What Sin is She Paying For? [South]
Jul 5, 2011 2:33:18 GMT -5
Post by Eastern Orange on Jul 5, 2011 2:33:18 GMT -5
[/justify][/blockquote]How long has it been since I left that place? Days? Weeks? Months? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like that long ago… I can still feel his rough hands on my thighs and his slimy lips on my mouth. The Peacekeepers did nothing to help me. They stood at the cell door and watched. I tried so hard, so hard to get away. But where would I have gone? What were they thinking putting a male and female in the same cell? It’s like they wanted it to happen. My screams still tear at my throat and ring in my ears. My heart still beats erratically. I still feel him inside me. I feel dirty and worthless and unloved.
I feel used.
I don’t know how long I was in that cell, but everything is still sharp in my mind: the stink of sweaty bodies, human waste, and fear; the stagnant air that clung to you and stuck in your lungs; the rough stained concrete; the torture I endured, not by the hands of the peacekeepers, but by the hands of my cellmate. Everything stood out in vivid detail, blurring everything that proceeded my time there. I lived in constant fear and it was hard to imagine a place where I felt safe. There must have been somewhere right? Before that cell? There had to be. I just couldn’t find it anymore.
My windows were shuttered against the streaming sunshine, leaving my room murky and gray. I was balled in the corner staring at the wall across from me, trying my hardest to keep my mind from traveling back to those dark days. I examined the sketch I had just recently done. It was a boy I had never seen before…at least I hadn’t seen him outside of my shattered memories. He was about the age I was now, and he kinda looked like me. I felt love when I looked at the drawing, but I also felt sadness and a deep sense of urgent primal fear. I saw his face in my memory in that cell, while that boy did things. I saw him standing over me. I saw him handing me food. I saw him pushing me on the swing that’s out back. I saw him during various stages of my life. He was my brother. I have – had? –a brother. Why do I get such a mix of strange emotions when I see him?
You are scared. You have never been so scared in your life. Your father isn’t here to hold you. You saw and axe in his head. You mother is not here to smooth down your hair; you saw her being stabbed, stabbed, stabbed. You screamed. He hit you. A blow to the mouth. A blow to the stomach. You don’t scream anymore. He climbs on the bed with you and your dead parents. He pushes your nightgown past your hips. You want to look away but you can’t look left. That’s where your father is. You can’t look right lest you see your mother. The bed is sticky with their blood. He tells you that you deserve it for betraying him. He says it’s all your fault. You believe him.
You don’t even know the boy’s name. He never introduced himself. He just immediately went after you. He yanks you from the floor and pushes you against the concrete wall, shoving himself between your legs. Aren’t I lucky to be roomed with such a babe? He sneers at you and shoves his fingers in your mouth. They taste like sweat and blood. You bite down. He knees you in the stomach. After that he is especially rough with you. It hurts. You don’t fight back anymore. Over his shoulder you see the flashing smiles of peacekeepers standing in the doorway.
He keeps you locked in the cellar. He cuts you with knives and burns you with cigarettes. He rapes you. You have lost hope. He will kill you, and then himself. He tells you that as he lovingly slides a cold blade down your inner thighs. He forces himself on you for the hundredth time. You have learned to lay still.
Your cellmate is sleeping. You don’t feel any respite. It is just a matter of time before he wakes up and continues his abuse.
He hasn’t returned for a while now. You fear that he has left you down here to rot. You find yourself relieved.
He is awake now. He plays with your hair and takes pleasure at twisting your fingers. He breaks one of your fingers by accident. You scream in pain. He smiles at that and he breaks another one.
He didn’t leave you. He is back again. He runs his hands over your body, delighting when you shudder in fear. He hisses obscenities at you. Bitch. Slut. Whore. Cunt. He says you are worthless. You believe him.
He yanks your hair, pulling your head next to his. He whispers in your ear. Bitch. Slut. Whore. Cunt. He calls you worthless. You believe him.
The peacekeepers come and take him away. They take you to your aunt’s house.
The peacekeepers come and take you away. You arrive back at your aunt’s house.
I shivershakeshudder. It’s too overwhelming; I can’t make sense of my jumbled memories. It’s too hard. I can’t take it. I wrap my arms tightly around my legs and raise my blurry eyes to the drawing. I feel nothing for the strange face. I am empty. I can’t even comprehend what happened to me in my lost years. I can’t deal with it. Who was this person? No one to me. No one. What happened to my parents? Nothing. They hated me so they gave me up. What were these scars on my body? I feel out of a tree.
My shoulders are hiked up to my ears and scream in pain with how tight they are. My breathing is high and shallow and my head is absolutely pounding. I’m fine. I’m fine. Nothing happened. What happened in the cell was just a hallucination brought by stress.
I’m not tragic. I’m not.
I pull my arms in front of my face and grab onto my hair. A high keening sound scrapes its way up my throat, and I start to rock slowly, fast, faster. I slam my back against the wall, my cries hitching in my throat with each strike. Through my tears and a sliver a space between my arms, I see the drawing. It mocks me. His angular face captured in smooth confident strokes, his mouth an upturned line. A smirk. He is laughing at me. laughing With a feral scream, I toss myself across the room and slam my hands on either side of the drawing. “Who are you?!” I scream ferociously. It stares at me. “You are not my family! I don’t know you!” I screechwailsnarl. I bang on the wall, and with one swipe of my arms, I tear down the drawing, taking about five other drawings with it.
I am not done. I see him everywhere. He is everywhere in my drawings.
I run around chaotically shredding and tossing everything I come across, grunts of aggression and desperation pursuing me. Poems. Sketches. Intricate drawings that took days to complete. I tear down everything. Only once my walls have nothing but torn corners, and my floor is blanketed in paper snow, do I stop. I stand in the middle of the disaster, breathing heavily, and stare at the snatches of drawings and words peeking out between the mess. I still see him. I scream in frustration and run for the door. I throw it open to find a couple of the kids gathered around, attracted by the noise I was making. They look beyond me, at my room. They look at my wide eyes and haunted expression. They started to murmur to each other.
I push past them without looking at them. I have to get out! I can’t breathe. It’s like being trapped in that windowless cell again. I need the sky. I need the trees. I need to air. I trip down the stairs and fling myself down the hallway. I don’t look back when I throw open the door and run out. I head for the woods. I didn’t grab shoes, so my feet get cut and stabbed on various obstacles as I run. I trip and throw my hands out to catch my fall. I land hard. My hands are bleeding and my two broken fingers throb. I pick myself up again and feel stinging pain in my knees. They are bleeding too. I run faster.
For some reason, I ended up in the clearing with the swing. I fall to my knees in front of the swing and finally I break down into sobs. I wrap my arms around my stomach and scream with pain. I double over and dry heave (I haven't eaten in forever, there's nothing to throw up). Why did I come here? What was I hoping for? For the swing to not be here? That I imagined him putting it up, and thus imagined him? That was dumb; I had sat on it many times. What then? Proof? Proof that he was a good person? What brother would put up a swing for his little sister and then…
I fall to the side, and land face down on the ground. I clutch the grass, and taste dirt. My screams go on as loud as before, albeit a little muffled.
