Sanctuary

The echo of the raindrops along the tin roof of the old family barn reverberated throughout the hay-filled, dimly lit interior. The sheer humidity was enough to drive me up the walls, but I rarely stayed inside the farmhouse anymore. The faint, yet not-so-distant rumbling in the clouds gave me some comfort, drawing my mind away from the reality of what my world had become. Most people found the sound of thunder to be disconcerting, but it washed over me like a tide of overwhelming peace. It had been years since the incident, but I could still feel the scars of those nights as though the memories seared into my mind occurred merely a moment before, the pain still raw. No matter how hard I tried to put it aside, the only way I could black out the memories and turn away from the scars was by closing my eyes and listening to the rumble of thunder in my world away from the world; my sanctuary.

I was a child, but that didn’t matter to him. He was a ravenous wolf, insatiable; his teeth bared, ready to rend flesh from bone were he to remain unsatisfied. When you’re a child, the world seems so innocent, and you put your faith in the goodness of others, and your hope in the security of family. But I learned a long time ago, that while hope can be a source of purpose and strength for most, it is also an unforgiving torment for the naïve. After losing my parents as a young child, my aunt gained custody of me. Although she tried her best to do right by me, she was perhaps as broken as I had grown to become. The bruises that decorated her fragile body were hidden by her unyielding desire to please a man that could only ever find pleasure in the anguish of others. It wasn’t until my aunt had passed away from the pain and suffering that I realized how much she had truly protected me by being the target of his wrath. It broke my heart to realize how alone she was in the end.

With the guardian angel out of the way, the demon turned its gaze towards the only hopeful flicker of light it could find hiding among the remnants of a broken home. The very first time it happened, I blacked out from the pain. No matter how hard I tried to forget, the pain would not forget me. From the very warmth of his noxious breath upon the nape of my neck, to the excruciating agony of his flesh tearing into my own, I was haunted by the vivid memories that clouded my sanity. It was an inexplicable terror, one that felt like a grotesque scar that marred the surface of my identity. For many days afterwards, I was afraid to look into a mirror. I felt as though the filth that lingered upon my bones was evident to the world, and I hid in the only place that made me feel like I belonged. The old dilapidated barn was my home, not because it was a place to hide from the wolf that preyed upon the weak, but because I felt like his prey; a helpless lamb to the slaughter.

For the first few days, I slept in a fortress made of the moist bales of hay that kept me warm throughout the cold and dreary nights. My tears silently caressed my face as they fell through the cracks of the bale that I called my pillow. But the hay was comforting, like a gentle blanket that embraced me in a way that felt different than any human touch. The lights were never on because the darkness kept me hidden from the monsters that lurked in the night, but the pale moonlight that lit up the night sky shone through the barn sash window, bringing me some slight consolation among my lucid dreams. The dreams I dreamt were my escape from reality. From the lush verdant fields of lavender upon which the bees would play, to the golden wheat that covered the quaint hillside in a village by the sea, my dreams would offer refuge in a mind surrounded by nightmares.

The hardest part of it all was realizing how alone I had become. Towards the beginning I was afraid to seek help, afraid of telling even my closest friend of what I was going through. I was afraid of what the world would think, convinced that somehow, in some way, it was my fault. But overtime, the flicker of hopeful light that burned inside me slowly faded into nothingness, and little by little, parts of me would shatter like glass till there was nothing left to lose. When I finally mustered up the strength to speak my truth, the loneliness consumed me like a child falling into the maw of a great beast; because the fact remained that no matter how much sympathy was shown, or how many condolences were uttered, none of them could truly ever understand. After all... who would believe that monsters were real?

Many people think that facing a trauma over and over makes the event less traumatic; it’s only natural for someone to become desensitized to something that happens so often. But there was nothing natural about what my life had become. I tried desperately to become anyone or anything else, cutting off my hair, believing that it would fool him into seeing me in a different light. But that only made him angry. I didn’t have to look in the mirror to recognize who I had become, the blanket of bruises along my skin a roadmap to where I would eventually end up.

It was many months before the endless nightmare would eventually come to a stop. But the end of one nightmare was only the beginning of another. Over time, even the deepest scars of the flesh can fade, but the scars that fracture your soul simply fester, like a gangrenous wound that slowly eats away at everything that makes you whole. Even now as I closed my eyes, the memories pushed free from the darkness in which I desperately kept them entombed. The crack of deafening thunder pulled my mind free of the memory’s embrace, and the evanescent smell of the pine timber that adorned the broken walls filled my senses with a somber euphoria. Freedom would never be freedom, and life would never be life, but in my little sanctuary, the monsters would be kept at bay.