35. Ambrose—age nine #2
He closes in on me, and a feeling of claustrophobia washes over me.
I need to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“Dollie.”
I picture her outside the house, her tiny body running through some cold field. Her dainty wrist had slipped through the chain Colin had wrapped around it. She rushes through snow and the weeds that sprout through the December flurry, making it to the road.
“I need help!” she screams in my thoughts.
A car pulls up alongside her, and she fades away into a new vision.
Reality tries to pull me back, but I fight it, desperate to stay with Dollie.
She’s in the hospital, jumping from the high bed and running toward the one to her left.
“No, Baby. You can’t go in there yet,” Mom says, not letting Dollie pull back my curtain.
“But Ambrose.”
“Ambrose will be fine. Daddy and the doctors are with him now.”
I don’t feel fine, and Colin is the only one with me.
Another attempt to shut down takes me somewhere else, back to the blinding white hospital that forces me to keep my eyes closed.
I lie in the bed, Dad at my side, talking too fast and asking far too many questions for me to keep up with. The doctors touch me, and that makes me cringe.
“It’s just bruising. He’ll be fine,” a doctor tells Dad. “I’m just gonna apply some ointment here. It’ll help with the pain.” Eager to avoid the doctor’s touch, my mind shuts down, taking me to a black hole where only I can fit.
I stay there, breathing in the safety it offers.
Colin can’t get in here.
The doctor and the gel can’t get in here.
I’m wet down there. From him. I tell myself it’s just the doctor’s special cream. It isn’t Colin and his mouth.
But I’m safe here… no one can fit, not even tiny Dollie.
Where is Dollie?
My eyes snap open, and I’m back in Colin’s bathroom. The sticky feeling around my crotch dries in the air. My tears on my cheeks do the same, and my mouth moves, begging him not to touch me again.
The grip that Colin has around both of my wrists releases.
“Go take a bath, kid. You’re filthy and disgusting.”
A sick feeling washes over me when he points to the tub in the center of the room, and the promise of vomit is fulfilled when he slaps my rear. I step through the chunks of stomach lining in a trance.
I need to get to the bathtub.
I need to sink beneath the overflowing bubbles.
“Don’t worry about those or the vomit,” he says, dropping a bath sheet over the bubbles that make it to the floor.
I’m not worried about them. I’m only worried about Dollie and how I’ll heal from this enough to protect her.
I scrub at my skin in all the places I know he’s touched me.
“Where’s my sister?” I ask, using her as a float to stay present. “I need to see my sister.”
“You need to try and wash the filth from you first, boy.”
I nod, knowing that Dollie can’t see me like this, can’t see how hurt I am by whatever just happened.
I scrub harder, desperate to get this over quicker.
“Do you feel better about me kicking you? I kissed it better like Mommy would.”
No, Mom doesn’t do that.
And if she ever finds out, it’ll break her heart. She can never find out. Dollie can never find out. Dad can never find out.
It only happened once.
No one needs to know.
I can forget it.
Please, let me forget it. I look up, praying to anyone who’ll listen.
That hope fades away as I tremble in the water. Colin dips his hand in and says, “Here, let me help you get it done quicker.”
His hand touches me down there, and I can’t take it. My mind offers that space again—the safe one. The room turns black and gets smaller, but I fight it.
Dollie can’t fit.
Dollie needs to be safe, too.
Blinking in the image of the bathroom, the grubby white tiles and lace curtains, tears pour from my eyes.
I need something to get me out of this fucking room. Out of this house. Out of this rotten man’s life.
But that isn’t something that will happen.
In some way, he owns me now.
He owns me.
He’ll own me forever.
I think back to my little shard of glass and all the intentions I had. I wanted to use it on him, but his thick skin might not even break the way my soft skin did, and my pants are out of reach.
If I could reach… a twisted thought wraps around my brain, torturing me and offering me an out at the same time.
I’d use it on me.
On the ledge of this bathtub sits a substitute—a blade Colin uses to shave those whiskers on his ugly face.
I launch for it, water splashing everywhere, and I scream out, “I’m sorry, Dollie, I just can’t do this.”
Colin screams something, too, but the wall around my heart and soul—crumbling, piece by piece—blocks him out, sound and touch.
And I use those last peaceful moments, before the weight of everything drags me to depression, to reenact a scene I saw in a movie once. I angle Colin’s blade and pray for one second that it’s clean, then I drag the blade over my wrist and wait for the water to turn red.
But the water remains this ugly beige color, scum sticking to the sides of the tub.
I failed.
I didn’t get deep enough.
A wave of reality crashes, and a surge of relief overwhelms me. Because what was I thinking?
I can’t leave Dollie here alone with this thing.
I have to stay alive, even if that means suffering every single day.
And I hate that I have to suffer because of this creature.
But it can’t be her.
It can never be her.
Colin pulls me from the bathtub by my barely bleeding wrist and wet hair. He tosses me to the floor, and I reach for my pants, for the pocket where the shard is waiting to inflict an injury on him. I pray that I cut him deep enough.
“No, no, you little brat!” He drags me back by the legs.
The uneven tiles scrape against my stomach. I don’t flinch from that, just from his touch. My skin crawls beneath his dirty hands as they move higher up my legs.
I struggle to breathe through the very real feeling of his hands on me. My kicks and thrashes are wild but useless things, guided by terror and nothing else, as he pulls me closer to him, the pants now far from my reach.
“You’re not wearing those.” He flips me over and stands above me, his gaze alone enough to immobilize me while he disappears back into his room.
I don’t leave the floor, staying there with my painful thoughts and the heavy breaths I’m taking.
“Put these on.” He tosses a shirt and shorts at me that smell like him.
And all I can do is flap until it falls away from me.
Dragging myself back over the uneven tiles, I make it to the corner of the bathroom.
“Don’t make me hurt you.”
His feet stomp over the tiles, closing in on me.
“Put the clothes on, Ambrose. Or leave them off for your entire stay here.”
“Please, just let me wear my own clothes.” I sob, stuttering over the fear, the hold that he’ll forever have on my soul.
Calloused fingers grip my hair, and he guides my head and arms into the correct holes of his polka-dot shirt. “You haven’t worn your T-shirt in ages.”
“It’s dirty,” I try to reason. “And wet.”
I don’t even fight as he pulls a pair of shorts up my legs.
“So, aren’t you very lucky I’m so generous?” He smiles, today’s lunch still wedged between the gaps in his teeth.
He didn’t have green vegetables.
“It’s a good thing you’re tall.”
Staying silent, I let him finish dressing me. To prevent the shorts from falling, he sets a pair of braces over my shoulders.
“Why are you so sad?” he asks, gripping my face harshly. “Is it because you couldn’t reach this?”
My eyes roll as my shard of glass dances across his knuckles before stalling between his finger and thumb.
“Let’s make you look a little happier.”
The basement door creaks open again, letting some light into the comfortably dark room.
I’ve been down here alone for a little while, sucking in the scent of Colin from my new clothes and tasting my blood in my mouth with each breath.
For a while, my cheeks hurt, but they’re numb now.
A gentle sob accompanies the heavy patter of feet coming down the stairs.
Dollie.
I sit straighter on the dresser, waiting for her little legs to come into view.
And there they are, red and purple in places they weren’t before.
“Dollie,” I barely mumble, putting less pressure on my cheeks.
“Ambrose? What happened to your face?” She looks straight at me, noticing the bleeding flaps of skin that gift me my permanent smile.
There’s no way to answer that—too many words. I’ll only delay my healing.
Dollie speaks again, “I’m so cold, Ambrose.”
“Oh, Dollie,” Colin coos. “Have you learned your lesson? That down here isn’t so bad? That it could always be worse. Would you like me to make it warmer?”
Dirty curls fall into her face with a single nod.
“Okay then.”
His back blocks me from seeing what he does to light the fire, but when he steps away, an orange glow burns through small logs in the stove.
“Are you still cold?” he asks Dollie, whose hand he holds tightly.
Her fingers stay extended, avoiding his skin as she nods her head.
“You are?”
“It’s freezing, and I hate it, and we want to go home to Mommy and Daddy and Duggan and my favorite blankets.”
“Well, if you’re that cold, get a little closer.”
His fingers loosen enough to slide to her elbow. Tightening his grip, he yanks her forward and shoves her hand into the open door with the orange flame.
Her scream is deafening.
My legs shake, ready to run and help her, but my insides shake over the idea of being that close to the monster who holds her.
“Ambrose, please help me! Please, please help me!” Her little voice cracks with pain, and so does my heart.
Ignoring my concerns for my own safety, I push myself off the dresser and splash through the water with everything down to my soul shaking.
My steps slow slightly as I reach Colin, but I focus solely on Dollie—the tears on her face, the fear in her eyes, and the pain leaving her body in deafening screams.