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monster among men pt 2 | drabble
*tw: this drabble depicts domestic violence between a father and his daughter, and mentions rape. Please be cautious if these can be harmful to you. A continuation of this piece.
Winter of 2015
I’ve been living with Walter for far too long now.
My body feels weak - skin bruised and broken, bones fragile.
It’s getting harder to deny the claims of abuse, and I so badly want to tell people what he’s doing to me, but I can’t find the courage to break free from the cage he’s put me in. I can tell that my friends have their suspicions - they know I wouldn’t fall down the stairs and break my arm on purpose. They know I’m not as clumsy as I’ve been making myself out to be. Know that there are too many new bruises for me to be running into the corners of desks all the time. And yet, they still say nothing, their eyes doing all the talking for them. Begging me to get help. Begging me to run away.
I can’t, though. My whole life is here in this home. Memories with my mother play on loop in my mind like an old VHS tape that’s been stuck on the same scene, rewinding itself over and over. I didn’t get many with her before she got sick, and I now cling onto whatever good feeling that’s left haunting these walls. Memories of the three of us on my sixteenth birthday when my father handed me the keys to my first brand new car. Memories of our old dog, Zoey, playing fetch in the backyard. Memories of me, when I felt alive.
Walter wasn’t always evil. Didn’t always make life a living hell. When my mom was around, he was good. Happy, even. He treated me like I envision any good father would treat his kids. But then mom died, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. Didn’t know how to love me without using her as a crutch. Alcohol became his only savoir, and turned him into my biggest demon.
I had hoped that locking myself in my bedroom would offer some sort of escape from his tactics, that he’d leave me alone for just a little while. But it only made him angrier. His fist pounds at my door, and I jump, hair standing on edge. I didn’t want to answer, for I knew what was to come, but I did anyway. Hesitantly. He barely allowed me anytime at all before he was pushing the door open, the knob jabbing into my stomach as he did. I try to ignore the annoying pain, but the skin is already tender from a previous bruise that hadn’t yet healed, and I wince.
“What did I say about leaving this door open?” Walter says loudly, his hand twisting through my hair, grip tight against my scalp as he pulls me in closer to him. His other hand grips my face, forcing my attention to gaze forward, blue eyes meeting a mirrored pair. I always hated that I got them from him and not my mother’s beautiful brown ones. His breath reeks of alcohol and cigarettes, my stomach churning every time it hits my nostrils. Instinctively, my hands reach up to protect myself, a habit I wish I never had to make. “When I’m home, you keep the f***ing thing opened. If I want access to you, then I will have it,” he exclaims, tossing me to the ground with force.
My body hits the floor with a large ‘thud’, and I already know what’s to come, and I don’t have it in me to fight anymore. “I-I’m sorry,” are the only words I mutter for the rest of the night.
This was a routine that Walter had coxed up, and I was too weak to fight him off. Too fragile to tell him no repeatedly while he hit me. While he raped me.
I wanted out of this hell so f***ing badly, but I was too afraid to ask for help. Too afraid of what he might do to me if he had found out. I was no longer the Lennon Grey people loved, instead, an empty shell of the person I had once been. My outgoing and bubbly personality ripped from me, my innocence gone. I wasn’t even sure of who I was anymore, either. And I hated it.
I hated myself.
I hated him.
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