Tales from the 13th: Regret from the Beginning (Where Bruises Go)

Eric Cafferty was born at the end of May 1974 to Deanna and Eric. According to them, he was wanted; however, the way they acted towards him made it clear he wasn’t. While the pictures of his humble beginnings showed a happy child, his memories began when he was four years old. Sounds remarkable, but his earliest memory deals with him in Florida with his maternal grandmother and his Uncle Lewis. They were feeding ducks; however, Eric went to feed the baby ducks. The mature ducks took it that the child was attacking their offspring, and they flocked upon him. He remembered the feeding of the duckies and then the attack. The bills were flying on him, pecking away angrily. He also remembered the laughter as Lewis found the humor in it all.

This wasn’t done out of cruelty or malice; he just happened to come from a long line of sarcastic smart asses. This must have come from the paternal grandfather’s side, as his grandmother, Thelma, wasn’t at all, nor was his eldest uncle, Jason. Lewis and Deanna had it, and sometimes that sarcasm came with a cruel twist. Fortunately, he would spend every other weekend with his grandmother, and she would take him down to Florida with her when she went to see his uncle. This was the only peace that he would get as his parents were abusive towards him. Eric would spank him, and if he moved, which what child wouldn’t when struck with a leather belt, he would receive more whacks than stated there would be. The father would place his knee on the back of the child and whip away until his rage was settled.

Deanna was worse. She would slap him for being “stupid,” just because he got something wrong. There was one time that he was given a slice of watermelon and knew not to eat the seeds. That fateful day, he accidentally swallowed one. Not knowing what would happen, he told his mother. Instead of telling the four-year-old that he was going to be safe, she decided that it would be funnier to say to him that a watermelon was now going to grow inside his belly and he would explode. He only had till the end of his cartoon, Battle of the Planets, which was thirty minutes.

Believing her, as he had no other reason to distrust the maternal figure, he thought he was going to die. They say that you know your childhood is over when you know you’re going to die. Deanna felt that four was a good enough age to teach him about his mortality. Naturally, he started crying uncontrollably, fearing that he was going to die a horrific death. When he began calming down slightly, she would laugh and tell him the countdown of the time he had left. Eric tried to cuddle up next to her for some emotional support, but she pushed him away, telling him that she didn’t want his “blood and guts” on her. This would set him off more and taught him one thing: that she truly didn’t love him.

She would sing Elvis Presley’s song “Young and Beautiful” to him to help him fall asleep, but it was just a song to her. When they adopted his brother Denny, it became his song. This would mark him for life, as he became territorial about songs for his children. He first thought the song she sang was about him, but when she sang it with Denny, he was deaf. He had asked her why she sang it to him, as he always thought it was his song, she snapped and said it was “just a song.” However, discussing Denny is putting the cart before the horse. The whole situation with how he became family is its tale.

Deanna was a huge Elvis fan; he remembered the day that the King died and how she broke down in tears. She would play his records all the time and would have Eric dance with her. She didn’t teach him how to dance properly or move around, holding her hands. One day, he didn’t want to. It wasn’t because he was mean or anything; he didn’t want to dance. Because he refused, she smacked him as hard as she could. He got up as she was yelling at him to dance and ran to the front door of their condo. Aggravated that he was running from her, she took the thick leather leash, which was about a quarter of an inch thick, and slapped him across the face. He fell to his knees, screaming in pain, and dragged himself back to the living room. There, she forced him to dance.

This would mark him for life. He didn’t like dance music and refused to dance. He hated dancing from that day on. He preferred his music to be loud, fast, and aggressive. It was their influence that got him into the harder side of rock’ n’ roll. They first got him into listening to KISS, and then he found his way. They bought him each brand-new cassette and a couple of 8-tracks of the band. While she was strict on many things, the music he listened to and the shows he watched were unbridled. His babysitter was the television. He learned a lot from the boob tube. In the morning, he watched educational TV, then moved on to cartoons and reruns. Growing up in the seventies and eighties, watching TV was great.

However, he also had something else he loved, which was pornography. Eric Sr. had a stash of nude magazines, ranging from Playboy to Hustler. These were hidden underneath his dresser, which was about three inches off the ground. These were easily found by the four-year-old, especially when he was trapped in the parents’ bedroom. See, the father left at 4:30 in the morning, and so Eric wouldn’t venture out of his room on his own; they put him in the parents’ bed, next to Deanna. The premise was that she would wake up when he stirred and watch him. The thing was that the child was up at 6:30 or 7:00, and his mother would. Sleep in until 8. That meant he was bored, and he sought something to entertain himself.

He looked under the bed, but there was nothing to do there. Then he saw the magazines. They had always given him ordinary magazines to look at so he would be quiet. Not knowing that they were adult-oriented, he pulled them out and began looking. The Playboys were nice, but he found he preferred the hardcore ones instead. He was learning about sex in all the wrong ways. It didn’t help that Hustler also had hardcore cartoons, which entertained him as well. He was so affected by the magazines that the first time he ever got popped for writing erotic material was.

They didn’t know that he was looking at them, as Deanna would always turn onto her left side before she’d wake up. That was his cue to put the magazines away and not get caught. But like with all good things, his new addiction, besides superheroes, was porn. He couldn’t get enough of it, and eventually, when they moved into Thelma’s house, he would search and find where they were hidden. Where he went wrong was that he became greedy, as the older issues would go missing, while the new ones would remain. He liked certain pictures and would rip them out to keep for his collection. These pictures didn’t go unnoticed by his father, and he would search his room, find them, and then whip the living hell out of him.

He couldn’t figure out why he was the one being beaten. He wasn’t the one bringing in the smut. He wasn’t allowed to look at that, but they would allow him to watch a movie like Robin Williams’ “The World According to Garp.” That movie taught the six-year-old more about sex, the terminology accompanying the acts, and what a transgender woman was. One of the few things Deanna taught him that was right was that all people deserve to be treated equally. That no one is better than the other. She taught him not to judge someone by the color of their skin, but by their character. That no matter what their sexual preference was, they were still human beings with feelings.

He found this funny, coming from the woman who beat him unmercifully and then told him to “wait till his father got home.” That meant that not only was he reprimanded once, but twice as well. She would feed him to Eric Sr., who was already stressed out from work, and then had her start to dismantle him emotionally. His mother was brutal in arguments. She would keep hitting you with insult after insult until she finally found what hurt you. Then she would rip that portion open and then pour salt into the wound. Eric had seen her do this several times, but it was always his father who was the bad guy. She instilled that in him.

She was so determined to inject hatred into the son’s heart that she kept telling him how his father had hit her as well. That they were Abuse Allies. The thing was, Eric Sr. had gotten drunk one night and struck her. He admitted to this. However, she made sure he did this about as often as he whipped Eric. But when it came to that, he only knew of his beatings, and ones she claimed he was present for, he had no recollection of. His memory was good, but she treated him like an idiot. Throughout his entire history with them, the son could recall only one central argument they were fighting over. They were screaming at the top of their lungs, and Thelma even got involved.

Deanna gaslit with the best of them. How was he to know who was telling the truth? The father, who admitted to the one instance, or the woman who claimed he beat her himself. Eric was twelve at the time, and they’d paid for him to learn a martial art. One time, she tried to hit him with her fist, like a hammer, and Eric blocked it. Once he did that, she started accusing him of beating her up. One block, no offense, and he was a woman abuser. As far as he was concerned, a block was a block, not a strike. But this was just the beginning; she would do a lot more than just gaslight and physically and verbally assault him.