chronoSprockets

  Parental abuse, rape, incest, dissociation, domestic abuse

  [colpse]

  JANUARY

  The first time my father uses me I vow never to check on his son's body again.

  He gropes me in front of my Mum while she stares into her pte. Then when dinner is finished, he takes me onto the garage table that's still partially covered in cut-offs of me and proceeds to use me.

  From that moment on I never register another sensation from the biomass that was known as his son. I think I forget how to turn the sensors on eventually.

  -----

  I'm dangling my bare legs into a pond when Kes walks up to me and sits with her knees up next to me.

  "How's it going Erin?"

  "I'm okay I think. I've been transmitting internal data around my spine to Thirty and her friends for like a week so they can work on freeing me."

  "I'm so sorry." Her voice drips with pity and she wants to say so much more I can already tell.

  "It's not your fault Kes." I turn to her and pull her chin up ever so slightly, I want to be able to look into her marigold eyes. "I saw Drew while out shopping."

  "Yeah?"

  "My father's instructions don't restrict me from being amicable when I'm out shopping so- yeah I waved and smiled at her."

  "And...?"

  "She paled and smiled back awkwardly. I think she thinks I'm strange."

  "To be fair most people aren't used to Kimmys smiling at them randomly while they do their job."

  "Yes but she's cool, you know? She hit my ex's hand with a cricket bat and and told her to leave town like a fucking badass..."

  Kes is hiding her face with her hand and looking away again.

  "I'm sorry Kes, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing, I just get scared for you Erin. Scared he'll kill you and I'll lose you."

  "I don't want to think about that right now. Come on silly." I wrap her in an embrace and pull us both in the pond as she screams.

  -----

  The ninth time my father uses me, my Mum is already gone from the room before anything starts. She withdraws as she has been doing for the past week, it must be where I got it from. Like mother, like daughter.

  I dream of ripping out his spine and throwing it into the towering trucks that take the bins.

  -----

  Nona is teaching me a game she apparently pys with some other Kimmys. She has pulled me and Kes into it along with a gaggle of girls who I am ninety-ninety percent sure she lives with in person. Like actually lives with in person! That's so cool... it'd be nice to live with other Kimmys in person. Think of how clean the pce would be and all the things in Infinite Fun you could actually do in the chassis.

  It is called spin the bottle. She does not actually teach me the rules- she hands me the bottle and tells me to spin it in the circle of eight Kimmys.

  It nds on Kes. Kes withdraws into a ball.

  "What am I meant to do?"

  Nona pouts at me and whispers in my ear, then she drags me by the hand to the other side of the circle.

  I unpry her legs from each other and pull a strand of hair out of her face. She's always been pretty and had good legs, she's also always been an enigma.

  My lips join with hers and I can't stop thinking about the magnetic feeling of it for weeks to come. I want to learn more about her.

  When I tell Four about it the next day she only says: "It took you long enough to stop teasing her, Erin."

  I wasn't aware I was teasing her to be honest.

  -----

  By the sixteenth time my father uses me, his son is still decred missing. There is no evidence of his existence since the twenty-first of December but for two text messages sent before Christmas to a blonde woman I used to date who probably works in another corporate coffee shop by now; no trail and no body. He is another cold case of another missing boy who everyone thinks probably died tragically young, just a month before his twentieth birthday.

  I take joy in it. At least my father knows how little he could ever do to save the boy who was consumed by my becoming. He does not let up, it's okay because I hate him too.

  -----

  The bar is quiet. I now know the couples' names who seem to y cim to it- Kay & Kim. Kay was like me once supposedly, flesh and blood. She's the example they used to diagnose and provide analytics on my condition originally. It felt absurd looking at her cute button nose and picturing a human. Is that what it will feel like for me eventually? Or am I already there? Maybe in a year I might be sure.

  Did I ever meet her before in times I have long since forgotten? I did not ask but I would be curious to know, I'm so curious to know about anything outside of my little bubble. I wonder if she used to be an Ouroboros of a Shiver also.

  Kes hasn't brought up the kiss, but I could guess by the blush on her adorable face as she sips a cocktail that she's still thinking about it like me. That's okay with me, we have all the time we can get here. When she brings it up I will.

  Kissing her was different from Amber, Amber always wanted to control me- apart from when I went down on her- to keep me in a box. It is strange then that the thing that tore us apart was me being kept somewhere that opened me up to a whole new world.

  I see Drew every time I go shopping. I make sure to smile and wave. She showed me kindness her friend was not willing to and for that I will be forever grateful, she acknowledges me more than my own mother for one these days.

  One day it would be nice to tell her my name, so she can put a name to the face of the girl she saved from being brutalised at the hands of her friend. I wonder if they are still friends. I like to think they aren't.

  For a Kimmy, Kes is pretty shy. I don't hold it against her. I used to be much shyer than her before I realised who I am. It just means we get to enjoy the quiet- and the thump of bad 2060s rock.

  -----

  By the twenty-eighth time my father uses me; I consider stopping the count. My Mum does not meet my eyes anymore despite my best efforts and does not go out.

  This time my cut-offs are gone, he has put them into bin bags. While I'm in Infinite Fun I pitch cutting him into seventy-thousand identically sized pieces to a very enthusiastic Kimmy on a beach.

  FEBRUARY

  I have somehow managed to get many Kimmys to come to my "birthday" celebration- Four convinced me to do it for sentamentality reasons. I don't really see the need for having the damned thing anymore, biomass can't be brought into Infinite Fun.

  We're at a bar that comes from my memory this time, the one I frequented in my first year at university.

  Kes is here, Four is here, Nona and her gaggle of girls are here. Kimberly is here. There are fifteen others I don't have the energy to name off the top of my head because as I've said, I'm really bad at parties. I'm trying though, despite it all. Despite my father and mother. It's mainly my father, I just wish she'd pay attention to me again. It was enough for a time before.

  Thirty came here briefly, with Kay, at the start of the party and gave me an update. Apparently they're going to try to fry my inhibition cluster for the first time this month- I hugged both Kimmys and jumped with glee. It made me consider telling my Mum who I am when I'm free from him.

  DJ Kimmy refused to come apparently but it's okay. I have access to a whole world of music inside me. Many guests groan but I drag Kes into awkward weird dances I am not sure either of us are comfortable doing.

  Nona eventually gets me to actually drink at an Infinite Fun bar for once: it's so weird being able to taste something on my tongue here still. Outside of here I merely take what I can find between orders and shove it down me for self-preservation.

  I remember seeing Sis sit at this bar and ugh with a friend one of the few times I came here in my second year. It's an odd memory to reflect on nowadays, he ordered a fruity cocktail and kissed the guy he was with in front of everyone. I caught his eye after and he rolled his eyes, then winked at me. I wonder if he'd just have kissed me instead as I am now.

  I hope wherever he is is better than where I am these days. Nathaniel Chambers turned twenty today and I still feel stuck in this damned hellpit of a home. The police most likely already silently considered him dead weeks ago, no one here is under the illusion he is alive anymore. It is a household steeped in mourning.

  I, Erin, am alive however. And I thank every byte of Infinite Fun for the fact Kes sloppily kisses me at the end of the night. I hold her tight after she recoils from me.

  "I get more scared every day, Erin, that he'll hurt you even deeper. You don't deserve to be scarred further. It's so unfair I just make coffee and clean the floor and you-"

  "Well he'll have to get past my shield before he can reach castle Kes up in the clouds. Won't he?"

  We don't talk about him again that night. Four tells me for my gift she will order me a shark pin when I am freed soon. I'm so happy for her ability to be able to do something so... generous. I envy it greatly.

  -----

  On the fourty-sixth time my father uses me, I have not spoken in over a month. It's amazing how much being able to respond to orders does for your mental wellbeing.

  He is grieving, I am grieving too. I could have been his daughter if he wasn't corrupted and vile in every snapshot of him I gather. Still I grin silently as I share a joke about a co-worker with Kes and think about how I will hopefully be free within the month.

  She tells about how stupid she thinks it is that humans are just allowed to act like this in their own homes. I nod and try not to scream.

  -----

  Kimberly approaches me in the conservatory while I sip a ft white. My body jitters with anxiety and the coffee tastes too bitter.

  "Hi doll." She sits in front of me and smiles. "How are you holding up?"

  "I think I've been worse. I'm trying my best to cope with the fact that-"

  "You don't have to say it if you don't want to remind yourself."

  "Why didn't it work for me? Is it my fault Kimberly? Am I still malfunctioning like during that first week? I thought I was all fixed finally."

  My hands shake and I pce down the mug. It would be a shame to break such an ornate thing here, me and her are the only two Kimmys here right now but I still want to seem like I have it together.

  If I can pretend I'm okay there's a chance I might be able to be one day, when I might be able to get his angry face and barking voice out of my memory.

  "No Erin sweetie, it's not a thing that always works instantly, okay? It might take a few tries to get it right. Mine is still functioning you realise."

  "Fuck I just want to be anywhere but there day to day. I have to shower when he's giving sermons- he's around all the time otherwise. I can't do anything! It's just normal words and they paralyze me and bind me to his will. It's work or the garage table or staring at the shuttered door for hours upon fucking hours!"

  She gently threads her identical hand into mine.

  "I promise you that so many of us have been there, you're not alone in this experience and that's what matters because we know what it's been like and is currently like. It's not your fault. Come to the Meadow okay? Kes has been there all day and I want this pce all to myself."

  I feel like Kes needs me more than I need her sometimes. We hold hands and sit there in silence, while she tries to hide how sick and ugly she feels about what's happening to me, I keep her in my arms until she has to get up for work. Then she kisses me on the forehead and I feel my body being called to attention by my task list.

  It's so dull staring at the garage door every night- this room should be burned down with my father alive in it, a perfect tomb for a vile man. It wouldn't be that hard, I know he keeps old and unsafe fuels in a cupboard here. He doesn't even keep any cars in here, just his daughter.

  It's so much worse than I could have ever known it used to be: it's my father's birthday tomorrow. I will not let anything but my body attend. There will be a bnk space in my memory banks when he turns forty-eight years old.

  -----

  The fifty-eighth time my father uses me, I make a conscious decision about myself while I fight the urge to let him win walking down the beach alone.

  It doesn't matter who or what I started out as: Dawson Chambers is not my father and I am not his daughter.

  He is a sick pathetic man who sees me as the thing that took his son away from him and he says something to that effect every day, it's just veiled under some harsh pretense. My Mum stays in bed most days and does not ask me to do anything, so I can't. Dawson's rules have me on stand-by whenever he is around, the bsted things would be so easy to ignore without my inhibition cluster.

  At least they have enough loopholes to allow me to shower on Sundays and keep my chassis repaired with nutrients.

  I think my well of hate for the man known as Dawson Chambers is deeper than the core of the earth; it burns more more brightly than the sun; it is more venomous than any of the hate he could spit in my direction since I was forced to y my ears upon it. It corrodes me in the inertia that seeps throughout my gorgeous muscles.

  This time I fantasise about popping his eyeballs beneath my thumbs and smashing his head against the garage door until only pulp remains. I've thought of it six different times while he's entered me.

  Dawson Chambers will leave this earth through me, whether it kills me or not.

  chronoSprockets