44. Evie Twelve Months Ago
Evie Twelve Months Ago
Carter grins down at me. The only time his eyes sparkle like this is during sex. Sometimes, I swear it’s all he thinks about.
Lying on my back with him moving on top of me, I run my hands over his chest until he grabs them. Not pausing his movements, he leans to the side and grabs his work tie. My breath hitches as he begins to tie my wrists together.
I don’t particularly want to do this; I’m not yearning for it.
But something deep within my mind always tells me to just do it, go along with whatever he wants and keep him happy.
Get it over with.
Sex has always been something that I just have to get through.
A performative task—arch your back, flip your hair, scrape your nails down his chest, move your hips, kiss him like this, he will cum, and it will be done.
Pleasure, while I feel it in small bursts, is something that I have to deeply concentrate on if I want it. If I ever want to climax with Carter, I can never focus on the here and now, never focus on him and how it feels to have him moving inside me.
I have to go far away and use my imagination. If I pay attention to what’s happening, if I focus on what he’s doing to me, the warm pleasure disappears and my body shuts down and I stop feeling anything at all.
No man likes a woman who isn’t enjoying it.
Even if I’m not, I pretend to.
Not that Carter ever notices.
So, as he ties my wrists together and places a mask over my eyes, I do what I always do—I try to think of a different situation, a different world, a different person.
This isn’t happening to me, but another woman.
A woman who enjoys sex, a woman who revels in it and feels every sensation in her body.
Carter groans in my ear and it’s nice for a moment.
It sends a jolt of warmth down my chest. Conjuring up an image of a woman being loved and devoured by her partner in a completely different setting, I begin to feel it, the beginning of ecstasy as I spark to life, letting go of control for a short while.
Carter is close too. I can tell by the sound of his breathing, his groans and grunts, but then his hand reaches up and covers my mouth as I moan.
It’s a move he’s never done before, one no one has done before.
Suddenly, as quickly as the warmth that entered my system, it disappears.
My body turns to stone. I stop breathing. I’m trying not to move, trying to make myself as still as possible, because it’s not Carter that I feel moving over me.
The flood of panic and disgust hit me like a freight train.
Flinging my eyes open, I’m met with the darkness of the eye mask, but I’m not alone in the darkness.
It’s his head I see. It’s his body moving over mine. It’s his hot breath in my ear. It’s his disgusting moans. It’s his face floating above my own as he smacks his hand down over my mouth as I cry out in pain.
I’m no longer twenty-three-years-old being intimate with my boyfriend in our bed.
Suddenly, my body feels small, so incredibly small it terrifies me.
Carter pulls back. He’s no longer moving, he’s calling my name, asking what’s wrong. He’s removing the tie and the eye mask but I’m stuck, utterly trapped in the memory that holds me in its clutches.
I’m still not moving. I’m still not breathing, despite my lungs screaming for air.
It won’t go away, the feeling of him forcing himself on top of me. It feels like a phantom caress. I feel like the little girl that was forced to be quiet.
I feel it all.
And I hate it.
I fucking hate it.
I can feel him.
“Evie, what’s wrong?”
I was raped, my mind screams in answer.
And once the words pop into my head, it’s all I can hear.
Just that one sentence, over and over and over.
I was raped.
I was raped.
I was raped.
I was raped.
I was raped.
I’m a broken doll stuck in time with a record playing on a loop in my mind.
Carter is worried, I can see it in his gaze. Wait, when did the mask get removed? Did he take it off or me? Why can’t I remember? Carter maneuvers my body for me, lays a blanket over me to cover me up, and now concealed, I’m suddenly able to breathe.
Pulling in a deep gasping breath, I sit up.
But my mind is still stuck in that place.
Wet droplets land on my hand. Peering down, I see water on my fingers.
Am I crying?
I was raped.
I was raped.
I was raped.
Carter helps me to the bathroom. I’m operating on autopilot now, my mind so far away it’s like I’m floating. Wait, floating! Yes, I used to float all the time. Why did I float?
Because I was raped.
I was raped.
I was raped.
I was raped.
The little girl in me that was forgotten, the little girl that I shoved into the darkest part of my mind, comes running out. There’s tears streaming down her cheeks. She’s wet herself and there’s blood between her thighs.
I’m standing in my mind, stunned speechless as she screams for me, her arms open wide as she runs—from him.
She collides against my legs, clawing at them until I lift her up into my arms. She nestles her head into the crook of my neck and cries over and over and over.
The floating head man hurt me.
The floating head man hurt me.
The floating head man hurt me.
Pulling back, I look at her—look at me. I was so little. Blonde curls, tiny upturned nose…
I’m no older than three.
I’m so little and he was so big.
I was raped.
I was raped.
I was raped.
“Evie?”
Carter is scared.
Blinking away and out of my mind, I see I’m on the toilet. That’s right, I’m on autopilot. You have to use the bathroom after sex so you don’t get a UTI.
The words come out of me rote, devoid of emotion. “I was raped.”
Carter’s head rears back. “What?”
“I-I was raped,” I repeat.
I’ve never been so certain of something. That feeling, that indescribable feeling of having someone move over you when you don’t want it—I remember now.
I need to hold on to this feeling.
I can’t forget again.
I can’t allow myself to forget what happened to me.
“I was raped,” I repeat once more.
This time as I say it, nausea swirls in my stomach. Turning, I dispose of the contents in my stomach as the floating head man comes into my mind, the face of the monster who raped me.
Who forced himself upon me from such a young age.
No…it can’t be.
Not him.
Anyone but him.
No, please no, I beg in my mind. But the image is as clear as a photo, undeniable. Then there’s another.
This time, I’m watching myself, watching him grunt in my ear as he slaps his hand over my mouth and tells me to be a good girl and take it.
He moves over me while I remain motionless, my eyes wide, tears streaming down my cheeks and over his hand.
I’m not moving, not breathing. I’m trying to be as still as possible so he will get off me quicker.
I see it all.
I see him.
“No!” I cry out before more vomit comes up.
Carter lays his hand on my back and I flinch so violently, screaming at his touch, that he steps away, cursing under his breath as I sob into the toilet bowl.
Not him, not him, not him.
But the truth spirals through my mind, the little girl that I locked away pouring all her sorrows into my adult body, letting me know just how much she’s been suffering alone in the darkness of my mind.
He raped me, she whispers.
I don’t want it to be him. I’m all but begging my mind to switch the face, to make it someone else, to make it someone who isn’t going to destroy me from the inside out, but I can’t. The image is clear, his face contorted in the pleasure of my misery.
It’s all so fucking clear.
And then it starts to make sense. Everything starts to make sense.
The bladder infections, how I wet the bed until I was thirteen, the reason why I had internal cuts and couldn’t sit down sometimes.
The way he refused to bathe me when I was younger because it was “inappropriate” in his eyes, the way I could never hug him, the way my body would curl in on itself and not touch his skin.
It all makes so much fucking sense.
I was raped.
For the next coming months, I’ll remember every single night he crept into my room when he was in the house.
I’ll remember the way he took me shopping the day after to make up for his guilt.
I’ll remember the way he could only seem to touch me inappropriately, never innocently, because he didn’t see a little girl, he saw someone he wanted.
I’ll remember the way he sat next to me at the dinner table if he was in the house and stroke my leg.
I’ll remember the favoritism he’d show me over Caleb.
I will remember it all.
And I will be living in my own hell every single day as his face and the memory of everything he did haunts me.
It will ruin my relationships, it will steal my sleep, it will make being touched impossible, it will make me resent my boyfriend, it will make me fail at my job because every time I come across a sound or smell or a face that is similar to his, I will see him above me, seemingly floating in the darkness as he told me to shut up and be a good little girl and take it.
I will hear his voice grunt in my ear and have to physically shake myself to rid the memory.
I will feel his touch along my skin and have to burn myself under scalding water to make it go away.
I will feel physically ill at the sound of his name.
It will eat me alive, day by day, and I won’t be able to do anything about it.
Because I was raped.
I was three years old when it started, and it didn’t stop until I was nearly fourteen.
I was a child who was raped by a man she was meant to be able to trust, by a man my family welcomed into their home with open arms.
I was raped and I remember how much he stole from me.
And I will never be the same again since remembering everything he took from me, leaving me battered and broken.