Tag: torment

Savages and Beasts

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Excerpt

slowly-slowly he pressed the woman’s lips until they opened, her
tongue suddenly was licking his finger, her body started swaying
upwards and down, erotically, sensually, provocatively, full of
desire. He smiled, let his hand travel under the bed-sheet, he
touched her body slowly, methodically like a master in the field
he enticed her until she opened for him and let him explored all
her secret coves. She moaned now, her body was in exhilarating
mood, ready to be used, taken, to be enjoyed. He pushed the
bed-sheet away. He knelt on top of her bed. He pulled her
up on her fours. He violated her, crashing in from behind in a
beastly, rough way. She just let go. She was his. Sister Gladys was
a woman who could do anything to please him. She loved him,
she knew. He knew that too.
All his life Jerome, liked to be on top of things; from a young
age growing in a family of five children, in Gatinaeu, Quebec, he
always competed with his four siblings for who would be up front
when it came to sports activities, to studies, in both elementary
and high school classes; His parents certainly loved education, his
dad, a notary public and a very successful one insisted on education
and three of his other siblings, two boys and one girl got high education,
either in college or university. His youngest sister decided
early after high school that she didn’t want to carry on with her
studies and devoted herself to volunteer work for various charity
organizations. Jerome, a shy person by nature, loved the books and
when time came to decide, this was very important to his father
who demanded timely decisions and results thereof, he chose to
become a priest. He followed religious Studies at the University of
Toronto he conscripted himself in the Canadian Diocese, the head
of which sent him to British Columbia. After a few years in Vancouver,
he was sent to the Kamloops Indian Residential School
where he was truly on top of things from day one.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763602

Arrows

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Excerpt

“Leave me alone, will you?” he scowled.
But I wanted to make peace with him.
“I mean it, Gregorio. You need a bleeding to drain all those bad
humours and grudges. Hombre! I saw you in battle; if I hadn’t been
so busy running, I would have stayed put to watch you. What
shooting and fighting! You are a born conquistador. From now on, it
will be quite comforting to have you around.”
I uncorked a flask of marigold oil. Gregorio chortled at last. He
took a gulp from the mug he was holding.
“I saw you, too,” he said, “running like a hare.”
“Little wonder! I have never been so frightened in my life!”
Gregorio and Benjamin laughed. Perhaps I was more useful to
them as feckless character, someone to jeer at.
“Why, you don’t want to go to heaven, Friar?” Benjamin taunted.
“I know I am but a sinner,” I smiled. “But I could use a bit more
time before God blows out my candle. I’m hoping to find some way
to skip purgatory.”
“Trying to become a saint, are you?” Gregorio said. “Become a
martyr, then. That will do, won’t it?”
“That would be an improvement, no doubt. I’ve been thinking
about it. Perhaps one of these days someone will favour my
aspirations.”
Gregorio swatted at a hornet that came too close. “We’re going to
make it, I think,” Gregorio said. “Losada knows what he is doing.
You can see it in his face. I’m convinced he knows how the bastards
think. He has lots of experience. But, if you ask me, Francisco Infante
is the better of the two.”
Losada struck me as a man of principle whereas Francisco Infante
impressed me as a schemer, someone who would rather run things
for himself, so I decided not to respond to the bait. It was odd for me
to sometimes feel so close to Gregorio and Benjamin, and yet at the
same time I sensed their camaraderie was fickle, transitory. For
them, the New World was strictly a land of opportunity, and the
state of their souls was a distant second.
Were they ever my friends? Or did they even want to be?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Arrows

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Excerpt

Fresh tears filled her downcast eyes and rolled over her cheeks as
she blinked.
“How did you come to be here, Pepa?”
“I was one of five daughters. The last one,” she said softly.
I glanced at her husband, who had stirred in his sleep and
mumbled noisily before resuming his snoring. I knew exactly what
she meant. A daughter could mean the opportunity for a good
alliance or a financial burden on her father. In a household of five
daughters, the father would be happy to find anyone to take them.
Without a dowry, a girl would likely never be able to marry, or to be
choosy about it. Pepa told me her husband had agreed to marry her
without a dowry, despite her knowing how to read.
Gregorio awakened at the sound of her voice. He was listening. I
couldn’t help that. In her town, she said, everyone thought her
strange because she could read. It had been a relief to accompany her
husband in his quest for fortune in the Indies.Her mother had tried to
convince him to leave her in a convent, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
Gregorio kept watching her, sympathetically. He might have
consoled her himself had her husband not awakened at that instant.
Gregorio narrowed his eyes and shot him a loathsome look from
head to toe. “I’ll have something brought for you, señora,” Gregorio
said. “You’ll need your strength.”
“Gregorio is right, you should eat,” I said.
This unexpected attention seemed to perk her spirits. “I can read
something to you all, if you like,” she said, eyes lowered.
“Of course,” I said, breaking the silence. “What do you have
there?”
“It’s the Lazarillo de Tormes,” she said, taking a small book out
from under the folds of her skirt. The corners of her mouth trembled
as she tried to smile. She must have been protecting that book like an
amulet.
“This is a story about a rascal who is a blind man’s guide. Do you
know it? Here, listen: Fainting and dying of hunger, I staggered along the
street, and while passing by the Barley Square I found an old praying
woman with more tooth than a wild boar . . .”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Arrows

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Excerpt

In the general direction of the enemy, Indian servants placed
forked poles to hold the muzzles of the heavy harquebuses. The
horses whinnied and stamped their hoofs, rustling the foliage as
they tugged at their halters. Somewhere farther away, I could hear
sheep bleating; closer the squealing of pigs.
Losada had mounted his black horse and was now whirling in
circles and bellowing orders, sword raised high over his head. I
glimpsed an Indian woman scampering into the bush with a toddler
on her back, suspended on a thick band hanging from her head. The
Indian servants scurried about, grabbing whatever they could and
herding the animals. All the riders mounted, and the dust cloud
thickened, forcing me to hold my breath. Gregorio ran past me,
balancing a harquebus in his hand.
“Don’t just stand there, hide!” he bellowed, his voice almost
drowned out by the racket.
“Where is she?” I yelled back.
But he was gone to join the harquebusiers gathering behind the
riders. I hunched into myself, rosary tight in my right hand. I came
upon the fire, blinking to clear the smoke from my eyes, and found
the last place I’d seen her. I stumbled over a basket and nearly fell. In
the name of all saints, I didn’t even know her name!
The servants had disappeared. I was the only idiot awaiting the
arrows. At the sound of grunting, I looked down to see a pig
careering into the heart-shaped leaves of a huge philodendron. I
followed the pig.
It took a moment for my eyes to grow accustomed to the dimness
in the jungle. I could discern crouching human silhouettes. Indian
women were huddled together on the ground, some crying, others
staring vacantly while frightened children clutched at them, some
finding oblivion at their mothers’ breasts. I made hushing sounds
and touched a shoulder here, another there, gesturing toward the
trunk of a big mahogany tree and mimicking the arrows falling

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Savages and Beasts

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excerpt

encounter in life are shared by all only to a different perhaps
level of intensity from one to the other ultimately to be left with
that Pandora’s gift to the universe: hope. And upon this hope
one commences all over, like a new Sisyphus pushing his rock
towards the hilltop.”
“You speak of very wise things, Dylan, and I don’t hesitate
to say that I enjoy your philosophical views,” Anton smiled at the
old Irish man.
Anton’s side view caught Migizi with a young girl coming
towards them. When they neared Anton and Dylan the youth
introduced his sister Miigwan to Anton.
“My sister,” the boy said proudly and his cheeks turned
red as much as his sister who lowered her eyes and didn’t say any
word.
“Good to meet you Miigwan,” Anton said to the girl who
whispered something, which only her brother Migizi heard.
Anton realized that it wasn’t meant to hear what the young
girl said and who continued to look at the ground and kept silent.
Her brother smiled at Anton and Dylan, pulled his sister
by the hand and walked away. Soon they were among all the other
children who walked around the grounds in bunches of two or
three, until the school bell was herd and Father Nicolas who was
on duty with Mary gathered them. They were put in rows of three
and slowly walked into the school for their morning porridge.
“Another day in Paradise,” Anton thought and smiled. Yes
another day to work in the laundry with the old Irish man.
The skunk was buried today while the sun played hide
and seek with the ones who looked up high and noticed, those
few who had perceptional vision of that kind. The skunk died
and took along with him the stench of those days, bad days as
Dylan named them; yet were today’s days different and if so in

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763602

Savages and Beasts

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Excerpt

Three months went by. July came with mischievousness and playfulness
from the hot afternoons that kept the city boys running
behind the ice cream truck to the stuffy nights that kept most
Kamloops residents awake and sweaty. And it was a stuffy place,
Kamloops, when the winds rejected every request for a blow
and the clouds refused to appear from the west where they came
most of the times; it was a stuffy place, Kamloops, with the nuns
and the priests waging their war against the savages while they
tried to teach them what they thought was necessary and useful
to them, alas they didn’t know that when you try to wash off the
black of a man trying to turn him into a white you only waste
your soap.
This was a celebratory Kamloops morning with the sun
half way up the invisible staff of nature’s flag when Anton imagined
it rising in tune with the joyous anthem of nature and all
the earth creatures stood in attention, from the tiny ants which
raised their antennae to the orcas in the pacific which raised their
dorsal fins straight up in the air as if slicing it in two pieces, from
the immense wings of the condors spread in salutation, to the
tiny wings of the hummingbirds balancing themselves in midair
as they gazed at the marvel of a fuchsia, and from the raised
tusks of the elephants in glorification of the rising flag to the
salutation of the injured soldiers in the muddy hutments of war,
such glorious was this morning in Kamloops when Anton drove
his GMC pickup towards the Indian Residential School before
seven o’clock.
He passed the quiet Thompson murmuring indecipherable
secrets to the shrubs and verdure standing on its two banks,
certainly in attention too, and soon he was parked at the School
parking lot. His glance went through the gap the big oaks were

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763602

Savages and Beasts

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Excerpt

“Hey Dylan, after lunch come for your sweet,” George
addressed the old man.
Dylan agreed with a movement of his head and grabbing
a tray he showed to Anton it was time for them to pick their
serving of food.
“He’s a good man,” Dylan said while they were eating, “A
stroke of fate brought him here, like everyone else, I guess…”
“What brought you here Dylan?” Anton’s voice sounded
full of curiosity.
The old man turned his eyes in various directions, from left
to right, even above towards the ceiling before he decided to say, “I
was a fisherman once, back east, in Halifax, when my craziness told
me to go west, to come to the West Coast and go salmon fishing.”
“What happened? Did you ever do that?” Anton wondered.
“No I never made it to the coast…” his voice was interrupted
by the stern voice of the Sister Helen who was on duty
along with Father Thomas; one of them supervised the boys and
the other supervised the girls while they were eating.
“There are no seconds,” father Thomas said to a boy of
about fourteen years of age who looked very tall and skinny.
“But I’m hungry,” the youth protested.
“Stand up and pick your things,” the priest said to the
boy who got up and taking his tray was ready to start walking
towards the counter when father Thomas gave him a hard hit
with his strap. The leather strap hit the boy on the left shoulder;
he abruptly leaned a little to his left and turning toward the priest
one could see his anger on his clenched teeth and fiery eyes; he
was almost ready to hit the priest when the hand of the priest
swung again and the strap hit the arm of the youth once more.
His tray fell on the floor. Noise was heard by all the children who
turned to see what was going on.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763602

Savages and Beasts

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Excerpt

Absorbed in their work they faintly heard the recess
bell. Children walked out to the schoolyard again. They were
still timid and quiet like the sun behind the clouds that didn’t
dare show itself, same as the light breeze amid the tree leaves
that didn’t know whether to play and create its rustle or to keep
quiet like these hurt and intimidated kids. The savages, Anton
thought, were outside and the civilized and mighty remained
within the walls of this facility. And these civilized and wise
archons had their goal: to educate and make good law abiding
citizens of these brutes, to make them alike themselves so they
could one day go out there and subjugate others, they could one
day go out there and proselytize others to the good word or else.
Anton’s mind ran amok to things unpleasant and cruel,
things these kids were going through at their tender age and
suddenly he revolted at the cruelty of such a system and tears
started flowing down his eyes. He turned aside so Dylan wouldn’t
see him and wiping his eyes with his hand he took a deep breath
that didn’t go unnoticed by the old Irish man.
“What is it Anton?”
“I’m thinking of these kids and my mind went to the
rumors out there, things people talk about. Even the man who
lived under the same roof with you, old Simon, I often meet him
at the diner.”
“That drunkard? He’s of no good. He’s only good when
he prepares the traditional haggis during the Robby Burn’s day
annual festival. He’s no good for nothing else. He’s just a big
mouth that’s who he is, nothing more.”
“He sounded so convincing each time he spoke about these
kids in this school and the archons over them. He sounded so
convincing and he insisted of the cruel ways the church people go
after these children.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763602