The moment passed; the stranger and my father continued on with such a complex discussion about trade regulations that I turned my attention to staring blankly at my plate and hoping that, at some point, my breathing would return to something resembling normal.

But the dinner dragged on, and although I dared myself to look up at the stranger time and time again, at no point did he ever look back at me. I began to think it was all my imagination, some perverse hallucination and that he turned those luminous eyes on me only to further illuminate my father's obvious shame.

As the meal came to an end, a dull familiarity flooded all of the cells of my body. I would again be alone with my father, and all would continue as it was and always had been. Custom dictated a rigid social interaction came into play as our guest left our table; however, instead of making to stand as my father was doing, he said, with an ease of manner and confidence that was so new to me as to be revolutionary, "Well, you keep a marvellous table, and you have a fine son."

Blood rushed into my ears, and my heart pounded with an alarming irregularity in my throat. My first compliment. It was a split second of joy before I felt my hope die; he didn't mean it. There was nothing fine about me; the smile on his face was at my expense. It must be a trick, a mockery.

But the strange nameless man continued speaking to my startled father, "I'll make you this deal; £100,000 for the whole lot."

My father, usually the driest of faces, showed a tiny twitch in his left cheek and what I can only describe as a look of surprise. I couldn't be sure, having never before and never since witnessed this expression on his face.

"But my friend, the worth is but one-fifth. I don't mean to insult you, but there must be a catch," he reasoned. I could see the tense clenching of his jaw and the stranger's eyes glinting in a decidedly mischievous manner.

"Friend, of course, you're right. The payment is not just for your product," the stranger said smoothly. My father relaxed a little, but only in the way a cat will momentarily relax its muscles before it claws you, and he was ready to claw someone. The breach of etiquette and my slightly shortened shirt sleeves meant for a cracking post-dinner evening, and I would surely be the one getting cracked.

"£20,000 is for your fish stocks, the rest is for the excellent company, with food like this you must have a truly honourable wife. And for your son, so quiet and attentive, you must permit me to steal him away sometime so that I might enjoy him some more. Go on, what do you say to £100,000?" he said, before he looked at me and winked.

I had never in my whole life seen somebody wink; at that time I didn't even know the word for 'wink.' I said to myself, 'he closed one eye at me' because it was so completely unknown. I felt my face burn so hot that sweat began forming on my forehead.

That is all I remeber of the dinner; the rest is gone in the way of minds and memories. The reel is clipped and starts again perhaps an hour later. My father is beating me to death. I have stopped screaming, though I didn't scream much to begin with. All I can now hear is the dull squelching thud of my father's regulation boots, opening me up so that my secret places flow onto the polished wooden floor. It is rhythmic, he is in full swing, and I ride his boot backwards and forwards like some kind of deadly pendulum, and I feel the blows as if muted, as if being hit by a large pillow. I am calm, I am ready for this, I welcome it, it has been a long time coming, and I accept my fate.

Through the pillows and the swingings (is this what death feels like? It is not painful or scary at all, simply inevitable), I become aware of another noise, a scuffle, a grating. Perhaps I can hear it because my ear is against the floorboards. My father seems oblivious as he strains and sweats under the onerous task of ending my life. I watch now as a casual observer because I am almost separated from my body and am held by the most tenuous thread. I see my aunt, my mother's sister, breaking through the tiny barred door that holds the women apart when male company is in the house. I don't know how she did it because it is made from the strongest wood (as stipulated in the 'Manual of the Keeping of Women.') My father has not seen her. Still, she flies at him as if propelled by the wind and gives him such an almighty whack across the back of the head that her feet actually lift from the ground. The plank, which I recognise from the plain hard benches the women sit on, snaps quite in half.

Like an animal interrupted while eating, he grunts, momentarily stunned and turns on her with the same ferocity he used on me, delivering such a blow to her tiny frame that her body slides down the nearest wall in a crumpled heap before he even comprehends what he has done.

It is here, ladies and gentlemen, that my fate changes.

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Aunty is beautiful, just as my mother is, yet she is somehow warmer. While my mother married, according to her station, an appropriate husband, her sister married for love. That is to say, her husband married her because he loved her. No one knows how it happened, her behaviour was always beyond reproach. There is no evidence to suggest she ever left the women's quarters of my grandfather's compound. Yet, one day along comes a man and asks for her. There was no need for the family to inquire about his name, status, and background, for he was a face known well throughout the People's Republic, a national hero and First Born Son to the National Minister of Production. My aunty was handed over to him without the slightest hesitation to a life of complete adoration, or so the legend goes. Her marriage raised the status of her entire family, the younger sisters all made stellar marriages, and my mother, the eldest, stayed married to the mediocre brute who was now standing awe-struck, covered in my bloody wet insides, seeing his life flash before his eyes.

Aunty's husband had only increased his wealth and importance over the years. When she came to visit, my mother ate up her insides with jealousy, trying to show that we were at least as affluent as her, a pathetic illusion that my good-natured Aunt never shattered. She rarely showed herself to my father, relying on the modesty she didn't quite believe in to save her from what even I could tell was a distasteful experience for her; she kept her visits to the women's quarters, where I often visited her.

I stared up at my father through a red haze, but I was forgotten. My mother crept up, bent double, making herself as small as possible. A brief discussion followed while still, my beloved aunty lay crumpled. My father's rash act could easily mean death, for though she was but a woman, she was the wife of a man, a man far more powerful than my father could even imagine. If the probability was death, perhaps he could beg clemency, perhaps a quick death, perhaps my brothers could be spared, and so it was decided that she would be taken to the hospital, not out of concern for her as a slow pool of blood gently eased its way out from under her splayed hair but in an attempt to save themselves.

I stayed where I fell, attached to myself by a few tendrils. Hours passed? Minutes? I do not know, and really, it doesn't matter. Though my fates had changed, I did not know it yet, and I waited to die; I wanted to die. When I heard my father's boots return, he was just boots now, I registered no shock when he roughly grabbed me and lifted me into the air instead of simply stamping out the last few drops of life in me.

Perhaps I was already dead, and there was a vat already waiting for me; I expected it wouldn't make much difference. I had been told that the acid would dissolve the skin faster than the brain could register the pain, so compared to more boots or a man with a plastic bag perhaps it was to be preferred.

The next moment I was falling, I hit the cold, moist floor of the basement, and the only light that came through was between the cracks around my father's bulk that filled the tiny doorway. Standing over me, silhouetted, my father pronounced his verdict, "homo."

In my pitiful state, I did not know that this word would one day act as a magical password to a new world; for the time being, I concentrated on dying. I willed my body to let go, to give up, to evaporate, but I wasn't ready to let go. A tiny woman wielding a hefty plank was the tiny spark I needed,, but didn't want to keep me alive.

My Aunt was admitted to the hospital, and her husband stepped into a helicopter six-hundred miles to the North. Given the suspicious nature of her injuries, my parents were held in separate rooms, as I was held in mine. My Aunt underwent emergency surgery to repair a fractured cheekbone, dislocated eye socket and a large gash where she had bitten clean through her tongue and lip. She obviously wasn't used to violence in the same way we were if she knew no better than not to bite her own tongue near off. Waking up from surgery, she was greeted by the tender caresses of her husband; calm and expansive, he said simply, "Tell me," and she did. After she had finished, he gave his orders in a manner that was all the more terrifying for the calm delivery. My mother and father were naive to think they would ever be so lucky to have a trial. In the People's Republic, trials were for propaganda; real justice happened differently.

Within the hour, though it could've been years to me in my dank hole, my Aunt had me retrieved. I say retrieved because to her, I was something precious that had been lost; she had seen things in me that I didn't know were there and perhaps a few things that weren't.

As the shiny government vehicle sped across the newly rebuilt London Bridge I watched the grey clouds passing over head and felt nothing. As my blood seeped into the cracks and crevices of the leather seats I wished for nothing. The speeding vehicle, surrounded by other speeding vehicles driven in a defensive formation, illicited no excitement in me I simply waited to die. But that wasn't my fate, though I was sure my death would eventually come at the hand of my father, I never saw him again.

Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading the latest chapter! I will be releasing a new chapter every two weeks. Follow me to get updates when new chapters are available. Alternatively, if you just can't wait for the next instalment, check out my Early Access Tier on Ream for a new chapter every week.

Join the Discussion! What did you think of Chapter Two?

I am so excited to bring you Chapter Two and I really hope that you loved it, but without critique, there is no improvement! So, leave me a comment below (or on my community page) and let me know what you think about the second chapter of Beyond The Wasteland. Did you like it? Did you hate it? What would you have done differently? Have you experienced a toxic family environment? Did you find the violence in this scene triggering or cathartic? I cant wait to hear what you have to say!