The Afterwards: The Afterwards, #1

By Alex Jones

In this book, I write about the incredible journey my soul undertook to find the answers that were plaguing my every thought as a child, and later, overwhelmed me as an adult.
I talk about my desperate search for answers during an anger phase that was untaught to me from the circumstances I reluctantly found myself in. My torment and agony as a child led me to question all that I thought I knew and believed to be true as I began to pay attention to 'the fight inside,' and ignore how people thought I should cope.
It may be that they too, were asking these haunting questions. They too, might have been searching for a way out of an ambush. But, they never found it.

I told her about the door handle that turned at night, and that no matter where I hid, be it under the bed, in the closet, or in my sisters' bedroom, he still found me. I told her that sometimes, he'd bring others with him and that it scared me. I told her not to cry because we were still okay, but that I worried about my Lily. I told her that I thought the monster was what was making her sick, and what had brought the seizures to her. I told her that Lisa was crying, but that she couldn't see her tears.

They were bouncing around inside of her. I told her that we knew he was beating her, and we would hear her cry in the night. I asked her to stop him, we are afraid he might kill her. I told her about the firearm he kept hidden in his closet, and how often he brought it into my bedroom to remind me to keep our secret. I told her I had learned how to use it. I told her that the next time he drove us at full speed, aiming for a solid brick wall, that he might not want to stop and that we would ultimately hit the wall. I told her that I didn't want my sisters to die. I told her that when she left for the stores, to please let us go with her because when she left us behind, he did things to us. I told her that when she went to Church and left me at home to keep an eye on him, he did things.

I told her that sometimes, I could feel my heart beating so loudly that I hoped she could hear. I told her that I wanted my father back, and that I wanted my sisters to live. I told her that I could remember the day it all began, and that it was the precise instant he left. I told her that most nights, it was pitch black around me and that my eyes often struggled to penetrate the darkness, no matter which way I would turn. As the boogeyman would come closer, it would be as a diffused glow ahead of me. I told her how heavily it weighed on my shoulders and how the darkness would brood and rotate around us all. Listening to the boogeyman's threats made me feel isolated and secluded, and scared me like I had never known fear before. I told her that as much as I wanted to run away from it all, I couldn't move. I was frozen. I couldn't fight. I was paralyzed. It was as though I was being slammed into invisible barriers all around me and that the piercing moaning of the boogeyman made it hard to breathe.
I told her that hell was our home and that the devil was living amongst us. It was waging a battle against us, trapping us in fear and striking out at us with each ounce of aggression he could muster up. I told her of the lies he has convinced himself would turn into the truth, desperate to erase his brutality.

I told her that I hated him and living one more moment with him would only guarantee more hatred, betrayal, hostility and pain. I told her that I knew she didn't know, and that I knew she didn't hear our screams. They were silent, bouncing around inside of us. I asked her to help us stop it, because I couldn't stand one more night in the darkness. I told her my sisters wouldn't survive. And then, I told her how truly sorry I was, and how I wished we could go back to before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Jones
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393009023

Book preview

PLEASE, WALK GENTLY IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

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For the weak, I ask that you walk gently into the lives of others, for the path of destruction left behind before you may be hidden from your view.

Born in an era and a time when shame was found in the littlest of things, it was important to maintain a normal and socially acceptable image that wouldn’t be frowned upon in public. Words of shameful acts were never spoken of, and stories of monsters amongst us were never told. Instead, the portrayal of a perfect family, with perfect values and morals became the only story known to the outside world.

The Afterwards is a story recounting true events around surviving a series of traumatic incidents, only to discover that what happens afterwards is so much more unforgiving and crueler than the actual events; than ‘the thing.’ The promise that ‘the thing’ is over; that nothing could harm me from that moment on, is so far from the reality of what takes place afterwards. Afterwards is where the true trauma and unbearable pain begins.

The inability to be forgiven by those that I have loved the most continues to live inside of me and I am convinced, will continue on for years to come.

The inability to accept that the guilt was not mine to carry, will haunt me forever. The anger and fear still consume me.

The Afterwards is where the true heartache begins. It is where the real journey begins. It will always be where it all began and where the real devastation began.

The years that have passed, have not lessened the guilt. The Afterwards lingers; it never goes away. It never leaves. It never heals. It can never be anything else, and it will never evolve into something else. There is nothing after The Afterwards. It is where the end begins. It was always the beginning of the end.

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A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

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In this book, I write about the incredible journey my soul undertook to find the answers that were plaguing my every thought as a child, and later, overwhelmed me as an adult.

I talk about my desperate search for answers during an anger phase that was untaught to me from the circumstances I reluctantly found myself in. My torment and agony as a child led me to question all that I thought I knew and believed to be true as I began to pay attention to ‘the fight inside,’ and ignore how people thought I should cope.

My story about apprehension and acceptance come from a place inside me; one I prayed that Lily and Lisa would find someday. It may be that they too, were asking these haunting questions. They too, might have been searching for a way out of an ambush. But, they never found it.

The abuse is referred to as ‘The Thing.’

The period after the abuse is referred to as ‘The Afterwards.’

Alex’s father is referred to as ‘The Boogeyman’ and the men of the night, along with their actions as ‘The Monsters.’

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THE PRAYER IN THE RED BALLOON

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Today, I held onto a string that carefully secured and tied a red balloon I had slipped a note into only moments before I filled it with kisses of air and hugs of love. A gentle breeze began to blow when I looked up into the overcast, cloudy sky. I waited for the sun to set just a little more, and I waited for a gust of wind to sweep in just as the sun was about to say goodnight.

My timing had to be flawless. My prayer in the red balloon was important. As the wind began howling around me, I smiled up at the balloon before I released it into the almost dark skies. I prayed that it would reach you safely as it begun its journey of a thousand tears. I watched it go higher and higher, until I could no longer see my red balloon, and the heart it was carrying. I closed my eyes, and asked God to keep a lookout for a delivery, for my sisters I was sending a prayer and a million hugs to. In my note, I asked God to tell you that I could never have known that our last day together, would be our last walk in the rain. If only I had known, I’d keep you out in the storm for a few hours more, while I held your hands tighter as though it was a lifeline to our hearts. If only I had known that I would never hear your voice again, I’d listen more attentively to each word you had ever said to me.

Lately, on the loneliest of days, I hear you, and I keep your voice and your words alive in my mind. I asked God to tell you that you were my greatest treasure and my greatest sadness, and I hope you will know how much I loved you.

As my tears fell onto my prayer, I asked God why He never told me that you would leave. I never thought you would swap the world I rescue you to, for a world where the boogeyman still reigned. I thought you’d be with me, until the end of time. I asked God to tell you how sorry I was for bringing The Afterwards into your lives. If only I had known that it would be my last day by your side, I would plead and beg to stop the morning light and rather, linger in my last day with you forever. I would give up on the sun, the birds and the beauty of my days, to live with you in one long night until we could leave together.

All I ever wanted was to see you smile and pay closer attention to how your wonderful would unfold. I miss you in the mornings, and by the time the stars are out at night, the ache in my heart would debilitate and cripple me at times. Before signing off my prayer, I asked God to give you all my love in the red balloon, but that He be careful when He opens it.

I tried to fit in all the hugs and all the kisses we had missed in the days that followed your leaving, and those I would miss in the days that were to come.

I am not yet ready to say goodbye, and there are still so many things I wish I could tell you. It is hard to hold back the tears, when I think of the precious years we had spent as sisters followed by the haunting years we had missed.

The same tears that would silence me when I think of the years to come that I would spend without you. There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t give, just to see your face and hold your hand, even only one more time. I asked God if we could spend just one more day together. My life has just never been the same, and I need just a little more time.

I need to catch my breath, and lift the weight from my heart, even for just a moment. If God could just look into my heart, and see how broken it is, He might consider giving me five more minutes. I won’t tell anybody, and no-one would see. Just this once. Just for me. Just to survive. Just to feel something other than excruciating soul and heartbreak.

Without you, my soul is in so much pain, and breathing hurts with each breath I take. I sometimes struggle to pick up the pieces, and I regularly ask God to show me, and teach me how to live out the rest of her life, without you.

I sometimes wonder if you were ready to leave, and whether you were ready to let me go.

Do you sometimes negotiate with God as I do? I sometimes wonder for just a moment, if the stars hadn’t perhaps, made a mistake. Sometimes, I want to ask God to check His paperwork, perhaps the demons had gotten the address, and the names wrong. Perhaps it was as simple as a clock that was set wrong, and perhaps, their timing was just totally off. Sometimes, I want to know the name of the monster that so carelessly and mercilessly destroyed our hearts, and most days, I want to ask God to check, because it just can’t be.

It all had to be a mistake. It had to be the wrong home. It had to be the wrong time. Did the demons perhaps come for the previous tenants? There was no prior warning, no indication and nothing to say that an evil was on his way to our home. There was not enough time. We needed more time. I needed to have more time with you. My heart needed more of you. My soul needs yours. For more. For longer. Perhaps, if I whispered into God’s ear that if it was a mistake, I would never tell anyone if He would just bring my sisters back to me. I won’t tell a soul, and I would never say a word. As though it never happened, we would simply live out the rest of our days quietly with one another.

Instead, I asked God again to carefully open the red balloon, and hand my shattered heart over to you, because I know His angels follow His plans flawlessly.

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THE AFTERWARDS

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Just like me, nobody slept anymore. Nobody talked anymore. I sat and stared at the walls and so did everyone else. I sat and cried in the bathroom, and so did everyone else. The Afterwards had begun.

Haven’t we all heard the same question, "why don’t people like us ever come forward and speak up against their parents?" be it a mother or a father when we are being beaten or physically and emotionally abused on a daily basis for many, many years?

Why do we remain silent? Was it fear after being threatened by our boogeyman? There is no doubt that the threats are overpoweringly authentic in the mind of a child. One of the most daunting threats that could be made would be, "they will take you away and they will take your brother and sisters away." Threats of listening to the idea that my sisters and brother would be taken away. Threats of how my father would find himself in an enormous amount of trouble, and even be sent to prison.

Threats of how we will never see each other again.

But, are those threats enough to never tell? Do they scare us enough? Why couldn’t I just tell somebody, just one person? Someone I trusted, a Priest or a teacher at school?

It was the one question I couldn’t answer at the time because I too, could never pinpoint why I could never speak out. There were so many reasons to remain silent, but I just could never decide which one had silenced me.

Was it shame? The shame of what was happening to me? The shame that people would think the worst of me, or the shame that my family and their values were nothing like people thought they were?

There was a whole mountain of shame and certainly shame had such a significant role in admitting that my father was hurting me, but shame alone was not enough to remain silent, and endure the ongoing and often violent abuse.

Was it love? Yes, I adored my parents. Despite it all, I loved them. I never wanted anything terrible to befall them. I didn’t want to fling them into chaos, and when I realized that they didn’t love me back as much, that too, was not enough to remain silent and endure more visits from the monsters that would become increasingly aggressive with each day as it passed, and with each year that was added to my age.

Was it the idea of a family as a whole; did I truly understand that families fall apart after exposing secrets of behind closed doors? No, I didn’t know this yet. I didn’t know any of this. Nobody told me, so I had no inclination, no clue, not even a fraction of a hint that it all was about to fall apart around us.

All I knew for certain was that I wanted out. I wanted my sisters safe, protected and cared for. I wanted the hurt and the pain to end. I wanted a mother and a father like it was supposed to be; just like all our friends parents’ were. Just like our aunts and uncles were to our cousins. I wanted to be loved, protected and cared for, but not like that.

So, what would happen to me if I said something, anything that could possibly be worse than how life at home was? What could be worse than what we were living through when the boogeyman shut the doors of our home to the outside world?

What could be worse than the nightly visits from the him, the beatings, the emotional torture and the physical pain since, home had become the scariest place in the world to be. What could possibly be worse than that? My home with my mother and father; the one that others said was my safe place, was a home that turned into the only place that had become the center of my nightmares.

Why could I not speak up? Why was I so desperately afraid to speak up? What was it that would keep me living in fear of physical and emotional pain every day? What was it that could keep my lips so tightly sealed when I laid awake at night, waiting for the boogeyman to find me, just like he did every other night?

Even when I told, I didn’t want to tell. But I did. I turned him in. After nine years of nightly visits, of beatings and of fear, I had had enough of the evil lurking inside of my father.

The boogeyman had turned to my sisters, and I couldn’t let him take them. I didn’t want it to haunt them, as it did me. I didn’t want to be afraid of him anymore; terrified of going into the bedroom that felt so far removed from the rest of the world. I didn’t want to lie in bed at night, watching the handle on my door, and praying that it wouldn’t turn.

I didn’t want to fear the night anymore. I didn’t want to fear sleep anymore. I didn’t want to fight in silence anymore. I didn’t want to cringe each time my bedroom door opened in the dark, and I would see the silhouette of a tall, dark boogeyman. I didn’t want to hide under my bed or in my closet hoping that he wouldn’t find me even though he always did.

I didn’t want to smell the breath of a drunk who smoked too much and whose weight on top of me made it hard for me to breathe at times. I didn’t want to do ‘the thing’ anymore. It hurt all the time, every time.

I could barely take in a breath each time the door opened, and instinctively, I would hold my breath. I held my breath, deathly afraid of crying. I didn’t want to be subjected to mind torture anymore. The emotional abuse sometimes felt so much more damaging than the physical abuse did. The physical pain sometimes couldn’t compare to the emotional agony.

I didn’t want to pray, hope, and wish for the boogeyman to die anymore. I didn’t want to lie awake, waiting for him to come in but pray with every ounce of me that he had driven his car off a cliff, or fell at work and broke his neck. I didn’t want to wait for a policeman to knock on our front door and tell us that he had died.

I no longer wanted to memorize where he kept his firearm hidden, and how I would remind myself to first take the safety off before I cocked the gun in case I would someday find the courage to fight back against our monsters. "Remember to cock the gun after you have flipped the safety switch." I didn’t want to imagine shooting him before he could get any closer.

I didn’t want to lay at night in the dark with those thoughts, knowing that God could see them and then, wondering what He thought of me; wondering if He would someday, punish me for those fantasies. Fantasies that would make me happy and replace my fear with hope. Fantasies that would make it seem so easy to draw the gun, and fire into him until the magazine was empty.

I didn’t want to lie to my friends anymore and pretend that I was just like them, normal. Normal. I wanted to be normal. I didn’t want to be so afraid of the doors closing behind us each night. I wanted to breathe again without struggling to take in a tiny little bit of air into my lungs.

What was about to happen after I told on the boogeyman was something I could never have imagined to be worse; devastatingly worse than living the nightmare I was living at the time.

There was nothing to prepare me for the shattering and destruction that was about to come into my life and stay as an uninvited guest for years to follow, with no intention of leaving anytime soon.

There was nothing to prepare me of the cruel way in which speaking out would come back to haunt me, not only at that very moment, but for years to come, day after day.

The Afterwards. There is no better way to describe life after ‘the thing;’ after I spoke out, after everyone else discovered the truth, and after the boogeyman was taken away from us.

There was no way to prepare for The Afterwards; after my mother turned her back on me, after my entire turned their back on me, after the Church avoided me, after life had been altered, and after life began again.

It was different, but the same. There was nothing at all; no indication or sign of the emotional downward spiral and trauma that would knock me down with one foul sweep and keep me down for years to come. A prisoner of my own doing in a world I did not choose.

Caught up in ‘the thing’ that I had no voice in, and no control over. A world where I could never say no, and it would be accepted as a no. Nobody told me that I would transition from the prey to the perpetrator overnight. Nobody told me how wrong I was and that in the end, I was the monster.

Nobody told me that every single little thing I would ever say or do again, would be questioned while being analyzed and watched through a looking glass by what felt like the entire world, waiting for me to make a mistake, waiting for me to slip up and waiting for me to change my story, even just a little detail of my version. They were all asking the same question, "how could you accuse that man of doing such a thing?"

Some would talk about what the Electrician’s daughter had done. They would look at me when they thought I wasn’t looking and still, they would refer to the shame of the Electrician’s daughter. They would be frantic to catch me in a lie when each time they asked me if I was sure about what had transpired. They had to know; did I perhaps misunderstand?

And then, they began blaming me, "do you know what this thing has done to your family ... to our family ... to all of us?"

They were frantic to make me understand that this, this thing, had pulled four generations of family apart. They accused me of all that had turned tumultuous, and then they begrudged me. "You alone have divided a family, only you, you did this!"

It never ended, and they never stopped looking for a fault in me. They become louder and I become silent. I whispered, because the moment I would say something, everyone else became quiet. They wanted to hear me make a mistake. They wanted to hear me falter. Eventually, I become mute. Each time I was asked a question; they waited and hoped that my answers would somehow, change. The blame, the accusations, the shame, and the anger were just a small indication of what was to come.

‘The thing’ is what infested my entire being, my existence, and my voice. ‘The thing’ that everyone whispered about, but nobody really said out loud. "She was rebellious, she wanted to run around with the boys, and her father was too strict to allow it," were only some of the whispers that would reach my ears from time to time.

Normal people trying to understand how the Electrician’s daughter could come out and tell the world about ‘the thing.’ "How could she refer to him as a boogeyman, her father? What monsters?"

Right there and in the immediate moments after I spoke out against my father, amidst all the shock and devastation, The Afterwards was born.

‘The thing’ that destroyed all that mattered; ‘the thing’ that made my mother look the other way when I walked into a room, hardly ever able to face me, but when she did, her eyes would not let me forget.

‘The thing’ that took my father away from us and left my mother with nothing. Her eyes and her voice have never forgiven me. When she spoke to me, her words became shorter and sharper. Her disgust for me grew with each day. Her hatred for me became almost visible.

‘The thing’ that made my beloved grandmother an old woman overnight. ‘The thing’ that made my grandfather walk away from me whenever I walked in. ‘The thing’ that became too much for him and stopped his beating heart. ‘The