Some things are better left unsaid. No, I am not talking about the Daryl Hall & John Oates song either. Some things I think one should take to the grave with them. Take for instance Grandpa was very old and very sick.
He was bedridden and was dying. He decided he was going to get years and years of things he had done wrong, bad things that he had done.
I told him he didn’t need to tell me these things but he insisted. I didn’t want to upset him as I knew he was not going to last much longer. He started out by telling me that when he was 14 years old he shot and killed a boy that was three years younger than him.
He said he did it just to see what it was like. I tried to not listen to the stories as I didn’t want to think about my Grandpa being a psychopath.
But he continued on by telling me that it didn’t phase him one bit killing that boy. It wasn’t like he and that boy were friends, just that he had seen him on the playground at school before. He told me he never told anyone about this either. The police thought it was a drifter that had come to our small town. Til this day that murder is unsolved Grandpa told me.
Grandpa said that when he turned 18 years old he had already killed his second victim. She was a girl he dated and one night he said he pulled out his knife and sliced her throat. He said the site of all that blood made him feel good. I said, “Grandpa, I don’t want to hear these stories.” He said well you’re going to listen to them because I said so. I felt ashamed, and I was shaking, I felt sick I wanted to scream.
Some Things are Better Left Unsaid
Grandpa continued on and said when he was 21 years old he killed a man and his wife. They were sitting out on their back porch watching the lightning bugs. I walked right up to them pulled my revolver from my pocket and shot both of them in the head.
I was going to be sick I told Granpa and I got up and ran to the bathroom to vomit. Grandpa was laughing at me said I needed to grow up and get some thicker skin. He was calling me all sorts of names. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to him. But when I got back in the room and set down beside his bed he reached and smacked me hard in the face. “What are you going to do about it?” he said. I just sat there and he smacked me, again and again, he was calling me foul names.
Some Things are Better Left Unsaid
The third time he smacked me my nose started to bleed. He said I was a free bleeder. But still, I just sat there. He rared back to hit me again and I blocked his punch and swung with all of my might. My punch connected hitting him full force in the nose. I must have really hit him hard because he started convulsing all over and the nurses and Dr’s came running in. I ran out of the room and down the hall to the elevator. I went home, I was so mad at Grandpa that I wished he were dead. My wish came through as when I got out of the shower my phone rang and it was mom telling that Granpa had passed away.
I didn’t go to the funeral either, I didn’t feel I needed to after what he had done. My father came to see me and wanted to know why I didn’t go to the funeral. So I sat him down and told him the whole story. Dad started crying and said he was sorry for finding that out about his dad. My father said he knew about the early on murders that his dad, my grandpa had committed. After a while, dad asked me if I would just forget about the whole thing since Grandpa was dead and gone now? I agreed to never tell anyone about it but I would never forget what he told me.
© 2018 Paul Cox All Rights Reserved
So haunting a tale.