Little Tim, Big Tim Read Online Free

speaks to. She isn’t surprised about our peculiarities and we are surprised that she isn’t, and this makes us feel safe.
    Troy and I enter the nice Greek lady’s house and smell the strange scents in the kitchen that belong to the European cuisine that this family get to enjoy. It isn’t biscuits of the Australian type, but thick sticky pastries that are neatly arranged in front of us on the kitchen bench. She smiles at us as we perch ourselves on the stool at the end of the bench. Our hand is tucked away in our pocket—the pain is excruciating. Mustn’t let her see our hand, or we will get into trouble.
    ‘Tim, have a biscuit,’ the nice Greek lady offers.
    Little Tim surfaces and is disorientated and goes to pick up a biscuit with our burnt hand. He freaks and starts howling as he stares at our damaged hand like he is seeing it for the first time. He screams at the blistered flesh.
    The Greek lady places her large gentle hand under ours and proclaims that she should call our parents.
    ‘Your Mum’s a nurse isn’t she? She needs to look at it. ’
    Our world crumbles in again as she speaks to our Mum about our injured hand. She hangs up the phone.
    ‘Your Mum is on her way. How did it happen? ’ she enquires.
    Troy quickly tells her that Dad has done the damage. She looks shocked and says nothing. Shortly, there is a knock at the door.
    We sit on a stool at the bench where the foreign food is displayed, the stool closest to the open back door. Mum is following the Greek lady into the kitchen. The lady asks Mum if her husband was capable of inflicting such damage. Mum quickly goes to Dad’s defence and tells the lady that I have damaged my hand with firecrackers.
    Our little heart sinks again as another opportunity to escape fades away. We walk behind our Mum up the street, well aware of the flogging that is coming our way. Little Tim escapes again; we get the jug cord for our lie against their reality. The pain becomes excruciating. Troy is ‘in the cupboard’, which is his retreat space, and Little Tim is in the space of many colours.
    Later in the evening, Mum starts to bandage the hand. Once finished, she allows us to snuggle into her and be cuddled. Her warmth assists the pain level, but it is short-lived; as our Dad enters the room she quickly kicks me to the other end of the couch, so as not to meet his disapproval.
    We leave Mum appeasing Dad’s wishes and sob in the boys’ bedroom until we exhaust ourself to sleep. We awake later in the night to watch James start a fire in a KFC bucket. He is using shoes to try and suffocate the flames as they grow larger and out of control. He stops and all three brothers watch the fire making. No attempt is made to put it out. It has just started licking the curtains and as the fire is about to gather momentum, Dad rushes in and rips the curtains down, opens the window and throws the KFC bucket and curtains out the window. He looks at us, stunned and accepting that the only defiance we have is to allow the fire to be our ‘fait accompli’. The numb expressions Dad faces brings fear to his eyes as he is forced to acknowledge that we are willing to die instead of being on this earth, as his toys. A small victory for us with a huge result—tonight there will be no flogging.
    A week later we find Dad attempting to drown James in the bathtub. Troy runs to attack Dad and save James, only to receive a back-hander across the room. Dazed in our crumpled position, we are picked up and flung through the air to be dumped into the bathtub.
    We don’t even struggle after the first few moments of realising he has complete control over our tiny body. Once again, the fact that we don’t struggle and accept an early death confuses our Dad into ceasing the attack. In the past, Troy would bite Dad’s hand and we would end up battered and bruised, also raped; and this act proves that Dad can do anything to us whenever he chooses.
    The more we have control over Troy and his