When Darkness Ends (Moments in Boston #3) - Marni Mann Page 0,44
worse.
I had been wrong.
So fucking wrong.
Worse was what happened when I put on the wide-strapped white dress. When he touched me. When he dropped his jeans and forced himself inside me.
I wasn’t allowed to cry.
Scream.
Fight him.
Because there was a punishment far worse than the one he was giving me.
He had promised me that.
Now, sometime later, I could still sense his deathly black eyes looking at me and feel his disgusting hands.
I just wanted to scrub him away, but there was no water down here.
No soap.
Just a bucket full of my pee.
The doll, sitting on her perch like a fucking bird, wouldn’t stop staring at me.
She had red hair made of yarn, a white dress identical to the one I’d worn earlier. Rosy cheeks with a stream of freckles across them.
Her shoestrings were big loops of black thread.
When the tears had finally stopped, when I had no emotion left, that was when I’d seen her.
I hadn’t been able to stop staring at her since.
Sitting on the bare mattress—the asshole not even kind enough to give me a sheet or blanket—I held my knees to my chest and rocked over the thin bed.
She was taunting me.
His love, his pet, his toy—she was here to make me even more miserable.
I went over to the stairs and grabbed her fabric arm, dragging her to my bed. I tossed her down, and once I sat, I began hitting her with my fists.
I wanted to hurt her.
I wanted her to feel my pain.
I wanted her to take some of it away.
And inside my head, I was screaming all the things I couldn’t say out loud.
How fucking dare you do this to me!
Why did I deserve this?
Why are you putting me through this?
Why are you hurting me? Wasn’t kidnapping me, taking me away from my home and my family, enough?
You have to stop. I can’t bear another fucking moment.
When I ran out of energy, when I had no more breath left in my lungs, I tossed her into the far corner of the basement.
She fell onto her side, facing me.
Dark, beady eyes, just like his, gazed in my direction, haunting me.
Reminding me of the abuse.
Torture that I knew was going to happen again.
Because I was now his doll, locked in his fucking dollhouse.
Available to play with whenever he had the urge.
To rub his greasy, gnarly bald head all over my chest. To make me clean his filthy glasses with my tongue.
All just foreplay.
A buildup to when he lifted the bottom of my frilly dress.
To when things became unbearable.
Dear God, help me.
The tears were back.
Stinging.
Burning my skin as they dripped.
A knot clogged my throat.
A tightness gnawed my chest.
Both strangling me to the point where I couldn’t take a breath.
I couldn’t suck in any air.
I couldn’t stop my heart from pounding.
I couldn’t stop the shaking that was taking over my body.
I didn’t know what was happening to me, why I wasn’t able to breathe, why these tremors were rattling me like I’d been thrown in the washing machine.
But it all kept getting worse.
I clasped my hands around my neck, begging for whatever this was to let go. But it felt like someone had placed a plastic bag over my head. There was nothing to inhale, nothing to see.
Just hopelessness.
Thoughts of his face, his hands, those horrible fucking eyes were filling my head.
I slapped the bed, mentally trying to fight them away, and a wave of nausea moved through me.
I couldn’t make it to the bucket.
I couldn’t even get onto my knees.
My mouth opened, and bile shot out of my lips, hitting the ground beside the bed.
With each heave, I hoped to purge him out of me, to rid myself of the memories etched into my brain.
To forget the way he had made me bleed.
And to only remember the happier times—the love from my family, the hug of my mother’s arms.
When there was nothing left to vomit, I glanced up and saw the doll’s eyes.
They hurt.
Everything hurt.
I wiped my mouth with my arm and pushed myself onto my knees.
Air slowly started to come back in, and my hands fell onto the cold, rough floor.
I crawled.
A nail snapped and broke along the way. The skin on my knees split open, the tiny grains from the cement filling the cuts.
But I didn’t stop until I reached the doll, hauling her against my chest.
Her soft yarn hair tickled my chin as my arms circled her back, and I buried my face in her neck.