Gifts

Andrew Edwards

For as long as I could remember my dad had travelled a lot due to work. I rarely saw him during the time I was in school. Mum would come to the parents' evenings, school plays and concerts alone. I was quite musical, playing the saxophone in the school band, and I sang in most of the Christmas concerts. Mum was always there, smiling and clapping in the audience, and congratulating me on my performance at the end.

On his rare visits home dad would bring me lots of toys, and CDs and DVDs when I got a little older. He would spend time with me, going to the cinema, and the pub when I turned eighteen. He was strict about this: to his mind, you had to be eighteen and an adult to start drinking and go to pubs, even though everyone in the sixth form I went to did so. I never joined them, because I felt like I would be betraying my father's principles, or disappoint him. He would only ever drink one pint of bitter, followed by one neat double whisky. He would never alter this. I would join him with the same and, to this day, I never drink more than one pint of bitter and a whisky. I never drink less than this either

My mother died when I was nineteen years old. She had been walking back from the local supermarket when a car skidded on ice and smashed into her. She died of internal injuries a couple of hours later. I was with her when she died. My dad was away, as normal, and rushed back to see her. He missed her last moments by two hours.

My dad had been ill for some weeks, and he had begun to deteriorate. I had visited the hospital to talk to my father's doctor Mark, and old family friend. I couldn't understand why dad seemed so ill, yet he was denying that there was anything seriously wrong with him.
"He's got cancer, Mark. He's only got a few weeks left, if that."
I felt angry.
"Why? I mean, why haven't I been told?"

Mark wiped the sweat away from his forehead, and began to clean his glasses. "He asked for no-one to be told. I shouldn't really be telling you now. But his time is short, and I've known you all of your life. You need to make preparations. And say your goodbyes. Make your dad's last days as comfortable as they can be."

We spoke for some time after, about dad's cancer, painkillers and care and other stuff, but I don't remember the specifics. But I do remember the present I took home to dad that afternoon, contained in a plastic box, about the size of an ice-cream tub.

III

When I was growing up, there was a freezer in my parents' garage. It was a large chest freezer, and far too big to keep in the kitchen. It used to be full of plastic boxes, and when I was about fifteen or so I'd become curious about them. It had occurred to me that our food shopping was always stored in the smaller freezer in the kitchen. One Saturday, when mum had gone to the supermarket, I went into the garage, and I found the padlock key that dad had hidden in a paint pot. I'd seen him hide it there the last time he was at home, because I was in there too, hidden at the back of the cupboard, looking at the porn mags I'd begun to collect.

I opened the padlock, and pulled open the top of the freezer. I counted around two dozen small plastic boxes, each one the size of a tub of ice-cream. I took one out and pulled off the lid.

Among the ice and condensation inside was a piece of meat, but it was a strange shape, like a disfigured, small frozen pancake.

Or an ear. It looked exactly like an ear.

I put the top back on the box, locked the freezer and went back into the house.

The day after my twenty-first birthday, my father taught me how to kill a man.

He had taken me to a car park on the edge of the town we were living in at that time. It was early, almost four-thirty in the morning. The air was cold, and the whole area was completely silent, except for the shuffle made by the Wellington boots dad had bought us. We wore warm black clothing, and thick leather gloves. I felt nervous, but I kept it hidden from my dad. The twilight helped us to navigate our way.

The dosser lay in the corner of the car park, in between two recycling bins - one for paper, and one for bottles.

Dad unzipped the front of his jacket, and reached into an inside pocket. He took out a long bundle, and unwrapped it. It was a large kitchen knife, one that I had never seen before. Mum's knives had silver handles, while this handle was wooden.

Dad lay the blade flat across his palm, to give me a better look at it. "New. Bought it last week. Untraceable." A smile flickered across his face for a split second.

Dad rammed the knife right through the dosser's heart.

The first time that I killed a man, I could have so easily been caught. I was stupid, naïve and inexperienced, but I soon learned from my mistakes, and I realised the following: never kill close to home; always kill at night, under the cover of darkness; always kill a sleeping victim. Following these rules eliminates the prospect of getting caught.

He struggled. God, he struggled like a bear trapped in a cage. I should have waited until night. He threw punches, bit and kicked, and I could smell sour beer on his breath.

Fucking tramps. I hate them.

I managed to force the knife into his chest once I'd dazed him with the brick I'd spotted lying on the ground. We'd been kicking and punching each other for a few minutes, and I think we were both glad when that part was finally over. I struggled to pull out the knife - I think it had lodged in a broken rib or something - wiped some fat and blood off it, and sliced off his ears.

Maybe I should've stopped then, but my face hurt where the bastard had clawed me with his dirty, jagged fingernails. I was pissed off. I wanted those fucking nails, so I walked back to my car, got my tool box from the boot, and took out the small hacksaw. I put it in my coat pocket and walked back to the tramp.

I sawed his fingers and thumbs off, one at a time, and put them in another plastic box. It sliced through the flesh nicely, but the bone was hard going. It was worth it though, to see the smile on my dad's face when I have him his gifts. If he could still speak, I know he would have told me how proud he was of me.