Bang

by E. K. Blair

  “I’m sad every day, but it would be worse if I didn’t have you.”

  “Pike!” we hear Carl yell from downstairs. “Get down here.”

  My stomach twists when I see Pike’s face go to stone. He hates the man as much as I do.

  “One sec.”

  When Pike sits up, I ask, “Did you do something?” wondering why Carl sounds so pissed.

  “Does he need a reason?” is all he says when he sulks out of my room, and I feel sick when I follow him out and stand at the top of the stairs as he walks down.

  Carl grips the back of Pike’s neck and tugs him in close, saying, “Basement, you little shit.”

  His head drops, and when Carl opens the door that leads to the basement, Pike descends down the stairs. I hate that he’s always down there. He told me that Carl takes him there to knock him around, and I hate that I can’t do anything to protect him. Every time he goes to the basement, I just sit and wait for him to return, and when he does, he won’t even look at me. It’s like he’s mad at me. I asked him once if he was, but he swore that he could never be upset with me. It’s so different with us, because when I’m let out of the closet, Pike is always there to hold me. But when Pike comes up from the basement, he wants nothing to do with me. He avoids me and hides in his room. It’s awful when all I want to do is hug him to make him feel better like he does for me, but he won’t let me.

  I lie on my bed, slip on my headphones, and hold my new doll while I listen to music, trying to drown out the pain that fills my chest. Closing my eyes, I eventually grow tired and start to nod off when, suddenly, my doll is snatched out of my arms. Opening my eyes, I see Carl hovering over me. As I slip off my headphones, he snarls, “Get your ass in the basement.”

  Too scared to even question him, I trail behind him as fear chills my body. When he opens the door to the basement, my legs shake beneath me as I step down the stairs. I’ve never been down here before, and the panic has never been so fierce when I see Pike standing in nothing but a pair of boxers, his clothes crumpled on the floor next to him.

  The look on Pike’s face scares me. He’s never looked at me like this, like he’s scared too. But Pike is never scared. I stand a few feet away from him and nervously turn my head back and see a dirty mattress lying on the cement floor. Turning back to Pike, my eyes wide, my heart pounding, my tears pricking, I hear Carl ask, “How old are you today?”

  I face him as he sits in a metal folding chair that sits in the corner.

  In a weak voice that trembles, I answer, “Umm . . . t-ten.”

  He doesn’t respond, only slowly nods his head and takes a long moment before adding, “You scared?”

  I take a quick look at Pike, whose eyes are pinned to the floor, and then back at Carl and nod yes.

  His next words changed my life forever. It was my tenth birthday, and I was old enough to know better than to believe in fairytales. I knew that Prince Charming, flying steeds, and talking caterpillars didn’t really exist, but what happened next made me realize that monsters did. And I just so happened to be living with one.

  A

  Real

  Life

  Monster.

  With a low, stern voice, his demand comes. “Take your clothes off.”

  My heart slams down into the pit of my stomach as my body shivers. I’m frozen. I can’t respond, so I just stand there. The air is still until Carl repeats harder, “Take your clothes off. All of them.”

  I snap my head over to Pike, and he’s now looking straight at me. I know I should be terrified by the tears on his cheeks and the look of sorrow in his eyes. Without even blinking, I feel my own tears roll out effortlessly. Shaking my head in confusion, Pike gives me a nod that tells me I need to obey.

  My jittery hands slowly go to the hem of my shirt, and when I grip the fabric, a pained cry rips out from my constricted throat. It echoes off the concrete walls and floor. Pinching my eyes shut, I slip my shirt off and over my head and then hold it over my chest, even though I haven’t grown breasts yet.

  “Pants,” he orders.

  I don’t look at him. My eyes remain closed as I unzip my jeans and push them down my legs and step out, still clinging the shirt to me.

  “Drop it.”

  The ice in his voice frightens me, so I open my fingers and let it drop to the ground.

  “Good girl,” he says and I can hear the smile that wears his words. “Now your underwear.”

  God, if you’re real, please help me.

  Stepping out of my underwear, I attempt to cover myself with my arms and hands as I stand there. And when I finally open my eyes, that’s when Carl speaks.

  “Have you ever seen a dick before?” he asks as he opens his fly and tugs his pants down. His is the first I have ever seen and my throat burns with the bile that creeps up.

  “You ever touched one before?”

  My tears are heavy, and I can’t hold back the sobs any more, pleading, “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything.”

  “Anything?”

  My cries are loud when he makes his demand, “This is what I want. You’re gonna let Pike fuck you while I watch. You do that for me, I won’t lay a hand on you.”

  I shake my head vigorously, not understanding what he means, and when I look over at Pike, he stands for a moment before taking the two steps towards me, quietly saying in a choked voice, “You don’t want him touching you.”

  My head won’t stop shaking, and I can’t stop crying as I try to stammer out, “I d-don’t know what he w-wants.”

  He releases a defeated sigh when he tells me, “He wants us to have sex.” When he reads my confusion, he asks, “You know what that is?”

  “I th-think so. I mean . . . I d-don’t, umm . . .” I can’t get my words out through the terror that’s stabbing me from the inside. I’ve heard of sex. I know of sex. I just don’t understand what it is exactly.

  “On the mattress!” Carl’s voice booms, causing me to startle.

  In a hushed voice, Pike begs, “Please don’t be scared of me,” as he takes my hand and walks us over to the stained mattress on the floor.

  “Lie on your back,” he says, all his words in whispers so that only I can hear. He takes off his underwear before lying on top of me and my helpless cries fill the room. He lowers his mouth to my ear and quietly talks to me, saying, “It’s gonna be okay. Don’t even look at him. You don’t have to look at me, but please promise me you won’t look at him.”

  I nod my head against the side of his head so that he can feel my response.

  His last words to me before I lose every last piece of hope that somehow life will be okay are, “I’m so sorry, Elizabeth.”

  MY LIFE CONTINUES to be a wasteland. It’s simply pointless to even try to see the good in anything anymore. I’m now twelve years old. The only hope I’ve been clinging to is that in two years, I’ll get my dad back. But that hope turned to ash and dust when my caseworker stopped by yesterday.

  “Only two more years,” I said, and with a confused look, she asked, “What happens in two years?”

  “I get my dad back,” I told her. “I can go home.”

  She seemed annoyed when she shook her head and sighed, “That’s not how it works.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The state terminated his rights to you. When he gets out, you don’t get to go back home. He’s not allowed to have any contact with you.”

  My face heated in pure white anger when she added, “This is your home—here—with Carl and Bobbi.”

  I walked away from her at that point. The hopelessness and defeat were too much for me to hide and I didn’t want her to see me upset. She’s a piece of shit, this world is a piece of shit, my life is a piece of shit. I used to pray to God to help me, but he never did, so he’s a piece of shit too, leaving me in this nightmare. Me—living in the darkness, bound up with leather belts, scars imbedding their home in the frail skin of my wrists. Me—humiliated and degraded—having sex with my brot
her while Carl beats off as if we’re his own personal porn show. It’s my living hell.

  I used to cry all the time after being forced to have sex with my brother, the horror that started on my tenth birthday. When it was over that first time, I locked myself in my room, screaming and crying into my pillow. I’ll never forget that day; it’s burned its memory inside of me. A day that I truly felt my innocence being stripped away.

  Putting my clothes back on, Carl laughs at me and I run up the stairs and into my bedroom, locking the door behind me. I feel disgusting and when I fall onto the bed, I take the red-headed doll Pike gave me earlier and with all the force I have, throw it against the wall, releasing a violent sob as I do. I can’t stop the tears or the ache that fills me. I’m nothing but tears and snot and drool—ugly—and the salts from my eyes eventually start making the skin of my cheeks sting. My body wears out, after first being tied up in the closet for the past three days, and now the depth of my breakdown. With swollen eyes, I’m finally unshackled from this misery as I drift off into my dreams.

  When I wake up, Pike is sitting in bed next to me. I look up at him as his back rests against the headboard. His eyes are sad and bloodshot, and I’m mortified. I can’t even look at him. I don’t want him to see me, so I close my eyes and roll over, away from him.

  His voice is soft and strained when he says to my back, “I’m so sorry.”

  I cry. It only takes a second for this heavy weighted pain to claim me—to own me. My body heaves in an unsteady rhythm, and he doesn’t touch me like he normally does when I cry.

  Time passes as my cries weaken into shallow whimpers that hiccup out of me, and then he speaks again, “Please look at me. Tell me you don’t hate me.”

  I shake my head, keeping my body turned away from him when I feel him scoot down and lie behind me. His head presses against my back, and I hear him sniff before he starts talking to me quietly, making his confessions. “You’re not alone. I haven’t been telling you the truth. Carl doesn’t just hit me when I’m down in the basement with him.” He chokes back a whimper, and when I hear it, the tightening in my throat becomes painful. “He makes me do sick things to him.” His voice cuts off; he’s crying, and I can’t stand it. I roll over and his eyes are shut, but his hands find my face as he rests them on my cheeks.

  When his eyes open, he says, “Please don’t hate me. Don’t let him destroy what we have. Don’t give him that power to rip us apart from each other.” He takes in a shaky breath. “You tell me all the time that I’m all you have, but it goes both ways. I have nothing but you. You’re my only family, Elizabeth. Please don’t let him take you away from me.”

  Wrapping my arms around his back, I bury my face in his neck as we both cry together. In this world, a world I’m beginning to learn is a cold and dark place, I fear being alone. I need Pike, and knowing that he needs me too, pushes me to finally speak. I never thought I’d be saying these things, but suddenly I become an open book when I start blubbering against the damp skin of his neck.

  “I don’t hate you; I love you. But you hurt me. It hurt really bad.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And now I’m sad and scared and embarrassed and so alone.”

  “I am too,” he admits.

  “I’m scared I’m gonna lose you.”

  “I won’t ever leave. I swear.”

  Pike never has left my side. Even though we don’t attend the same school, he has planted himself in my life as a threat to others. I still get teased, but not as much. The summer is nearing an end, and I’m going to be at the middle school this year with Pike at the high school. I wish I could be with him. The only times I feel even a remote amount of relief from the never-ending suffering is when I’m with him. Somehow, he makes it possible for me to breathe in this clandestine world the two of us live in.

  If anyone knew that Pike and I were having sex, they would freak, but to us, it’s become just another facet of our lives. It used to scare me, used to make me cry, but I’ve learned to numb myself down in that basement. We have sex long enough for Carl to get off and then we escape to our rooms. Bobbi knows what goes on down there, but she chooses to ignore it as she makes her cheap-ass crafts and collects her stupid ducks.

  I’m ready to go back to school because it means I don’t have to constantly live in that God-forsaken closet. Now that I’ll be back in school, I know I’ll only have to go into the blackness on the weekends. I’d endure almost anything to keep Pike, so I’ve never mentioned a word of what goes on inside of that house for fear that I’d be taken away—away from Pike. If I didn’t have him, I’d have no one, and no guarantee that I wouldn’t be placed in another abusive home, only to find myself all alone. So I stay, and my silence eats away at the little bits of goodness that are left in me.

  I’VE BEEN IN bed all day with a bad stomachache. I’ve been tossing and turning, trying to distract myself from the pain by listening to my music, but I’m miserable. I jerk up and sit when I feel something warm between my legs. Rushing to the bathroom, I cringe when I see blood on my underwear. I sit on the toilet, pee, and then clean myself, wadding a handful of toilet paper up and shoving it in the crotch of the clean pair of underwear I put on. Embarrassed, I know I need to get some money to go to the drug store, but there’s only one person to ask, and I really don’t want to. With my hand on his bathroom door handle that leads into his bedroom, I close my eyes and swallow an awkward breath as I rotate the knob and wait for the click.

  Peeking in, he’s lying on his bed, reading a sports magazine.

  Timidly, I quietly call out, “Umm . . . Pike?”

  He looks up at me as he lowers the magazine to his chest. “What’s up?”

  With my head down, I stammer, “I . . . umm, I need a few dollars.”

  “I just gave you money the other day,” he complains.

  “I know, but I . . .” I briefly look up at him and then move my eyes away when I let him know, against the heat of my face, mumbling, “I think . . . I think I just started my period.”

  “Oh,” he responds, caught off guard with what I just told him. “Umm, yeah. I mean, sure,” he rattles as he gets off the bed and walks over to his dresser.

  God, this is so embarrassing.

  “How much?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know.”

  When I see his feet appear next to me, I hesitantly look up at him. He hands me a ten-dollar bill and asks, “Want me to walk with you?”

  I shake my head and then duck back into the bathroom.

  When I return from the store, I shove the bag of maxi pads in my dresser and then go set Pike’s change next to his sink. I really don’t think I can face him right now. My stomach still hurts, so I decide to crawl back into bed. I close my eyes and roll to the side when I hear Pike walk into the bathroom.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “Is that what the stomachache is all about?”

  I really wish he would stop asking so many questions. He has no idea how much I just want to disappear right now, but I answer anyway, saying, “I don’t know,” because I honestly have no clue. Bobbi wouldn’t sign the permission slip for the sex ed the fifth graders went to last year, and I have nobody to talk to, so his guess is as good as mine.

  The bed dips, and when I look over my shoulder, he’s lying down, reading the same magazine from earlier. I turn my head back and smile at the fact that, no matter what, he’s always here for me.

  After a while, a couple of Pike’s buddies stop by. He hops in their car and takes off for a while, leaving me at the house all by myself. I go down and rummage around the kitchen. I fix myself a sandwich, and when I sit down to eat it, I hear the screen door squeak open and then slam shut. Leaning over in my chair, I see Carl. He’s so gross with his greasy shirt that’s barely covering his fat, pot-bellied stomach. I sit back and continue eating as he strolls in and grabs a beer from the fridge.

  “Where’s your brother?” he asks befo
re taking a swig.

  “Don’t know. He left with a couple friends.”

  Not wanting to be in the same room as him, I shove the rest of the sandwich in my mouth and rush upstairs. It’s then that I hear Pike return, and when he gets upstairs, I go to his room and watch as he pulls out a wad of money and shoves it in his dresser.

  “Where’d you get that money?”

  “Shh, I don’t want anyone knowing I have this, okay?”

  Lowering my voice, I ask again, “How did you get it?”

  “I’ve been working for a few months, trying to save money so that I’m not on the streets when I turn eighteen.”

  “Working? You were gone for thirty minutes.”

  He comes to stand in front of me and whispers, “If I tell you, you can’t say anything to anyone.”

  “Pike, I don’t talk to anyone but you.”

  “I’ve been running drugs for a guy I know.”

  My eyes widen, and I ask, “What do you mean running?”

  “Selling,” he states.

  “Are you crazy? What if you get caught?”

  “I’m not gonna get caught. Relax.”

  “What are the two of you doing up there?” Carl hollers from downstairs.

  “Nothing,” Pike shouts.

  “Good, then get your fucking asses down to the basement.”

  “Fuuuck,” Pike sighs and then holds my hand.

  For a moment, I feel the drowning of my heart, but this is nothing new. We are down in that basement at least once a week, if not more. Pike has really helped me learn how to numb myself from what goes on down there, so I take in a deep breath and hold it for a second before slowly releasing it.

  “You okay?” he asks, and when I nod, he gives my hand a soft squeeze before we make our way down.

  I never know what Carl will have us do, so when I get down there, my stomach turns at the thought of me being on my period. Pulling back on Pike’s hand, he turns to me, but before I can mutter anything, Carl speaks.

  “Clothes off and fuck her on the bed,” he barks at Pike.

  He lets go of my hand and starts to strip while I remain standing, not wanting to do this while I’m bleeding.