Chapter 48
Mireya
Play - Family Line by Conan Grey
Take me away
Coming home is always the same. A contradictory mix of stress and dopamine that tightens my chest even before the door closes behind me.
Seeing Milo makes me happy, truly happy. But this joy always comes with another certainty that gives me a headache: seeing him again also means seeing my father again.
I go on autopilot right after Milo goes to bed. Saturday morning, I woke up with a start.
The same nightmare, the same sensation, one hand, then a second, then this…this pain, as if my body remembers everything every time I close my eyes and my mind tries to rest.
My heart is racing, my throat is dry, and despite the silence of the house, I know I won't fall back asleep. I lie there, eyes open, counting the seconds, listening to every sound.
I usually believe that if I don't wake up with dried tears on my cheeks, it might mean everything is alright. That the pain I feel between my thighs, the burning sensation every time the cool air touches my skin, as if I'd been fighting it even in my sleep, that it was all just a nightmare.
I get up, take a shower, make sure Milo is wide awake and happy with his day, then I go downstairs to make breakfast. It's always like this.
Then I hear his footsteps. We're sitting at the table when he comes in. Milo has already finished his first slice of toast. He licks his fingers, smiles, he looks so happy.
And I feel guilty for feeling stressed. I watch him eat and think that if I stare hard enough at this image, maybe it will stay, maybe that will be enough.
But a few moments later, I see him. Step by step, slowly, angry, maybe already a little drunk, who knows. He doesn't say anything, he puts his jacket on the back of a chair and pats Milo on the shoulder.
“Did you make coffee?” he asks, looking at me.
“Yeah, I'll bring it over,” I say, getting up and pouring the coffee into his mug.
He drinks it, but spits it out as if I'd just served him poison. “It's cold.”
Yes, it's cold. He was two hours late this morning.
“I—”
“Never mind.” He drinks it anyway and grimaces, exaggeratedly. "Damn... you're really fucking useless."
Useless.
I've heard it all my life, in different forms. He repeated it to my mother while she was alive, to me when I was little, to me as a teenager, and to me as an adult.
Milo speaks without looking up. “I'm still hungry, ReyRey.”
My heart clenches violently. Not now. Not him. “Later,” I say. “Go to your room, now.”
I don't look at him, because if I do, I'll break down.
“Why?”
Because I know what's coming. Because I always know.
“Just… go, Milo.”
My father's chair jerks back abruptly. “No. He's staying here.”
The floor sways beneath my feet. “No,” I say. “He's going to his room.” The words tumble out before I can stop them.
He finally looks at me and in his eyes, there's no surprise, just a satisfied expectation, as if he were just waiting for an excuse to snap.
I quickly crouch down in front of my brother. “Go, firefly,” I whisper. “Now. Please.”
He smiles and obeys, getting up and running toward the stairs.
My father slams his fist on the table. “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHERE YOU ARE?!”
I slowly straighten up, feeling as if I'm too heavy for my own body. “Don't shout, Milo can hear you.”
“You're in my house,” he says, his voice lower, closer. “In my fucking house!” He moves closer, and I back away without realizing it. “Do you think that because people look at you differently outside, it makes a difference?” He smiles, “Here, you’re nothing. Nothing.” Then, almost softly, “You always have been, less than nothing.”
Nothing.
Less than nothing…
I’m too tired for his bullshit, and all I want to do is leave now and never come back. But then I remember what he said. Consequences won’t fall on me, they’ll fall on Milo.
“Without me, you’d be dead,” he adds calmly. “You know that, right?”
I know. I already knew. I hate this man, so much it hurts to look at him.
When he finally turns away, I stay there. For a long time. I can’t hear anything anymore, except my heart pounding too hard. I'm starting to clean up the spilled coffee, then clean up the rest of the kitchen, until my fingers ache, until the door closes and he leaves again, I don't know where.
Until Milo comes downstairs and tells me he's done and I see it's already 2pm, and then I stop cleaning and make him dinner. I look at him, but I'm not there. I nod, I answer, I smile, I laugh, but I don't know what he's talking about.
I hear but I don't understand, I'm... I'm somewhere else. The whole day is a blur.
Without him, I’d be dead…
I repeat it in my head, when I make dinner, when I laugh with Milo during the evening movie, when I put him to bed before my father gets home.
Without him, I’d be dead…
I repeat it to myself when I get in the shower, when I let the scalding water run over my skin, when I slide down the wall until I'm sitting.
Without him, I’d be dead…
I repeat it again and again, even when I take the blade hidden at the back of the drawer and spread my thighs, letting it drag across my skin.
Then, when I see the blood flowing and mixing with the water, I understand.
Because of him, I'm already dead.
He came back the next morning hungover and already angry. The smell of alcohol followed him through the living room before he even opened his mouth.
“They’re coming tonight.”
That was all he said. He didn’t have to elaborate because I already knew. Milo was never here on nights like those. So, I spent the whole day with him at Edna’s. We cooked star cookies and watched the same movie over and over again.
Hayzel showed up in the afternoon, saying she missed me and brought Blue with her.
Somehow this little traitor immediately ignored me and curled up against Milo instead. They stayed like this, watching the TV but I could see Milo counting the hours until I had to leave.
Hayzel stayed for dinner, but she eventually had to go back to campus. Then it was just me, and when the evening came, I said goodbye to Milo and promised I would see him soon and walked back home.
The moment I opened the door I heard them. Voices, two of them. Both are laughing too loudly. Dad never laughs like that unless he’s letting someone else in, someone I’ve learned to fear. I never knew his name, I never asked, never had the chance to speak.
I’m not allowed to see him.
My stomach drops, my fingers go cold around my keys as I stand there, trying to convince myself I misunderstood. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m remembering the last time and not this time before that. Maybe it’s been months, a year.
I moved down the hallway quickly, keeping my head down. If I didn’t look, maybe he wouldn’t see me. If I moved silently enough, maybe Dad wouldn’t call my name. If I hid, maybe he’d get bored and leave.
Hope, hope, hope.
Three steps. Four. Five.
I’m almost in my room. My heartbeat is so loud I can barely hear anything else. I close the door behind me, telling myself it doesn’t matter if I shake, that I’m safe here. But my room was never safe, even when I was a child.
Then I heard it. The door opens again behind me. My whole body freezes. And before I can turn around, I hear the lock click from the outside.
Dad.
He had closed the door. He had left me again. He knew. He always knows.
Before I could even process it, a hand was on my mouth.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t think.
You’ll suffer again Reya, you’ll suffer again and again and again.
“Miss me, darling?”
His voice was soft, almost making something cruel sound gentle. My brain screamed at me to move, to fight, to do anything. But my body betrayed me. I stood there, frozen, mind empty, only able to focus on my heartbeat.
He stepped closer, pressed me against the wall, his weight heavy, his breath warm against my cheek. “See? It’s just us.”
I shouldn’t have come home. I shouldn’t have moved toward my room. I shouldn’t have hoped.
“Now, be smart. Take off those stupid pants. Remember our game? Never bite the lollipop… you suck it.”
You have to suck it, not bite it.
Memories of every time this had started, every humiliating, terrifying repetition, slammed through me. When I was a kid, this game wasn’t supposed to feel painful, I knew from my mother’s eyes it was painful even for adults. But now… now I’m still here and I’m older.
I trained. I told myself I’d never be small again. But maybe I still am, and I never stopped being the same person.
“Open that beautiful mouth.”
I didn’t. I couldn’t.
He laughed at my reaction. “Fine. Fingers first.”
His hand slammed back over my lips, harder this time. I tried to twist away. I tried to scream. I tried to fight. Nothing worked. Every movement made him more violent. Every breath I gasped made me smaller in his eyes.
Kill him. Kill him. Save yourself.
I could feel it, feel him, feel everything, but my mind split itself off from my body. One part of me was trapped in terror and pain. The other drifted above it, watching, numb, disconnected, wishing to disappear entirely.
It’s strange how easily I’ve learned how to stop being here. How easy it is for your soul to leave your body to avoid the pain and the humiliation.
“It’s just a game,” he whispered softly.
If it’s just a game, why does it feel like I’m being torn apart? Why does every muscle scream for me to move, and I can’t? Why do my tears feel like acid in my cheeks?
“You grew up well, Mireya,” he said, satisfied.
I tried to find his face, I tried so hard. I thought, if I could just see him, if I could remember him, then maybe I would understand. Maybe then he would become human.
But every time I reached for the memory, it disappeared at the same time as his voice appeared again.
My sobs are loud, broken, humiliating, and he watches as if my collapse is a prize.
And somewhere behind the door, my father exists. Does he hear me begging and crying and choose to not care? Or does he think this is all my fault ?
Just like hers.
I wish he could open this door and kill him. I wish he would fight for me, even if just once. But no one is here: it’s just him and I.
I kick him desperately, trying to stop this, to stop him. For a moment, I think I’ve done it. But then his hand reaches behind him and in a movement something comes out of his pocket. A knife.
“You want to play without obeying the rules?” A burning line slices straight down my stomach, warm blood spreading sticky along the vertical line. “It’ll give you a scar,” he says softly. “So you can remember that you’re not in charge.”
And after that, everything collapses. Nothing fits together.
I don’t remember him undressing. I don’t remember when he pressed against my wound.
I don’t remember when he kissed me. I don’t remember the sound of his voice, the way he threw me on the bed like I was already dead.
I don’t remember the touch, the pain, the things he did.
I don’t remember when he left.
All I remember is rising, shaking and crawling into the only long dress I found and walking out of that house.
I walked for what felt like hours, my legs moving on autopilot, my blood still warm against my stomach.
My chest was shaking while my mind tried to make sense of what just happened.
I ended up at the cliff near the campus.
Hours of floating to finish my journey here.
The wind tore at my dress and whipped my hair across my face, but I barely noticed.
I stayed there, letting the edge hold me while everything inside me felt hollow and far away.
One step.
Just one step.
I could let the water take me. I could disappear.
Is it my fault? Is it normal to feel like it’s my fault? Is it normal to feel empty, to feel small, to feel like a shadow of the girl I never was?
I stare at the drop, heart crying, blood on my stomach, the pain in my chest stretching down into every limb and then I close my eyes.
One step. Just one.
One breath.
Maybe the ocean could take me away from this, from the fear, from the exhaustion. Maybe the waves could cradle me and sing to me.
One step. And it could be over.
Then a voice cuts through everything.
“Mireya.”