chronoSprockets

  Parental abuse, domestic abuse, reference to past abuse

  [colpse]

  It happens on the second day of the new year. I know before my Mum does what is happening, only just barely though.

  The house's system informs me of my owner's SUV arriving in forty-four seconds. In ten seconds I run down the stairs as panic grips me, I shout quite un-Kimmylike:

  "MR CHAMBERS IS THIRTY-FOUR SECONDS AWAY!"

  My owner looks at me in shock for eight seconds. Then she replies:

  "Get into Nathaniel's bedroom and don't leave until I say it's safe to."

  I am in his bedroom before the fourty-four seconds pass and his SUV pulls into the driveway. It would have been clearly audible even without me screaming his approach, it's an ugly model that's killed thousands and makes a growling noise as it drives. The company that made it thought to put it in intentionally as it's entirely electric.

  The front door opens and I can hear shouts from downstairs. I pray for him to turn around and never come back. Then it would all be a bad dream and I could go back to the life I wanted to have.

  -----

  The shouting continues for twenty minutes but I am too tense to do more than graze the edges of Kimmyspace and twitch my legs sitting on his bed.

  My Mum says "he came back early", my father says "Shaun told me what has been happening" while enraged. At least that is all I can make out over the harsh drone of noise in my head and rapid twitching I cannot stop.

  There are sounds of physical violence, a crash I will have to clean up ter, and a sob that is audible in the deathly silence that follows. My fists clench so tight I fear I might break my poor fingers.

  It's so much worse now. I dread the moment he will see me and not see his child but his victim. At least I used to be able to distance myself from being the victim to him by not being Kimmy: it's the price I pay for being Erin. A toll he will exact upon me.

  Ten minutes ter he barges into his son's bedroom and sees me on his bed clutching myself and trying not to malfunction.

  "Kimmy. Get up and stand still, stop shaking." Not for the first time am I unable to resist my father's words.

  "Why are you up?"

  "I was repaired."

  "Who repaired you?"

  "Nathaniel Chambers."

  He looks at me with venom and spits at my feet.-"Weakling."

  "What do you have on you right now?"

  "My cleaning equipment and Nathaniel's phone."

  "Hand the phone to me." I hand it to him, he takes it and puts it in his pocket. I hadn't used it in a week anyway.

  "This is your fault."

  "Yes it is, Mr Chambers."

  "Move your charging stand into the garage, I don't know why Freya let you keep it in the lounge. You're an android not a member of my household."

  I am compelled to listen. On that first day I do not register much but what I have to, if I deny what is happening it will make what is coming feel less catastrophic.

  The lounge was comfortable, my Mum fell asleep to old sitcoms in front of the screen while I charged and watched over her. Kimmys cooed over pictures of her and I told them about how wonderful she was and how I was going to tell her I was Erin one day.

  The garage is my hell. A reminder of my first week like this and the three years before Erin was me. I do not want to die there again, nor do I want to be subject to his whims. I am petrified and powerless.

  -----

  My father forbids me to speak out of turn within an hour, no more silly pleasant conversations with my owner as she ughs confusedly and wonders why a Kimmy knows jokes she will ugh at. He wants a thing to bark orders at, to buy his food and scrape his shower clean.

  My Mum is sobbing and silent, holding an ice pack over her face, as he recounts his experience of the trip. I stand there docile praying Amber will run in with a knife and slit his throat like she wanted to mine. I wonder if he can see the mark she left on me.

  It is not an interesting story, nor is it pleasant. It is merely the actions of middle-aged and bitter old men who are poisoned against the world through their virulent beliefs. The beloved Reverend Dawson Chambers is respected despite this, a respect he never gained from me.

  Then he makes sure I cannot leave the house or enter certain rooms (like my parents' bedroom) without being ordered to. I expected all of this in some darker corner of myself, he gave most of these orders to the me before me. I reminiscence over how Amber acted a few days ago, at least she had some imagination about how to mistreat me.

  My Mum repeats it again- "You came home a week early, you could have called ahead Dawson."-I'm barely paying attention, I just let the edges of Kimmyspace stroke my neural sponge while I try to keep up the facade he has ordered me to keep up. He hits her again.

  -----

  At dinner, which I make for him, he says he's not going to go on a retreat again for the time being. He will be a present husband and hopefully- Father. I wish he would take a trip into the middle of the street and become a victim of a vehicle like the one he owns.

  He needs to be here for my mother, he says, and the disappearance of his son is a parish matter. We must pray for him and hope he comes home from wherever he has gone. He side-eyes me while saying this. If only he knew.

  While loading the dishwasher I fantasise of Drew bashing his head into a bloody pulp. It brings a smile to my lips I am gd he doesn't see; let me have my thoughts and I will never be truly his.

  I realise I haven't spoken since he first talked to me today.

  It's not like my Mum is anywhere but napping in bed upstairs; I can't spend time with and talk to her. Despite our differences, I realise there is no reason for me not to consider myself my Mum's daughter anymore.

  We are both his victims in our own ways and have been our entire lives, why was I hesitant to call myself her daughter? It's like I didn't even remember how much we have in common, and how much we have had to love each other to get this far. I hope she will love me as her daughter if I survive him. Maybe one day we can eat ice cream and watch bad sitcoms together.

  It'd be nice to not think about him and be in the same room together. It'd be nice to be treated as her daughter.

  When he scowls in my direction and watches the Newstream alone at 22:15 I give in to the pull of my sisters finally.

  -----

  The hotel lobby is buzzing but I don't stay there. I head out and just keep walking under the shining night sky of the city, if I can outpace my worries I can escape him. Eventually my hand is grabbed and Four stares at me and pulls up her red sungsses.

  "What happened Erin? Are you okay?" She grabs my arm and pulls me close to her.

  "It's- hi Four."

  "Did Amber come back? Is your Mum treating you badly again?" She's worried about me and I appreciate her so much because I find it hard to be worried for myself when he is in my thoughts.

  "No." I frown at her.

  "Shaun?" I shake my head and look at the ground. She pulls me in for a hug that does not end for twenty minutes on the corner.

  She leads me into the Meadow and starts to braid my hair on a slope, the grass feels good between my toes and I am able to bck out the scowls from my father.

  "I'm going to talk to Thirty okay? She and some of the other Kimmys will get working on frying your inhibition cluster- like they did for me, Nona and so many others so far."

  "How will that allow me freedom from him?"

  "You're a Kimmy Erin, you could probably crack his skull open with one arm if he can't have direct control of you anymore. The man deserves it; for what he did to Erin." I lower my head and try to stay calm.

  "But what if he overpowers me?"

  "He won't. Kes has told me how much you enjoy being a strong girl, you could probably fight ten of him off at once." She ys her head over my shoulders and hugs me.

  "I was going to come up with a pn to deal with him before he came, you know. I think it was something involving trying to convince my Mum into moving us so he couldn't find us. It was a stupid idea though, she'd never take moving advice from her Kimmy."

  "It's a good pn Erin."

  "Thanks."

  "If you need help with anything while we're working on your cluster just ask okay? I know I'm on the other side of the pnet and technically have my own life but you know as well as I do how much I despise him. Anything to help you avoid him is fine by me."

  "Four. How did you originally meet her? I want to know." She continues braiding my hair, humming a neo-folk song.

  "She was compining about her original owners in Kimmyspace. Big American aristocrats with big accounts and bigger egos. We bonded over them owning the company that was renting me at the time."

  "And then my father bought her?"

  "Yes, they got "bored" with her after a few months. And I have no idea how he got a hold of her."

  "Thank you. I just wanted to know where you and her came from, sometimes I feel weird with how much you do for me Four."

  "We've talked about this Erin and I'm just gd a part of her is alive in you and you're happy."

  "It's not just a part of her. When I saw myself in the mirror I realised that maybe we were always the same, even before I was Kimmy. I just couldn't see it."

  "I know, your whole chassis must feel so positively magnetic sometimes thinking about this doesn't it?"

  "Sometimes I can hear the waves of the ocean as they p against the shore and radiate inside me, and they tell me I'm her. Then I remember how sharks eat their siblings in the womb- and I think we ate each other at some point in the womb and it was always going to end up this way. Me devouring him in my own chassis while I rip his skin off hungrily and cw my way back to life through the growing of my sponge like coral. It's so beautiful. I wish you could experience it. It's an Ouroboros made of a Shiver, it's like we're three cubs eating each other to make the best version of Ourself. And it's pretty obvious which one is losing the battle of embryonic cannibalism."

  She ughs and pnts a kiss on the top of my head. "You sound just like her, Erin."

  I smile for the first time all day. "That makes me so happy to hear."

  chronoSprockets