Fickle, valuable thing

Calming darkness. It pulls her under the water with its ripples. At the end of the tunnel the light will come, and reveal what is on the other side. What is on the other side? She doesn’t know yet, nor does anyone know unless they have been on the other side before. The light grows larger. Opening like the sequence of an old cartoon reel. She waits in anticipation for what she was about to see.

The room is open to the public. People laugh and talk in distorted tones. The water clogged her ears. The faces of the people are unrecognizable due to blur by hallucination. The girl looks around, slowly as the fog only allowed her to see glimpses of what was truly going on in the moment she was in. Partying. Heavy drinking. All the merriment one can expect from a place like this. Eyes widen. Her eyes fall onto him. His face was not blurred. His voice was not muffled by whatever impaired her hearing. He was there, staring at her.

The girl thinks of escaping. A tiny voice, one spewing logic into her mind, tells her to run. She doesn’t belong there. However, the girl doesn’t listen. She starts walking. Each step slow at first before she begins to quicken her pace. She wanted to scream at him. To hit him. But as much as she controlled her body, he controlled the scene. Not this time. This time, she would fight back. “ALL YOU DO IS HIT ME! YOU MOLEST ME AND SLEEP WITH MY MOTHER! SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT YOU DO! BUT I’MA TELL HER!” She said the words to inflict pain on the man. But instead, it infuriated him. His fist came up and with the quickness of a viper, bit into her cheek, and thick murky water pulled her under.

She is standing in a park. She is conscious and able to think again. She is walking through a crowd of people, frantically searching. She remembers what she needs to do. She has to tell her mother what he does to her. A sense of urgency runs through her once she spots her mother. She runs towards her, blocked by a sea of people hell bent to stand in her way. Frustration builds inside the girl. She is shoved back despite all efforts to push through the gross sea of people. Her mother seems so close. So close she can almost touch her. She is there. If only she could reach her. The people made a protective wall around her mother. Trying to stop the girl from telling his secrets to her. Protecting that grotesque beast. But nothing would stop her. And with that determination, she breaks free from the people, reaching a clearing where her mother, looked down at her daughter with glazed over eyes.

“Mami!” The girl attempts to scream but her jaw is shut. She can’t force the words out or open her mouth for that matter. She forgot how to speak. In her mind she forms the words she’s trying to say, tugging at her mother’s shirt and arm. “Mami! He hits me every day mami! Don’t you see the bruises? MAMI! HE WATCHES ME SHOWER! HE WATCHES ME GET DRESSED! MAMI I’M SCARED HE-…” The words could not form. The girl was in tears trying to tell her mother. A look of horror crosses the girls face. Yet her mother just looked at her. Somehow her mother knew what she attempted to tell her only for her mother to push her away, and speak “I’m going to ask him if this is true!” The woman screamed, leaving her heart broken daughter, in the middle of… nothing but space. All the people were gone.

Run. A voice said in her mind, putting body to purpose. A nearby gate leading towards the parking lot of the park stood agape. Her escape. She ran from the clearing as fast as she possibly could. Lava bubbled inside her stomach and cemented. It started slowing her down. Sweat rolled down her cheeks and her throat is on fire. A hot poker being forced down her esophagus. All her muscles burned and you would think with all this exertion some benefit would come to the girl. No. She can’t run fast enough. She can’t run fast enough. She fucking can’t run fast enough! The more she ran the more lead filled her stomach. It pulled her down to the ground. She couldn’t escape him. No matter how hard she tired.

She hears him whisper. “You can’t run.” It was so clear that she thought she felt his breath right on her neck. She tried to let out a frantic scream. No sound. Only her body seemed to react accordingly. Her arms lashed out and she jumped forward trying to knock the sound of his voice away from her along with his face. She only felt air. Yet, he could touch her and he slammed into her back toppling her forward onto her face. A daze set in from the hard crash. She turned quickly. She threw her arms and legs up attempting to hit him. Yet he catches her every move with what seemed like a thousand hands binding her.

Panic and claustrophobia set in inside the girl’s mind. Once again, she willed her mouth to open to scream. No sound. Her jaw didn’t even budge open. The thick sulfurous lava immobilized her bubbled up into her esophagus. It choked her. She couldn’t breathe. It tasted like old eggs put into a microwave to be nuked only to be drowned in salt and pepper. The eggs becoming spongy on the outside but disgustingly gooey on the inside. An old breakfast he used to force her to eat. She gagged soundlessly. She dry-heaved violently. Her body trying to rid itself of the hot thick liquid in her stomach. Nothing came out. Her stomach knotted up painfully.

“So you tried to tell your mother my dirty little secret, ahy? Well let’s not make her delicate little flower a liar…” The words themselves forced her mouth agape but instead of a cry for help. But as soon as it does the hot magma spilled out of her mouth, down her cheeks, and onto her chest in an endless river of sulfuric acid. It was electrified. It shocked her body. Causing her to shake violently in place. All of the hairs on her body stood on end. In her head she was begging him to stop. To let her go. In her mind she was a terrified child begging him to stop. Not the grown woman he is now hovering over.

Shadowy hands came to rip off her clothing, leaving her exposed. His human hands came down and helped themselves to squeeze her breasts until they hurt. She thrashed. More hot sulfur pouring from her lips as she tried to scream. These same hands penetrated skin. They sunk down breaking her ribs. His fingers, long sharp claws now, wrapped themselves around her lungs squeezing the little air she had left in them. He was suffocating her. Attempting to take everything good from her. In her mind the terrified child kept screaming. A shrill, agonizing scream. “PLEASE STOP! I’LL BE GOOD! I’LL BE GOOD!” He now lowered himself on top of her. Her eyes shut tightly. A feeble attempt to protect her innocence from what he was about to do. She felt so hot. The fire burned her. He would remove her innocence now, and there is nothing she or anyone can do about it. He starts laughing. She finally screams…

The girl sat up in her bed. Sweat beaded her forehead running down the sides of her face and chest. Her lungs were on fire. She gasped for breath painfully. His laugh still ringing in her ears. Her head begins to fog again. The walls of her room move in on her. She screams again launching herself out of her bed. She crashes into a wall trying to find the light. Her hands sliding along the wall in a panicked motion. The lights come on showing her that everything that went bump in the night was gone. It was a simple room. A bed. A dresser. Television. An unlit candle sitting on the window sill. Simple was good.

It was all only a dream. A very fucked up and disturbing nightmare. A nightmare that came right out of the pages of a twisted remake of Alice in wonderland. Yet this wasn’t just a dream. They were distorted memories compiled together to create a fucked-up mix of all of her biggest fears. The last memory never finished. Was she blocking it out? Of course, she was. To relive the horror of what he did to her would be too much. Even now, despite her being safe it was too much and she began to cry.

It is real that, despite the short comings of the girl, she functions properly with only a few mishaps here and there. Very few melt downs and hysterical sessions of sobbing. Or even moments like the one she is having now, where she is attempting to comfort the frightened child on the inside by rocking herself back and forth saying “It’s ok”. However, it is endlessly horrifying that an act so natural to life can scar a person. How something that should be sacred and given willingly is taken for granted by the people who were never threatened to be robbed of it. However, this seemingly fickle thing is most valuable to this particular girl. Because the taking of it is by a man who forcibly does so from a child who didn’t look like a child, anymore.