Page 45 of Intolerable Bishop

He had never been shy about abuse or torture, hell, even rape. He didn’t care about us knowing, so why bring certain girls here? I guess he could be torturing random people, but that didn’t seem likely either. This place was so much more public than the torture chamber under the mansion.

Crack, crack, crack.

I flinched as I imagined what was going on behind the closed door. In the past, I would’ve walked away. I would’ve said it didn’t concern me and I could deal with it after I took over, but not now, not when the girl needing help was so close. If I took a beating for stopping him, then so be it, but I couldn’t just walk away.

Crack.

A faint, muffled groan reached me, and I’d heard enough. Backing up, I got in my stance and kicked as hard as I could. The door crashed open with a bang, and my ears felt like they were going to bleed from the loud, screeching music assaulting me.

Stepping into the room, I readied for the worst that my father could do, but there was nothing in the world to prepare me for this. I stood in the doorway while my mouth hung open as I computed what the fuck I was staring at.

It was a dungeon. Every kind of sex toy you could ever dream of was hung or strung up around the red-lit room. My father had one similar at home, but his toys had sharp hooks, barbed wire, and electrical currents for a really fun time. Those who went in rarely came back out alive. Sadistic fuck. The window was blocked out, and there was sound-canceling board all over the walls and ceiling.

My eyes darted back and forth between the two people who seemed as frozen with shock as I was while my mind reeled and traveled back to another time. To a time when the house felt like a home, and despite my father’s vile temper, he wasn’t as brutal. Back to a time when the house was filled with the scent of fresh baking daily, and I believed in absurd ideas like marriage.

“What the fuck is this?” It was all I could come up with to say as I stared at my father hanging from the ceiling. He had leather cuffs holding him in place, with a ball gag in his mouth, a tail hanging between his legs—that could only be from a butt plug—and a cock chastity belt with spikes. Aside from that, he wore nothing, and my brain felt like it was going to explode in shock.

I locked eyes with him and then the woman behind him with a long whip in her hand. It took my muddled brain a moment to figure out who she was. I hadn’t seen her in years, and with the revealing leather outfit and vibrant red makeup, I needed to be sure this wasn’t some crazy illusion. Walking over to the stereo, I hit the power button, but the silence was worse.

Turning around, I crossed my arms. “Mom, do you mind telling me what the fuck is going on here?”

She licked her lips as she coiled up the whip in her hand. “Hi, son,” she said, her voice as soft and sweet as I remembered, which didn’t fit the scene in front of me.

My father started to struggle and yell through the ball gag. “Ignore him. Tell me what I’m looking at?”

She shrugged. “Your father and I separated, and I left. I came back to town a little while ago, and we reconnected. We realized that we still loved one another and had a certain chemistry that we couldn’t find with anyone else. We knew remarrying wouldn’t work. Neither of us had been happy then, so we started getting together once a week to do…well, to do what we always did best.”

Jesus Christ, they did this before I was born. I didn’t need to picture how my mother got pregnant. No child should envision that. I cringed.

“How fucking long has this been happening?”

My mom looked at my father, who was as livid and mortified as I’d ever seen. He didn’t like to be caught off guard, and my arrival had certainly done that.

“A little over two years, I guess.”

My mouth dropped. I hadn’t seen my mother in ten years. No Christmas card, happy birthday, phone call, text, or a fucking messenger pigeon, but she’d been whipping my father and doing God knew what else once a week for two years?

“Is this a joke? Please tell me that this is some sort of sick game to screw with my head?” I looked around the room for a camera like this was a comedy show, and I was the punchline. “Okay, Dad. The Vicky thing didn’t get me, but you got me this time. Cause…fuck.”

“No, it’s not a joke,” Mom said. “We thought it best if I just stayed away since it had been so long, and you were doing well without me.”

“Are you fucking delusional? You think living with him is normal?” I pointed at my father, not caring if he heard. “You think slinking around in the night following your father is normal behavior? You think bolting my door so he doesn’t drag me from the bed in the middle of the night is okay?” I glared at her. “Fuck you.”

“Son, don’t speak to me that way. I’m still your mother.”

“You left me with a narcissistic sadist who beat me for fun, and you never looked back,” I yelled. “I always thought you left because he hurt you! Obviously not, so what was it? You just decided you didn’t want to be a wife or a mother to me anymore, and walking away was easier?”

She rolled her shoulders. “Some people are cut out to be parents. I realized I wasn’t one of those people. But that has nothing to do with you. It was how I felt about me, not how I felt about you.”

I lifted my gun and pointed it at my mother. She sucked in a deep breath and held up her hands. Turning the gun on my father, I glared at him as hurt and rage consumed my body. It was tempting to end it all now. How easy it would be to kill them both and be done with my fucked-up family once and for all? But I lowered the weapon.

“Newsflash, neither of you ever should’ve been parents.” Pulling out my phone, I snapped some photos of my father and mother as he yelled at me through the gag. My father’s eyes promised pain.

“You know what? You’re right. I don’t want to see you again,” I said as the last of the little boy who’d longed for his mother died with the words.

“Nash, please don’t be like that,” she said, her eyes sad. I shook my head, unable to wrap my mind around the insanity. How did I come from these two people?

Walking over to my father, I stared at him, purposely letting this moment and what he looked like seep into my brain. He was seething, his nostrils flaring, and there was a tiny piece of satisfaction in that.