurricane. I knew this was merely the eye of the storm. If he found me, I was dead.
Don’t make a sound. Don’t make a sound. I’m so dead. I’m so dead. God help me. But if God was there that day, he wasn't talking.
I tried hard not to wet my pants while I rode a fear so grippingly terrifying I could taste it in my mouth. A fear not meant for children.
The beast stood there for maybe ten seconds, listening. It felt like an eternity as the sound of my heart pounded in my ears like a drum and I held my breath. I was trapped in the storm.
Then he stomped down the stairs cursing under his breath about how the bitch had made him do it. Once the door slammed and the car raced out of the driveway, I could breathe again.
The storm had passed. Now it was time for the ambulance and the stories. Time for the adults to pretend that my mother had taken such a terrible fall that it choked her unconscious and blackened her eyes. Time for the lies.
It was always such a relief when the storms passed from the house that was never a home. The faux calmness brought respite. That is until the next storm started to brew.
| Author Notes |
I had just turned 11 when this particular incident occurred. I know that I have written about the monster before. I am going to continue to write about him until I am no longer ashamed that I did not end him.
Also I know the language was harsh. We lived in a Christian home, after all. My stepfather was a deacon in the church. Still, we heard all of the bad words come from his angry mouth many times. You grow up real fast in that type of environment. When mom asked the church for help they advised her to stay with him, that way if he killed her then she would go to heaven. One day the monster choked the pastors teenage son unconscious after he played a prank. The church then decided it was okay for us to leave. We ended up in the Elkhart County Homeless Shelter. Our church was oddly absent. It has damaged my faith for many years. My stepfather stalked us for many years after that, often showing up unexpectedly. This sent us children right back into terror-mode. I can remember this incident like it was yesterday. What I was wearing. The stain on the carpet. His unlaced boot. It has never left me. I think my PTSD symptoms may generate more from my childhood than my LEO career. Not sure. National domestic violence hot line. 800-799-7233 |
By Douglas Goff
| Author Notes |
I had looked at this contest a couple of times and decided to skip it.
Then I learned of Deans death and I knew I had to express myself. This seemed like a great way to share my initial reaction in an openly naked and transparently honest way. This has been an emotional week. This man has left a lot of very damaged people in his wake. Thank you for all the warm support. |
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