by Cole McCade
She bucked against him, but he ground her face into the sheets until she couldn’t breathe, until she twitched and jerked and gasped but couldn’t stop him from ripping her panties off, cloth biting into her thighs and ass in searing abrasions. Then the zipper, the familiar grating rasp of the zipper, the sound of a cage door grinding open to release a mindlessly dangerous animal that nosed hot and throbbing against her folds. She screamed. She screamed, but there was no one to hear but the sheets, which knotted up around her fingers as if they could comfort her if she just held on so very very tight…
The world split apart into stark noir shades of black and white where the only color left was red, spearing up through her in hard grinding surges. Leigh went limp. She couldn’t understand what had just happened. Suddenly nothing made sense anymore, when she felt like she was floating underwater and sinking deep and out of air and drowning, drowning, drowning. But she couldn’t move to try to swim, to save herself, because there was a monster on top of her—weighing her down, tearing her apart, destroying her from inside with the stabbing thrusts of a hot spiked sword. Somewhere distant she heard screaming. It didn’t sound like her voice. It sounded like a little girl. A broken little girl screaming and sobbing like her wings had just been torn from her shoulders, and she was bleeding to death from the wounds on her back and the dirty filthy gash between her legs.
“You can’t leave me again,” the monster whispered in her ear, its lips rubbery and slick, while he broke open all her dirty places and left her sullied and bruised, crumbling into smaller and smaller pieces with every thrust. “You can’t ever leave me again.”
Maybe she’d just die. She knotted her fingers in the sheets; the fine thin threads caught on her hangnails. The words maybe I’ll just die whispered and crawled around the inside of her head in the voice of that little girl, that girl who’d said Daddy and spread her legs and never realized, when she’d opened herself to him, that she’d branded herself with a scarlet letter that told every monster in the world she was theirs to use. She’d rather die, and she choked on the taste of her tears and the hard thick bubble of her sobs while she prayed the next sword-thrust would tear out her heart and kill her.
Sometimes I think a part of me wanted to die, Hart whispered, and she understood.
Just let me die. She squeezed her eyes shut and held as still as she could, but the pain wouldn’t stop. Pain she’d never asked for; pain that cramped in her belly and pulled in her thighs and tore her to shreds.
Let me die…
But it only came faster. Faster while he grunted, while he heaved, while the overhang of his belly flopped in wet smacks against the small of her back. He squeezed her until she couldn’t take in another breath, hammering her with blinding flashes of agony worse than even the pain of the contractions when Elijah had fought his way from her body to take his first breath.
Elijah.
His name was a sugar drop on her tongue, and she whispered it to drown out the squeak of the mattress springs and the sound of flesh ripping and the glassy shatter of her heart breaking. Her eyes opened. She could see nothing but the haze of tears, the tangle of her hair, and the blurry crumpled hillocks of the sheet, and past them a gleam like a wishing star. The light reflecting off the door handle, and the promise of escape. Elijah. If she died she’d be leaving him alone with the monster, the horror in the closet, the bogeyman under the bed—only this bogeyman was named Daddy. It was always Daddy.
She’d abandoned him to that once. She couldn’t do it again.
Jacob arched over her, rutting hard and rough until she could hear the whubbling flap of his jowls with each of his spittle-flecked exhalations. His hands raked her hips, lifting her up into him, into the hot slide of his cock. Every intimate detail she’d known for half her life turned from banal familiarity into a lurid nightmare, with all the right things painted in all the wrong colors. She’d spent years lying underneath him and taking it, giving him what she’d thought he’d wanted when he’d demanded—expected—her love. She had nothing left to give, but he’d just keep trying to take until he broke her.
Unless she made him stop.
She closed her eyes and made herself breathe past the pain, made herself focus past the panic, made herself think beyond the desperate need to vomit, the scent of her own blood, and the fear that he would find another way to hurt her. Elijah. She thought of Elijah, coiled her arms beneath herself, and then—as Jacob came down to cover her body on another deep thrust—shoved herself up with all her strength, snapped her head back, and smashed the back of her skull into his face.
Something gave with a satisfying crunch; the pistoning locomotive atop her ground to a halt. Her head rang and quivered through ripples of impact pain compounded by his bellowing shriek, but she didn’t wait for her wavering vision to clear. She jammed her elbow back until its sharp point dug into something soft. She was rewarded with another cry, howling and deep and furious. His crushing weight fell back, his shadow tumbling from over her to let in the light. The sword in her belly ripped free with a last grating pull, and she screamed in pain even as she dragged herself toward the edge of the bed and fell off.
His hand clamped around her ankle and hauled her back, leaving her dangling upside down with her head cracking against the side of the bedframe in a stabbing burst, her hair dangling over her face, her vision spinning. She twisted and thrashed; he loomed over her, his face as scarlet as the blood streaming from his nose.
“Bitch!” he roared.
She tucked the knee of her free leg up against her chest, thrust her foot out, and slammed her heel right between his eyes. He dropped her like a hot coal, grabbing at his nose with a gurgling cry. She crumpled to the floor, rolled into a crouch, and launched herself at the door. The bed squealed behind her; feet thudded to the floor, every step drumming against her heart. She clutched the handle, ripped the door open, and spilled out into the hall.
The corridor loomed dark and endless, the faint golden shimmer of the nightlight a beacon. The front door was too far away and he was coming, stomping steps at her back and nowhere to hide, nowhere safe, there was nothing safe in this house for her except—
Elijah.
The door smashed open behind her. She glimpsed blood on white cotton, then ran with his grasping hands on her. His fingers trailed through the ends of her hair, gripping, grabbing, but she caught hold of Elijah’s bedroom door and shoved her way inside. Fire raked her scalp; hair tore loose with a rip as loud as a scream. She turned and shoved the door closed as hard as she could, and didn’t dare breathe until the lock turned with a decisive click.
She slumped against the door, closing her eyes and sucking in great scouring breaths. The door rattled harshly at her back, and her heart nearly shot out of her chest. She froze. He wouldn’t. Not in front of Elijah, not in front of their son, please…
A tiny whimper stopped her cold. She opened her eyes. Elijah huddled in the corner of the room, tucked in the space between the bookshelves and his little desk, his knees pulled up against his chest the same way she’d pull hers up as a little girl while she’d listened to her mother’s voice rising shrill and piercing over the low defeated slur of Steve’s. Her little boy stared at her with eyes as wide as a frightened rabbit’s, his lips trembling and his fists curled into tiny knots against his jeans.
Leigh pushed away from the door and scrambled to his side, reaching for him. “Shh. Shh. Come here, baby,” she whispered. He hesitated, then nearly launched himself at her, burying himself in her side with a sobbing mewl and shaking against her. Leigh curled around him and pressed her lips to his sweet-smelling hair. “It’s okay. Don’t make a sound. It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”
The door-handle rattled. She hunched her shoulders, held her son close, and prayed Jacob didn’t have the key. The key she’d insisted on, so they’d never be locked away from their baby. His silhouette reached through the cracks under the door, stretching long like reaching hands, and she swallowed back a
sick heavy scream that wanted to come up like vomit. It was the shadow under the door all over again, those two feet wide-planted and determined, fixed, just like him.
Back and forth. Back and forth he paced, his voice a sibilant hiss on the other side, unintelligible. The shadow paused. Moved. Paused. Moved again. Then a slam, shaking the door in its frame and exploding Leigh’s heart against her ribs. His voice came through the door, eerily steady, low, dark.
“If you run away again,” he said, “this time I won’t protect you.”
Then the shadow withdrew, and there was only the soft unbroken rectangle of the night light’s illumination reaching under the door.
Leigh waited, counting to thirty. Then sixty. Then one hundred, because she’d once read in a book about Helen Keller that Helen’s teacher had said if you could close your eyes and count to one hundred without interruption, without starting over, the thing you wanted most right then and there would happen. She whispered ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred and crossed her fingers behind Elijah’s soft warm back, but Jacob didn’t come back. She’d gotten what she wanted most.
For now.
Elijah made that tiny heartbreaking noise again. Leigh uncurled to look down at him and cupped his cheek, stroking its downy-fine softness with her thumb. He looked up at her. His eyes were still wide enough to take up half his face, but dry and solemn and almost resigned.
Leigh offered a faint smile. “You okay, little man?”
He considered gravely, then nodded. “You were screaming. I was scared.”
“I know. I know, I…God.”
She closed her eyes, rested her brow to the top of his head, and breathed him in. He still had that strangely hot baby smell, sweet and powdery like cotton candy. He wouldn’t smell like this for much longer, when he was growing up so fast—but she couldn’t feel the pain and sickness racking her body, as long as she could smell that scent.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that, Elijah. I’m sorry I scared you.”
Smooth, silky fingertips touched her cheek and followed the wet lines spilling over her skin, raindrops on the fragile glass windowpane of her face. “Why are you sad?”
“I…I got hurt, baby. I had an accident.”
“You should put a Band-Aid on it.”
“Not sure there’s one big enough, but maybe I should try,” Leigh said. Elijah didn’t need to know that he was her Band-Aid, but she hugged him close and let the weight of him in her arms ease her every hurt. She picked him up and carried him to the bed. He curled in her lap as she settled against the headboard, and she dried her tears by stroking her cheek to his fine, soft hair.
“Why can’t we just be happy without him?” she whispered.
“Huh?”
“Nothing, baby. Nothing.”
She kissed his temple, stroked his back, and wondered if this moment, this sweetness, could be enough to pin her to earth when she wanted nothing more than to fly away from here and never taste her own tears again.
“You love your Daddy, don’t you?”
Elijah shrugged. “He buys me lots of toys,” he said with matter-of-fact simplicity, and tucked his head under her chin. “Grandma says he’s a good Daddy.”
“From the mouths of babes.” Leigh smiled bitterly. “Yeah. I guess she would.”
She closed her eyes and listened to his breathing, and tried not to scream at every squeak of the floorboards from outside. Jacob would leave her alone for right now. The heat of the moment was over, and he wouldn’t want to confront her in front of Elijah. That bought her time until morning. Time to figure out what to do, where to go—because she couldn’t stay here.
Biting her lip, she looked down at the little boy in her arms. Did she really have a choice?
Go to the police, she told herself. Wait until Jacob was asleep, and call 911. They’d do a rape kit, see the bruises, see the blood, and they’d…
They’d look at her the way Officer Maroni had. The same disbelief and mocking contempt, like she was a filthy little liar. A slut with an agenda. They’d look at her skinny fishnet thighs and short skirts, and sneer at the idea that her husband could rape her. Then they’d tell her just what her mother had told her:
Suck it up, and be grateful all she had to do for everything she’d been given was open her legs.
And they’d lock her up, take Elijah away from her, and call Jacob again, because dirty little sluts needed to be returned to their handlers before they started to get ideas about being people.
No one was going to help her but herself. Her mother would turn her back on her. In her own way her mother had been trying to prepare her, but had never warned her about this. Steve would pat her head. He was useless. No. She still had the money from the ring, but it wouldn’t be enough to hire the kind of lawyer who could beat Jacob’s vultures in court. She had nowhere to go. She’d left behind the world where she belonged, a world with people like Gary and Gabriel and Maxi and Wally, people who understood the difference between dirty and dishonest and who thought her brokenness just made her human…instead of making her worthless.
She could go back. Run away again, and go back to the life she’d had on the streets of Crow City, drifting in and out of Gary’s bar and the beds of a hundred nameless men. Or forget the men, take the paycheck Gary had offered so many times, get a tidy little place and a tidy little life, and start over. Maybe even start over with Gabriel.
But Gabriel wouldn’t look at her the same way, if she left her son. With that quiet respect, reverence, admiration that said even when he held her down and gave her what she craved, she was a goddess to him, with or without her wings.
She didn’t want to go back, not if it meant leaving Elijah behind. She didn’t know what she wanted. She’d thought she had, but wants changed. People changed. Maybe what she’d wanted then wasn’t what she wanted now.
What she wanted now was out of her reach, and she wouldn’t know what to do with it if she had it.
Elijah’s breathing changed, deepening and slowing. She watched him drift off to sleep, watched the way his lashes floated down in little waves that swept the air, and hoped she could build up enough moments like this to buffer her against Jacob’s wrath.
The door rattled. Leigh sucked in her breath and gathered Elijah closer. A shadow beneath the door. The click of a key. The doorknob turned; the door swung open, and Leigh shoved herself against the headboard as her fear froze in a chill of ice slicking down the back of her neck.
The little redheaded nanny stepped in, her eyes dark, troubled. Just past the threshold, she stopped. She and Leigh stared at each other in silence, and Leigh wondered how much she’d heard, what she must think to walk in here and find Leigh clutching her son while the tracks of tears ran down her face and over the throbbing red swelling on her cheek.
The nanny’s mouth worked, before she licked her lips and gestured toward Elijah. “I need to get him ready for bed.”
The girl shut the door behind her—then locked it. Leigh exhaled and relaxed her death-grip on her son, who only stirred to nuzzle deeper into her. She scrubbed at her face, swiping the tears away. The nanny watched them for a moment, then crossed to the dresser and pulled out a pair of footie pajamas from the drawer, fuzzy blue with bears and crescent moons. When she sank to her knees next to the bed, Leigh shifted Elijah to sit upright with a faint smile.
“I’ll help,” she said.
The nanny answered her smile with one of her own, and together they gently eased Elijah out of his shirt, shorts, and socks, taking turns holding him up while his head nodded like a heavy flower on a wilting stem. As they worked him, one limb at a time, into his pajamas, the nanny darted a few glances at Leigh’s face, then away, then back again, before clearing her throat.
“Are you okay?” She had a nervous little voice, sweet and soft. When Leigh just looked at her, she smiled sheepishly and gestured toward her face. “Red around the eyes. Can’t hide it.” She delicately touched Leigh’s cheek. “And that’s going
to bruise.”
Leigh flinched back, lowering her eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
The nanny pulled her hand away quickly, but still hovered, watching Leigh—then stood jerkily and pulled a box of wet diaper wipes down from one shelf. “Here.” She cracked the box open and pulled out several damp, sweet-smelling scraps, and offered them with a discreet glance down at Leigh’s thighs. “He’s supposed to have grown out of these by now, but they’re the best for PB and J stains.”
Leigh followed the girl’s gaze downward—and felt the blood rush from her face as she saw the blood smeared on her inner thighs, crusting and drying into a rust-red film. Her breaths lodged in her throat at the head of a fresh spate of building sobs; she forced them back and made herself smile, reaching up to take the wipes.
“Thank you.”
The nanny only nodded and looked away, tactfully avoiding eye contact with Leigh and zipping Elijah into his pajamas. Leigh wiped her skin clean with the cold rough cloths, swiping as high as she dared with someone else close by. She needed a soak in a hot bath, but she wasn’t leaving this room until Jacob was gone.
The wipes reduced the blood to just faint pink stains on the white cloth. Like it had never happened. Like it was already fading away, when it would never fade for her. She stared down at the wipes, then crumpled them in her fist until she couldn’t see them anymore, and lifted her head to watch the nanny.
The girl lay Elijah against the pillows with a tender gentleness that almost made Leigh want to snatch him away from her. Made her want to demand what gives you the right to touch my son that way? She knew it was irrational. This girl…this wet-eyed, sweet little girl had given Elijah the love he needed. She’d probably been keeping him safe from so many things, when Leigh hadn’t been here to do it herself. She’d stepped up where Leigh had failed. She shouldn’t be jealous.
