Rock Stanley

basics

Age: 34 height: 6'3" weight: 280lbs hair: brown eyes:brown

personality (book description of inner feelings)

introverted and his social ineptitude is a hurdle. Rock had a lack of experience that no amount of practice could make up for. Despite his many faults, the motivation that awaited him back home turned him into a miracle-maker at times. Rock suffers from long on going sexual abuse from his adopted mom. Rock’s uncertain tone didn’t ooze intelligence, nor did his timorous nature fit such an intimidating presence. At six-foot-three and just under two-hundred-eighty pounds, he didn’t have to take shit from anyone. Yet, he did.Rock’s depression and angst only boiled harder with each cutting remark. He’d never been good enough. Not good enough for his blood parents, and certainly not good enough for his adopted mother. Geraldine was never shy about letting him know he hadn’t earned acceptance. He was an outcast, an idiot, a habitual failure an uncommon man in the sense that, even while in the presence of others, Rock Stanley was still alone.The joy was difficult to watch.They were all things and concepts Rock wished he’d been able to enjoy at their age. But agonizingly, that wasn’t to be the preordained path for him. Rock never knew the luxury of stretching his legs as a boy, nor as a young man, and certainly not as a perpetually policed adult.The juvenile jealousy and adolescent anger mated, giving birth to his depression. The twisted feelings never waned they only amplified occupying more space in his brawny chest and his bitter brain. There wasn’t a morning that Rock awoke without being reminded that he’d been slighted.As he watched the pack of children in the playground having the time of their lives, it was difficult for Rock to dissect how he felt about it. The situation was complex. His unsovereign assimilation into a family of maniacs didn’t help, a family that wasn’t even a family. The sick circumstances had indefinitely distorted his logic. But despite his cruel upbringing and the cantankerous queen of the castle, at that moment, he felt different.

cont

How many parties was he deterred from attending? How many smiles had been stolen from him? As each question piled onto his thoughts, he couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. Rock despised what he’d become. The pathetic slave in the mirror that stared back at him each morning. How had he allowed his fears to control him for sHe didn’t deal well with people. But Geraldine was counting on him to keep things organized. Geraldine always somehow found a way to bring out the best and worst in him. The tall duty she’d saddled him with was one of Rock’s greatest challenges. While approaching and coaxing disadvantaged families at the inner-city playgrounds to participate in Geraldine’s experiment was an evil act, Rock surprised himself in his execution. He was astounded he was able to convince a single family, let alone three. Fear was his ultimate motivator. The wicked fury that fluttered through his torso intersected with a newly-emerging dread. A grim dread he was already aware of, but a dread that had been lying dormant the entire morning. Rock’s instincts told him things were only set to get more tumultuous. Caroline Clarke didn’t understand just how distressed her presence made Rock. A flash of Caroline yanking her son’s leash on the playground flickered in Rock’s head. When he’d approached her, uncommon thoughts of violence had crept into his mind. Even after their initial meeting, the fantasies hadn’t fully dissolved. Rock had grown physically immune to the abuse, but emotionally, it was another story. He didn’t know what to do next, so he did nothing.He took pride in not selling the attack; he didn’t want Geraldine to get the satisfaction of hurting him. The outbursts occurred frequently enough that he’d conditioned himself. He was like one giant ball of pins and needles. Tough as nails and numb as Novocain. Rock gritted his teeth once again He still had a tight grip on Donnie’s bloody leash. There was something about the material that comforted him.

Donnie

Donnie is a six year old boy who was brought to the nightmare playground by his mother Caroline Clarke who cut out his tongue because she said he talked too much and kept him on a leash and dragged him around. Rock murdered his mother because of her abuse to him and his feelings of a parallel between him and Donnie. As she stood on the doorstep with six-year-old Donnie Clarke once again tethered to her, a loathsome leer lingered on Rock’s face and the memories resurfaced in full force. When he’d watched her from a distance that evening, he noticed the parallels he could draw to his own life. Just like Geraldine, Caroline was overbearing to the point of suffocation. She kept him inches away at all times. The leash that was attached to his back wasn’t merely a measure of safety—it was a symbol. A lack of trust. A sense of ownership. A craving for control. A symbol of dominance. Rock knew where Donnie’s path of darkness eventually snaked, and it wasn’t a good place. It was a massive black hole of perpetual terror and despair, of self-doubt and gratuitous dependence. A synthetic, pre-packaged mindset manufactured by Donnie’s disturbed overseer to keep him under her grubby thumb.Caroline Clarke knew exactly what she was doing.Geraldine Borden knew exactly what she was doing.It was like Rock was looking at two parallel dimensions where identical atmospheres were being cultivated. Tightly wound worlds of suffocation that used fear, compliance, and reliance as fuel.When Rock had watched Caroline and Donnie in the park that evening, he’d felt like he’d been placed back into his own childhood under a different set of nuances. It didn’t matter that he’d grown up in a prettier house or around more money than little Donnie. They were both emotionally poor. When Rock heard Caroline scream orders at the boy, he knew Donnie wasn’t enjoying the ride. The swing he sat upon meant nothing to him. With his smooth face drained dry of enjoyment, it was clear Donnie was merely dancing for

Donnie cont

a puppet master. As Rock watched Caroline pull and position Donnie by the literal string sticking out of his back, the metaphor in his mind was demonstrated before his eyes. The leash attached to Donnie kept Caroline physically connected, as if the umbilical cord had never been severed. Why? he wondered. Rock’s world had always been a place of disappointment, but he was realizing he’d underestimated the scale. Now that he’d ripened some, things had become clearer. His thirty-four horrifying years on the planet felt more like a hundred. Could little Donnie really handle that? He was just a boy, a moldable wad of putty set to be stuffed into a box, confined in a way only a corpse in a coffin should. Everyone else was oblivious, but Rock and Donnie knew they were already dead. Dead inside, dead alive, and dead tired. unleashing decades of frustration. When the blackout ended, he sat atop Caroline’s lifeless body. The cuts and blood that covered Rock’s hands bled downward onto her pancaked head. The splatter collected by his suit made him feel like he was in a dream. But when he looked up at the ghost of his past, six-year-old Donnie Clarke, he knew he wasn’t. The little boy stood steady as ever, unflinching as he awaited whatever came next.Donnie wasn’t terribly impacted as his mother’s warm blood dribbled down his wrist. He felt Rock’s hefty hand delicately clenched around his and found a peculiar comfort as he entered the bathroom. Rock sat the boy on the closed toilet seat and looked down at the nasty scrape that painted most of his kneecap. A few uneven, flapping lines of the boy’s once smooth surface dangled off the side. The red was still coming out of the wound quite generously. “We’ll get you patched up,” Rock said. The boy offered no words in response. Rock’s big bloody paws shook from the adrenaline rush, the outpouring still rumbled inside him. Steadying himself, he twisted the hot water faucet on the sink. Rock dampened a cloth and used the bar of soap

Donnie cont

Rock dampened a cloth and used the bar of soap to create a lather. The emotions he was holding in check were dangerous. Rock didn’t know how to feel about what he’d done to Donnie’s mother. Just managing to think enough to clean the boy up felt like a victory. He was just doing what he thought was right, but inside, nothing was right. He felt himself coming undone. He felt high, and that overload of pure panic and pandemonium was like a drug.Finally, he’d told the kid something that was concrete. Donnie didn’t say a word back, but he nodded a touch. While it wasn’t much to Rock, it felt like they were starting to communicate. Even if Donnie’s gesture was minor, it meant a lot to him. It was the first time he’d been able to talk to someone he related to. Rock applied a big bandage to the raw area on Donnie’s knee. He was careful to ensure the sticky parts didn’t touch any spots with torn skin. Once the dressing was in place, Rock gathered the soiled swabs and disposed of them in the trashcan. Then he turned the hot water on again and slipped the washcloth back under the spout. “Just gonna get that blood off your hands, little fella,” he explained as if it were somehow an ordinary chore. Ironically, to a pair of broken souls like them, it was. Rock noticed the blood had drizzled down further than his wrist. It must’ve traveled in toward Donnie’s armpit while he was holding his hand. As Rock cleaned Donnie with the damp cloth, he moved from his palm, over his wrist, up his arm, and then finally into the pit. Up until the moment that the rag entered Donnie’s armpit, he was fine. But upon contact, the boy jerked his arm from Rock’s tender grip.The questions baffled him. Maybe I deserved it? Rock couldn’t be sure if he did or not. There wasn’t a single day where the guilt of his unfailing worthlessness hadn’t been beaten into him. But he still couldn’t help but wonder about that day. It was different from any other.

story section dump

Rock Stanley watched them from the entrance of the park. The thick wrinkles stretching over his gigantic head added a puzzled glare to his grizzled appearance. The droplets fell at a rate that would’ve sent any sensible parent heading for their car. Yet, there, with her tiny boy, Caroline remained. In a way, Rock felt a measure of relief at the sight. While he was looking for a parent with at least two children, securing another participant would be better than none. He was glad he’d decided to check the playgrounds on such a dreary afternoon. Surprisingly, the improbable gamble had the potential to payoff.Rock clenched a brochure in his big hand that read: ‘HELPING HEARTS.’ It displayed various information about the charity that helped underprivileged children gain access to modern playground equipment. It also had an area with cut lines that surrounded a single ticket for family entry embedded on the final page. Not wanting it to get soaked, he slipped the informational material back into his pocket. He’d always hated approaching people. His towering height and bulky frame always seemed to intimidate them. Additionally, his social ineptitude was a hurdle. Rock had a lack of experience that no amount of practice could make up for. Despite his many faults, the motivation that awaited him back home turned him into a miracle-maker at times. Hopefully, he could come through again as he had before. But there was something else that was still on his mind besides securing a reservation. He’s not a fucking dog, Rock thought. Rock squinted his eyes. The more he focused on the toddler tether attached to the child’s back, the more it bothered him. In his mind, it was the physical manifestation of restriction itself. Just the sight of such a domineering tool filled him with ire. As the rain pattered down on Rock’s faded flat cap, he clenched his teeth. The boy looked just old enough to attend school.

He didn’t require the weight of such an oppressive invention dragging him down, siphoning the urge to explore and roam freely from his soul. Rock expected such a crass contraption might mutate the child’s spirit into something more predictive and robotic. He knew it all too well. As Rock watched the boy sit on the swing, he already appeared halfway there. Most children in his position would be rocking back and forth, testing the limits and heights they could push themselves to, exploring acceleration with a youthful vigor to borderline dangerous speeds. Donnie looked dead. It was as if his mother was pushing a tiny corpse along for a ride in the downpour. It sickened Rock. He didn’t know if he could watch it anymore. But just as he considered taking a step toward them, Donnie’s pace changed.Rock watched with discomfort and anger infecting his chest. The scene was difficult to take in. Then, suddenly, when Donnie reached the pinnacle of his forward motion, Caroline violently tugged the leash backward. The power of the purposely ill-timed jerk caused the unsuspecting boy to flip backward. The yank was just strong enough to turn his body half a revolution. After the four-foot drop, Donnie landed headfirst in the muddy sand. The sickening thud of his body hitting the gunky beach grains was highly unsettling. Rock could hear it from where he stood. He cringed. His eyes flared. It was all too familiar. “Get up!” Caroline screamed. “You have to hold on! Didn’t I tell you to fucking hold on?!” As the dizzied boy rolled off his back and sat up, Rock saw the mass of wet sand that matted his hair and clung to his face. It was beginning to make sense why she took her child to the playground in the pouring rain. A flurry of vicious imagery invaded Rock’s head. He’d never felt such a strong urge to hurt someone. Inflicting violence wasn’t a deed that typically crossed his mind, but he had no control over the psychological jolts. The terrible things he might do under t

The terrible things he might do under the right set of circumstances seemed unending. But as attractive as the horrible ideas were, Rock understood they weren’t possible. That dreary day wasn’t about him. No day was. Life, and the dynamic between Rock and the pair of strangers he studied, were far more complex than an idea so simple. “Clean yourself off, now!” Caroline yelled. She slapped the back of Donnie’s head. The force behind the strike was so hard that sand flew from the boy’s hair. Rock looked away. He couldn’t watch it any longer. Instead, he focused on interrupting it. Walking toward the swings, he extracted the brochure from his pocket. Rock Stanley stared at Geraldine Borden like she was a black hole, a gaping portal of darkness ready to devour him without a moment’s notice. His eyes felt just as heavy as the weight that he carried on his stout shoulders. The terror encapsulated in his pupils wasn’t anything new. The fear and uncertainty had been stapled to them long ago.The old hag’s glare burrowed into him with the speed and ease of a laser beam. The discomfort that was transmitted left him fidgety. Rock reached up, removing his weathered flat cap, unsure how to respond. “It’s a simple question,” Geraldine said. “How many were we supposed to have?” Rock held the cap firmly in one hand and used his remaining sausage fingers to scratch the disheveled follicles on the top of his skull. The words still weren’t coming. “Answer me, you idiot! How many?!” Geraldine’s aged vocal cords screeched. “Nine?” Rock finally managed to blurt out. Rock’s uncertain tone didn’t ooze intelligence, nor did his timorous nature fit such an intimidating presence. At six-foot-three and just under two-hundred-eighty pounds, he didn’t have to take shit from anyone. Yet, he did. “Well, I’ll be damned!” Geraldine said. “It speaks! Then help me understand, why did you approach a single parent with only one child yesterday?! Furthermore, you waited until now—hours befor

they arrive—to tell me!” “Y—You said that I shouldn’t bother you unless—” “Not another word! You’ll never be worth a damn!” Geraldine placed her hand over her mouth, adjusting her dentures. Anger left them on the verge of sliding out. “This is why you’ll never be a Borden! Why you’ll never be worthy of my fortune! All I ever wanted was another deserving generation to continue once I’m gone! Is that really too much to ask?!” Rock’s depression and angst only boiled harder with each cutting remark. He’d never been good enough. Not good enough for his blood parents, and certainly not good enough for his adopted mother. Geraldine was never shy about letting him know he hadn’t earned acceptance. He was an outcast, an idiot, a habitual failure—an uncommon man in the sense that, even while in the presence of others, Rock Stanley was still alone. “If my ovaries weren’t barren, I would’ve had someone capable!” Geraldine said. “But instead, I had to wait almost two years just to get custody of a useless, sorry excuse like you! They didn’t even give me a female! Even when you were just a child, I knew you’d be shit! I didn’t get this successful,” she swirled her finger around at the collection of valuables in the stunning room, “by not having an eye for failure. I saw you, boy. I saw you coming unglued a mile away. I should’ve known better than to expect anything less. I should’ve known better than to believe I could somehow change you.” She turned her back on Rock and looked up at the oil painting of herself that hung above the fireplace. It was a recent rendition that captured all her wrinkles and the oversized, hazelnut mole on her left cheek sprouting several inky hairs she’d neglected to trim. The vivid illustration outlined the compounded hatred and disgust she’d harbored for decades, a lifetime of disappointment trapped in her eyes. While Geraldine’s hair may have been a blend of yin and yang, her soul was the former—black as night. And within that sinister space

laid the fuel to propel anything her corrupt mind could conjure. Outside of the parlor, which was nearly the size of a high school gymnasium, the echo of footsteps approached, pausing at the doorway. Just beyond the threshold, in his elegant brown slacks, white collared shirt, and brunet vest, stood Adolpho Fuchs. The curled brow above his left eye indicated a bit of concern. “What’s all zhe fuss?” Fuchs asked, his German roots shining through as he spoke. Geraldine squawked. “There’s only going to be eight now, thanks to this goddamn putz!” “And? Is eight not enough?” Fuchs inquired. “Nine is the number of children my mother had,” Geraldine said. “And her mother…and I just…” She paused. There was a quiver in her bottom lip that she struggled to subdue. “I just wanted to know what it was like to be her for a day. Just a day.” The German couldn’t help but chuckle. Geraldine glowered. “What’s so funny, Mr. Fuchs?” “Nothing, my lady,” Fuchs replied, the amusement dissolving off his face.He was a lesser human. He would never be good enough. It was not just how Geraldine saw Rock, but also how Rock saw himself. “Zhe boy will never be perfect,” Fuchs said, “but he has secured you eight. We must be grateful for those efforts, otherwise, we risk ruining zhe festivities. You mustn’t let one bad apple spoil zhe bunch, my lady. You should still have some joy, for today will be far different zhan any other zhat we’ve ever witnessed.” Geraldine glared at the old man and let the words Fuchs offered simmer in her brain. A smile crept over her haggard face. “Maybe you’re right. It’s not perfect, but I suppose we’ll just have to make the best of it.” She turned herself back in Rock’s direction. “Go to my room. It’s time we dress you properly before our guests arrive.” Rock stared into the mirror, the collective pain pooling in his glazed eyes. Geraldine lurked creepily behind him and slipped the raggedy coat off his torso.

Her hands lingered longer than necessary on his muscular frame, familiar with his physique. She caressed Rock as she disrobed him. “Oooof, my word,” Geraldine said. “When’s the last time you bathed? You’re most certainly going to need to take a shower. I can’t have you smelling so foul in front of our guests. Even if you’re not above them, you need to act like it. Get this undershirt off.” Through that old, adolescent lens, Geraldine looked a bit different in his mind. Her skin was smoother, and her hair had more color, but her tongue was still as sharp as ever. The verbal lashings hadn’t changed with time. They remained her most punishing tool, one that haunted Rock as steadily as Geraldine’s hand the moment she pressed the scalding iron into his chest. Over. And over. And over. Rock recalled how Geraldine had screamed while his flesh had flared from the blistering heat. “Why did you look at her?!” she’d said. “I saw you!” Just a short distance away from where he’d sat, Wanda, the then live-in maid, lay motionless on the floor. A growing outline of garnet gruesomeness had infected the carpet. The soaked flooring her cracked head lay upon would be the site of Wanda’s final thoughts.The battered brain tissue littered around her malformed head was a ghastly image that had burned itself into Rock. It was the picture of all potential fear. The violent amalgamation of inner cranial tissues, skeletal fragments, and Geraldine’s rage. An incident that left an impression of such depth on him that it would last a lifetime. Rock remembered the nonchalant nature of the only other living adult in the room, the straight face Fuchs wore as he watched the madness unfold, sitting casually on the sofa by the fireplace. The gory murder was far from the most difficult thing Fuchs had seen. It looked like just another evening for him as he puffed away on his pipe, watching the branding irons in the fire grow a lighter shade of ginger.