Marked

by Charisse Spiers

  I hate when she screams. I pull my long sleeves over my hands and ball them up in my fists as I scoot back in the chair, making room for my feet. I bring my knees to my chest, but it's not as comfortable as it used to be. "I'm sorry, Mom. What did I do wrong? I thought I was making you happy."

  "Not getting pregnant! Did you not learn anything from me? Do you not see how hard it's been for us? How are you going to take care of it, or feed it? You're on your own with this. I won't raise another kid." She rubs her face. "This is bad, really bad. He's going to kill me."

  I don't understand how this happened. "Just tell me how to fix it. What did I do to make this happen?"

  "What have you been doing with the damn condoms, Lux? I gave them to you for a reason. You don't fuck a drug dealer without a condom, even the somewhat decent ones. Fuck! When did you even start your period?"

  I blink, staring at her as she stops ranting long enough to put her hands on her hips, her face all crinkled. Where does she think her pads and tampons have been going? "Last year on Halloween. I was at Delta's. Her mom explained it to me."

  "Then why haven't you been using condoms, Lux? I've given you one every time he's come by. Every. Damn. Time."

  I'm starting to panic. Is this my fault? "I put them in my jewelry box. You didn't tell me what to do with them. You just handed it to me. Isn't the boy supposed to do something with it?"

  She slaps her palm to her forehead as if she's only getting madder. "What am I sending you to school for if they don't teach you things? Aren't they supposed to go over all of this in some class? I shouldn't have to pull all the weight around here."

  "Talk about sex in my grade? That's gross, Mom."

  She starts scratching at her skin and slapping herself. "Mom, what's wrong?"

  She looks at the clock and comes toward me, grabbing my hand and pulling me from the chair. "I feel sick, baby. I need it. Just a little. I can't do this, Lux. Please, help me," she begs. "You love me, right?"

  "Of course I love you. Tell me what to do. Do you need medicine?"

  "No. I just need it one more time and then I'll stop. Please do this for me."

  She falls to her knees, holding on to my hands as she looks up at me. "I don't like when he does that to me. He's not my age."

  "He cares about you, Lux. He does a lot for us. Don't disappoint him, or me. Maybe...this baby will actually help. This could be like our insurance policy. That's it, baby. Do this for us. Make him happy."

  "Okay..."

  A knock sounds at the door, causing her to stand as it opens. He walks in, coming straight for me with a smile on his face. He hands Mom a small, clear bag. "Get out of here. I don't want to see you for at least two hours."

  She looks at me, pleading with her eyes as she walks out the door, leaving me alone...again. He looks down at me, brushing my hair behind my ear. "I've missed you, pretty girl. I shouldn't have waited so long, but I tried to stop. I tried not to touch you anymore, but I can't. He grabs my hand and pulls me to my bedroom, locking the door as it shuts. "I can't stand it anymore. I need you."

  He grabs the bottom of my shirt, trying to pull it up, but I stop him. "What's wrong? Why are you wearing this big shirt?"

  "I don't look the same."

  "Let me see you."

  My stomach is in a ball of nerves, but then I remember what Mom said. I don't want her mad at me, so I let him take it off. His eyes go right to my swollen stomach, and then back up to my eyes. "Have you been with anyone else?" I shake my head. "Have you told anyone?" I shake my head again. He grabs my face in his hands. "Everything will be fine, just don't tell anyone. You wouldn't want to get me in trouble, would you?"

  "No. I won't tell anyone."

  "Good, then we won't have any problems."

  He walks me toward the bed until my legs hit, then drops to his knees, placing his hands to my stomach. "I made this." He looks up at me. "I'll take care of both of you. You'll see."

  He grabs the waistband of my shorts, pulling them down my legs until they reach the floor. I place my hands on his shoulders, stepping out of them. He stands, immediately removing his shirt, then goes for his belt. "Turn around, baby."

  "Do you need a condom," I ask nervously.

  He smirks. "It's a little late for that, gorgeous. I want you bare."

  I turn around as he drops his pants and bend over the bed, placing my hands on the mattress, staring at the polka dots on my comforter, waiting. His hands touch the back of my legs, and then I feel something wet down below. He makes a noise and starts licking me. I grip the blanket. I hate that it feels good. It makes me feel dirty.

  He rubs his finger over the spot higher than his tongue, fast. I don't understand why I like it. I don't want to like it, but no matter how much I hate it, it still feels really good, and it just started feeling better. I no longer feel anything for a few moments, before he enters me.

  It doesn't hurt anymore, at least not like the first time. Maybe it's because I escape into story time during this part. I close my eyes as a tear falls from my eye, just before closing them. I'm wearing a pretty dress, my hair and makeup done, and he just picked me up to take me to prom. This time he doesn't just want to make himself feel good. He actually wants to spend time with me, asking me to be his girlfriend...

  I snap up, my body wet from sweat, my stomach churning. I place my hand over my mouth and throw the blanket off, quietly standing from bed, before running in a tiptoe toward the bathroom. My stomach muscles start contracting as I get the door shut, barely making it to the toilet before what's left of dinner is expelled. I grab some toilet paper and wipe my mouth, throwing it in the bowl as I flush, my eyes watering from throwing up.

  I stand, immediately discarding Kaston's tee shirt and my underwear to the floor, and then open the shower. I turn the water on, adjusting the temperature before stepping in and shutting the door behind me. The small space starts to fill with steam as I walk beneath the water stream, letting the hot water run down my body. My head falls back and my hands rake through my hair from root to tip, combing it off my face.

  I step backward until my back hits the wall, and exhale, letting the water spray from my mouth. My knees weaken and give out, causing me to slide down the wall until I'm barely holding myself off the floor. My wrists prop on top of my knees like a tabletop, and my head falls back against the wall. I need structure. I've got to get back to structure. What layer I had built back up shatters, and the tears return, even though they aren't welcome. I want it to stop. I can't go back to this shit again. For years I’ve been unable to cry, even if I tried. This hasn't happened since I was a stupid kid. Now everything is coming back with vengeance, haunting me.

  The shower door opens and I look up. Kaston is standing in his briefs with his hands braced on the frame of the door, looking down at me, still appearing half asleep. "I think it's time we had that talk."

  I nod, and he sheds his underwear before stepping in and shutting us inside. He walks in front of me, and squats, blocking the water as it rains down on his back. I look forward at his chest, saying nothing. It's getting hard to breathe from the water being so hot, creating a sauna effect in here, but I can't find the willpower to go back to bed. This is why I don't stay over. When you finally figure out how to make the bad memories stop chasing you, you don't fuck it up. I always stay in my bed.... The one that is now filthy.

  He grabs my hand from my bent knee and brings it to his lips; the one with the healing cut across it, no doubt to leave a scar, reminding me that we belong to each other in more ways than just words. "Nightmare?"

  I nod. "Just a shitty past. That's all."

  "Tell me what happened tonight, Lux. Let me bear some of it."

  I take a deep breath, looking at him. None of the wounds will ever completely heal. I'll be lucky if I can just mend it with scar tissue. I've worked so hard to shut them out, to drown them inside so they won't bother me, but the second I feel like I'm totally rid of them they reappear, reminding me that they will ha
ve a hold on me forever. Maybe it's time to let someone else in. Maybe it's time to let someone help me fight the demons. My biggest fear is that he'll find out the things I've done and realize that I'm really not the sparkles and ray of sunshine he thinks I am, that I'm not always the strong girl on the inside that I appear to be on the outside. I don't always have it together. I use my body to hide the mess I am beneath the surface.

  He reaches behind him and shuts the water off, then changes position to sit beside me. His arm runs behind my lower back and his hand grips onto my hip, lifting me as if I weigh nothing, and then pulling me to straddle him, his semi-hard dick pressed between my legs. I instantly relax when his hand cups the side of my face, wiping away the wetness, his eyes boring into mine. "No one can hear you but me. We can talk in here and no one will judge us. This can be our safe room."

  I laugh, another tear expelling. "You're kind of becoming my best friend, Cox."

  "I want to be so much more than your friend, Lux, but that's a start."

  "Promise me you won't hold it against me?"

  "I promise that nothing you tell me will change anything, and I never make promises that I'm not one-hundred percent sure I can keep."

  "I made a mistake."

  I can't see him breathe. All movement halts. He stays silent for a moment, blinking at me. "What kind of mistake?"

  "Asking her to come here..." I whisper, the pain dispelling as the words expel.

  His other hand takes residence on my face and both comb through my hair. "Fuck, you scared me. I somewhat just experienced a heart attack."

  "I walked in on her fucking him." The words come out without effort now. I close my eyes, trying to get them all out. "In my bed. Then he held me against the wall." The tears begin all over again. "He touched me after he had been in my mother. I felt like I had been exposed to a disease...and then he touched me. I asked him to stop, to let me go, but he forced his hand on me, in me. I didn't say okay...this time, even when she asked me to."

  My eyes open when his hands fall from my face, and the ones I'm staring into I don't recognize. They are dark, distant, and possessed by something else altogether. His dick is no longer hard at any degree, scaring me, as if he's now disgusted by me. I always make him hard. When a girl no longer turns on a man there is nothing left. If I know nothing else I know that. That is the most definite confirmation of a man's feelings, no matter what comes out of his mouth. Physical attraction and sexual intimacy are the doorways to any relationship.

  Pressing on his shoulders I try to stand, but he grips onto my hips so hard it hurts, pulling me back against his lap. His chest is rising and falling at a rapid rate, as if he's working hard to slow his breathing and failing miserably. His mouth is parted, but his tongue is curled up and pressed against his upper teeth. "It changes things, doesn't it?" I laugh, trying to cover up the panic inside. "I told you my life is fucked up," I say sarcastically. "Whose mother fucks her ex-boyfriend?"

  He's still staring at me, but not looking at me; a vacant stare. "Explain, I didn't say okay this time, even when she asked me to."

  His words are harsh, the sweet guy he's been all night gone, nowhere to be found. This is clearly more than he was wanting or expecting, exactly what I figured, and the reason I've never told anyone about parts of my life other than Delta. The way he looks right now is hurting me. "Do you want me to leave?"

  "I want you to answer my fucking question...please." The last word comes out in a different tone. I might as well just get this all over with and then leave. I'll go to Delta's.

  "My mom has pretty much had an addiction problem my entire life. The types of addiction changed from time to time, rotating out as she went through the variations, but none the less there was always something: drugs, alcohol, sex, male attention, whatever she could find to obsess with. We had no money because of those addictions, so she would whore herself out or smalltime deal when she could, over whatever she could get, but that wasn't enough to pay for her drugs and the few bills we had, so when I was twelve she figured out a different bargaining tool: me."

  It starts to play over again, that first day. I swallow, trying to keep the nausea down. "My body developed faster than the average girl. I hit puberty at eleven and my breasts started to develop. I shot up in height making me thin like a model, and because we didn't have extra money I had longer hair like I do now, which also made me look older. Once, I was with her when she went to pick up from her dealer and I guess he noticed me. The problem started when her drug addiction got so bad that she would use more than she was selling. She began by bargaining with him, getting the drugs up front and telling him she would bring it as soon as it sold. He let her, at first, but then she got to where she couldn't pay it back. Instead of killing her or beating her...he bargained with her, and I was the prize, the payment for her to keep her addiction satiated."

  His pupils get smaller than they were before. "He raped you?"

  "No. I said okay...after she begged me and told me we had no choice. We would starve, or worse, so I did...for her. She was my mother. I was only twelve. I trusted her."

  His fist flies back into the tile, cracking it. "That's the same fucking thing, Lux. You were a kid. Emotional rape, bullying, and bribery are still on the same fucked up level as physical rape. How many times did you have to do that?"

  My lip starts to quiver. "It went on until I was fourteen...when we thought I was pregnant, again." More tears fall. I've never admitted that aloud to anyone else, not even Delta, because after the first time she would have found someone to kill my mother herself.

  He is staring at me with no expression, no emotion, nothing, as if he's completely unsure of what to say or think. "I'm sorry," I say, covering my face in shame, pressing the tips of my fingers into my eyelids trying to stop the tears. I'm not proud of the things I've done, but it's easier to not deal with it than to be consumed with the guilt. Sex with no strings and a payout other than money was the only thing I found that kept the guilt away. It was the only thing that gave me control, something I never had before.

  He grabs my wrists and pulls my hands off of my face. "Where is the baby?"

  "In a cemetery."

  "It died?"

  "She was dead when I delivered her." My breathing starts shortening as those words come from my mouth. I haven't spoke of her since it happened. "I went into premature labor and lost all of her fluid before I even got to the hospital. We didn't have money for doctors and I didn't know about government health insurance, not that my mother would have helped in fear that what she had been doing would have been found out, so I wasn't getting prenatal care. I didn't even know there was anything wrong until the pain got so bad I had no choice but to go to the hospital. She was too young to make it on her own, because it was spontaneous abortion is what the doctor called it. He said it was most likely related to my age. My body was still developing and not ready for a baby at the age of thirteen. When most people were starting to play spin the bottle and seven minutes in heaven at birthday parties I had given birth and was burying my daughter. Sophie was her name. She just looked like a Sophie."

  Unexpectedly he pulls me toward him, placing his hand on the back of my head and then lays it against his chest, over his heart. It's racing. "Is that the reason you had surgery to prevent more?"

  The things he remembers... "Yes. After that Mom did more drugs, stayed in bars, and had a new guy most nights of the week. When history almost repeated itself and we dodged that bullet, I begged Mom not to make me do it anymore. She changed dealers and put me on birth control. I became really wild, looking for attention in alcohol and sex since that's pretty much all I knew. I had a reputation. I was the girl you came to for a good time. I didn't give a shit. My life was already hell, so I just made a massacre of it. When I was seventeen, my senior year, I decided the only way for me to forget my childhood was to move, so I went to her tiny gravestone for the first time since she was buried there. I made a promise, to her and myself. I promised her that
I would never conceive another child so she wasn't forgotten, but also that I would never forget the way she looked when I held her body, like a baby doll. Doctors advised against it, that I wasn't mentally capable of going through something hard for adults, but I just had to see her. She was the only thing worth loving, another victim of twisted things. The world is fucked up, Kaston. I had to grow up at the age of twelve. I’ve seen more fucked up shit in my lifetime at the age of twenty-five than most ever experience. I may be selfish to someone that wants kids, but I'm not selfish enough to bring someone else into something this bad. There are too many kids out there with a horrible life and having to suffer than to add to it. I don't want to be a mother. I didn't have a choice then, but I was never going to be faced with that again, so I conned her into signing the consent forms for me to sterilize myself or I'd tell shit she didn't want told. Even as fucked up as she is, she still has things she wants to remain secret."

  I lay here with my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It's strong, still beating fast. This is starting to feel like home. The silence between us is peaceful, but that's one thing I like about Kaston. Whether we're talking, bickering over our own stubbornness, or just sitting beside each other, I'm still content. No one has ever cared enough to want to get to know me, and I've never cared enough to open up, but with him it just felt right, and the storm inside has never felt as calm as it does right now, after I've let it all go. "You're probably the most unselfish person I know."

  I sit up and look at him. His face is a little too calm from the raging waters it was just a few minutes ago. His mind has to be a scary place. Just looking at him, or hell even knowing how he can be with me some of the time, you would never think he's capable of the things I've seen him do. "What's on your mind?"

  "Move in with me."