Bathed in blood

Bathed in Blood

Chapter 1

Should one believe in the twilight zone, a situation that is characterized by being mysterious? Do we have connections with people early in our life that somehow reconnects later in life? Such has been the circumstance in my life. A connection with people that have revisited me in a different way.

High school had finished for me in 1970 and I was looking forward to some freedom, independence, perhaps the first opportunity to escape my parents. My life as a teenager had bordered on child abuse. Life on the farm had been tiresome. Days had been spent getting up early in the morning to hand milk the house cows, separate the milk from the cream so my mother could turn it into butter. Early rising was a normal part of life, over an hour had to be spent on the process; rain, hail or shine. Then I would have to get ready for the bus to travel the 15 km to school. The day was not ended until the cows were milked again and the wood cut. Many times, I had felt my father’s strong hand hitting my backside because I hadn’t completed an adequate quota of wood, or I had made some comment to my mother about being tired. School work was only an afterthought and my parents didn’t make any emphasis on homework as being a priority, if the chores were done.

Now it was different, at the end of my high school life my father suddenly decided to uproot and make the change to living in the city. They had bought a house in a suburb of Launceston, the major regional town of northern Tasmania. Fate had made one of its many unexpected incursions in my life. Being in year 11 was challenging for me, suddenly I would have to manage my time, study more and achieve the best marks I could. My goal was to be a physical education teacher. Once again life’s circumstances would dictate my future, I knew that such a goal would probably be unachievable. The ability to enter university then was determined by one’s ability to pay fees per semester, money that neither I nor my parents could afford.

Life, circumstance, perhaps fate – who knows what it can be called. My first college classes were in English communications, the classroom was relatively small and full of strangers. I sat in the first available seat somewhere in the middle of the room. Certainly, didn’t want to sit too close to the front nor right at the back.

I was no stranger to the presence of girls in my life and ever since I could remember had attention from the prettiest girls in the class. I couldn’t believe my eyes though when she walked in the door. She was the most beautiful, sexy girl that I had ever seen. Even the pretty American girl that sat next to me all through grade 10 withered in comparison. A Norse beauty, my eyes tried hard not to stare, my physical being desperate to be aroused and yet I often failed to hold back my natural urges. She looked around the room and made a beeline straight for me and sat in the chair directly adjacent to mine at a shared table. We introduced ourselves by first names and I spent the whole lesson admiring her presence, the teacher trying to introduce the reading material for the course, The Great Gatsby.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see much of this amazing creature, she didn’t appear in class very often and I understand she left soon after. Little did I know then that the Franke girl would re-enter my existence some years later in the most unusual circumstances.