Short story: Daddy Issues

My dad was always different, but different in a way that you just couldn’t tell how. For starters parent teacher conferences regardless of how pompous, or terrifying the teacher, were always on his terms. A bully at school always had their dad who backed them up, until daddy confronted him and as always daddy never raised his voice but just stared into the man's eyes for quite a while. This big muscle bound man was soon in tears, on his knees, and blubbering as he sobbed uncontrollably. The bully demanded to know what happened and daddy stared him down too with the same result. Neither were the same after that. I had a boyfriend that tried to force himself on me and suddenly daddy just appeared outside the car tapping on the window. He waved his finger at the boy, then opened the locked door, and pulled him out. That was the only time I ever saw daddy punch someone and I swear I heard bones snapping. I later learned the boy's friends said he described the punch as feeling like he'd been hit with a fifty pound bag of mulch. It knocked the wind out of him, and he saw his life flash before his eyes and a vision of Hell at the end–he is now an Eastern Orthodox priest.

All of my experiences with daddy never prepared me for what I would learn about him after I was drafted.

Now here I am sitting in a fox hole maybe the last of my fellow soldiers and an enemy combatant is pointing an AK-47 at my head. I’m shaking uncontrollably, I have no idea where I will go after he shoots me, and in a moment of terror I scream out “DADDY!!!” Before I could stop screaming daddy appeared behind the combatant in his normal perfectly clean and pressed, custom, designer suit.

“Hang on honey, you are going to be just fine, but you’re about to see who I truly am to guarantee you are safe from harm.”

As his last words leave his lips the combatant spins to look at him and as the combatant begins to fire his AK-47 the bullets do nothing to daddy, but he begins to change. His suit seems to just sublime away his skin turns to the color of hot charcoal with a similar texture, he grows to maybe fifteen feet tall, billowing muscles cover his body, thick leathery wings emerge from his back, his normally cropped black hair grows until it is halfway down his back, his eyes amazingly stay their piercing blue though, and with a snap of his fingers a nine foot long flaming cat of nine tails appears in his left hand and a long flaming sword appears on his right hip.

The gunfire all across the battlefield ceased as he was spotted, and he roared like a thousand lions causing ear piercing screams from all across the battlefield. Giant hounds of molten rock began racing across the battlefield and the combatant before me flew skyward and out of sight from a single punch from daddy. With a whistle several hundred cats in colors from neon pink to venta black, and sizes from kittens to Burmese tiger’s, some fully formed, some in partial decay, and others are just skeletons, and all crawled out of the ground and watched him intently. In words that I could understand and yet I had no knowledge of ever hearing before in my life.

“Watch her, protect her, she is my daughter, and I have asses to kick right now!”

Daddy’s wings flap once and he leaves the foxhole. Some of the cats come in close to me as if to comfort me as I stand up to see what is happening, and I see the enemy begin to move toward daddy as he tosses his cat of nine tails over his shoulder, he stretches out his arms and flexes his fingers beckoning the enemy to move in, and move in they do. Then he speaks to them in their own tongue.

“Do none of you know who I am? Do any of you even care? Let me introduce myself then, my name is Lucifer, The Morning Star, Curator of Damned souls, Administrator of Hell, now who would like their list of damnation read to them first?”

A gun fires, the bullet hits daddy and falls to the ground.

"Ah, a volunteer!"

Daddy flips his hand and a large book appears in the air before him, and just kind of floated there, and he flipped a few pages.

"Theft, and of religious items from a church no less, murder, bearing false witness, intolerance of other people's beliefs, spousal abuse, mental abuse of children. Quite the list you had going there, but all things end."

A snap of daddy's fingers and the soldier vanished. Then with another roar he grasped the hilt of the cat of nine tails once again and began swinging. The flaming tongues of fire streaked through the growing twilight with each swing, and everytime the tails caught a combatant screams and cries for their mommy filled the air then silence. I lost track of time as I stood watching the battlefield be cleared one soldier at a time as gunfire was always aimed at daddy until finally the field was cleared except for three soldiers, and daddy turned to look at each of them

"Come on, don't be shy."

The three soldiers walked up to him trepidatiously.

"Now, you three have no rap sheet, and therefore I cannot take you from this field. Your souls are clean, keep them that way. One of you is due to end their service soon, go home, do NOT reenlist, work to end this war from inside your capital. Do this and I see you becoming a great leader, you shall wed, be happy, have many daughters, and live a long and happy life. As to you others, get out when you can, one will be a lawyer, the other goes into construction then becomes an engineer. After today if you stay good, you shall never see me again. Now walk calmly back to your base."

He turned toward me.

"It's safe to come out now Annabelle."

I climbed out of the hole and walked up to daddy.

"Daddy, if you are Lucifer, what does that make me?"

"A demi-angel. The children of angels and humans are the heroes of antiquity, the ones remembered in myths and legends. Now in time you will see your 'magic' grow, sadly you were called into this damn war instead of learning who you are."

He laid his giant hands upon my shoulders, and again in words I did not know and yet understood he spoke.

"No weapon of any mortal man or woman shall harm you. Punches shall have no pain to you but shall return to the striker three fold. I shall always come to your aid if you call me, does not matter where, or when, I'll be there."

The cats were all gathered around us, the hounds of Hell sat just beyond the cats.

"Daddy, what were the hounds doing?"

"Preventing the enemy from leaving battle. Would you like one to stay with you?"

"I think they'd attract a lot of attention."

"True, very true. Archie stay with Annabelle, keep her company, give her comfort, watch her back."

A venta black cat that must be four feet long not counting his tail walks up to me and softly meows.

"Archie is one of the guardians of the entrance to Hell. He can appear and disappear at will, he can also talk when he chooses, the problem with that is he will talk your ears off when he gets going."

Archie shot daddy a stern look and daddy laughed.

"Don't like me telling the truth?"

"We both know you cannot outright lie, but you don't have to share everything."

I stared dumbfounded at hearing a cat speak, and yet again it was words I did not understand. Archie looked at me.

"Yes you understand the speech of the angels, I shall teach you during our time together, there is much more for you to learn as well. You have several lifetimes to learn it all so don't rush it."

"Several lifetimes?"

"Yes, sadly you are cursed with an unnaturally long life by being my daughter. When your time in the Army is over I'll introduce you to a couple of guys about your age whose families are like ours so you don't have to see your spouse and children die long before you.

Now, you need to check the battlefield for survivors, call in for their evacuations, and report to your idiot commanding officer…when he gets to Hell oh he is so going to pay for the lives he has killed by his incompetence! He basically murdered these people as this battle was not needed nor properly supported."

Daddy turned to the cats, find the survivors, stand beside them so Annabelle can get them help. Archie, I expect regular reports on her."

"Yes, my master."

And with that the cats scattered or vanished, and daddy vanished, leaving me and Archie to track down the living.

Maura out