Fatherland

Spring rolled around, and it occurred to me that I hadn't been home in two years, not since my deranged father ordered my fiancé and his parents out of the house on Christmas Day before they’d even had a bite to eat. But that's another story.

He’d always been what my mother termed difficult, and until I was five years old and discovered the dictionary, I thought that meant stark raving mad. Suffice to say I didn’t bring my friends home, and I barred him from coming within 100 metres of my school by threatening to report him to Childline. He didn’t dare to cross me; I had his genes after all.

Ignoring my then fiancé now husband’s counsel that a surprise visit was a bad idea, I set off solo and homeward bound. Spring, after all, was the time for new starts, and it was high time I made up with my father.

Using my old door key when I arrived I walked in on my parents in a heated discussion. ‘I tried to reason with them’ my mother was insisting. 'I told them that if I get into bed with you guys, I lose my clients'. My heart seemed to flip over and then stop until I realised she was referring to the town’s annual charity bed push. It seems the controversial GLTKKK, of which my father was the recently enrolled third member, was entering this year and they were threatening him with excommunication if my mother refused to be one of their four in a bed. They imagined that she, as the local churchwarden, would lend them some air of respectability.

It was promptly decided between the two of them that a church warden’s daughter would probably do just as well and so it came to pass that I found myself in bed with the entire membership of the GLTKKK. It was only a stormy day with zero visibility that saved me ending up all over social media. The only image of me on that day is so out of focus it looks like I’m far back in a tunnel with my head stuck in a bucket. Very fortunate considering my public position and the fact the GLTKKK is now a proscribed organisation in 13 countries.

Posted in response to @mariannewest's weekend
freewrite challenge.
The 3 prompts are in italics
The image is my own.