21. Delilah
DELILAH
All week it had felt like someone was watching me.
I couldn't explain it, but my body had chills. Every time I stepped out of the house or the library I felt like my every movement was being tracked. I’d even had a nightmare of a masked man watching me while I slept.
I chalked it up to paranoia. Maybe my period was due soon and I was being overly sensitive.
But the feeling wouldn't go away no matter how much I tried to rationalize it.
"What do you think about this?" Margot asked me as she slid over a flyer for the library she had printed out on neon green paper.
"I think it burns my retinas," I said, squinting at it.
She rolled her eyes and sighed. "It's the only color we had left."
"Budget cuts," we both said at the same time.
They'd really been after the library and our resources in the last year, going so far as to make us remove several books from the shelves that the good people of Kingston deemed 'inappropriate'.
That reaction only had me recommending them even more, and I even read them in my spare time, always at the library because John would have beaten me to death if he ever found out what kinds of books I filled my head with.
It was one of his favorite topics at the moment, going so far as to glorify the olden days when the only people allowed to read were clergy members and town officials.
How I was able to keep my face straight while he spewed such hateful nonsense, I'll never know.
But that's what my life had become. I had to be hyperaware of every look, every breath, every facial expression, or he would pounce on me.
It felt like John was always looking for an excuse to exert his power over me and got off on making me feel small and stupid.
Throughout the years of his torment, I had started to believe him.
Maybe I was just a stupid girl who needed to be put in her place.
If you heard something enough, it became hard to combat it, no matter what the truth might be.
I had no one but my friend, Margot, at the library to confide in about his behavior, and even that was limited.
When I got home, though, his car was already in the driveway and my stomach dropped.
John was a creature of habit and only deviated when something bad was about to happen.
It usually meant I was going to spend some time recovering from whatever punishment he decided to dole out.
One look at the sky and I knew I was fucked.
It had begun to rain and there was a distant rumble of thunder that sent my heart rate skyrocketing.
I swallowed hard as I opened the front door, not knowing what to expect.
There was John on the stark white living room couch with my birth control pills littered all over the coffee table next to a stack of bills that could only be the money I had been meticulously saving.
There was an ice-cold beer that dripped beads of condensation onto the black surface off to the side that was nearly empty from what I could tell.
If he was drinking that only meant this would be much worse that I’d anticipated.
He looked far too calm for my liking and my hand gripped hard onto the doorknob, contemplating how far I could get if I turned around and ran.
But there was no escape. I didn’t have the first idea of where I could run to that he wouldn’t find me. And because he’d fucked up my body so much, I wasn’t able to run fast. He’d catch me in seconds.
I walked forward, accepting my fate like I always did. The door snicked closed behind me as I walked forward with my limbs shaking and palms sweating.
"You want to explain to me what this is?" he asked. He knew what it was, there wasn’t a need for explanations, but he loved scaring me. His voice held an edge that had my skin crawling and my brain screaming at me. I knew all too well the danger I was in.
I kept quiet as I normally did, knowing he didn't want my response. He wanted me broken.
"You know all these years, I wondered if God was punishing me for my sins. Thought maybe you were infertile. Imagine my surprise when I found these vile little things tucked under our bed.” He picked one up between his fingers twirling it.
Then he tossed it at me and I flinched, not dodging the hit in time.
I breathed in deeply, preparing myself for what was to come, but the panic had already settled deep in my stomach, writhing around like a parasite.
“You’ve been keeping us from becoming a family like the good Lord wants us to be," he said, gripping his thighs with his hands and clenching his jaw. Then he stood and slowly walked towards me.
The sky lit up with a single streak of lightning and then he struck.
I went down hard, clutching my face from where he hit me.
My eye would be swollen all to hell tomorrow, I already knew it.
My vision tipped and sparkled as he grabbed a handful of my hair.
A whimper escaped my throat then, and he smirked at me.
"You're a fucking bitch, Eve. And I'm going to put another baby in that belly of yours, mark my words." He leaned down and smelled my hair. I could tell that he was hard. He always got hard when he beat me. He got off on my pain. Sick fucking bastard.
I knew he wasn't done with me though, and as soon as the thunder rolled throughout the house, he struck again.
My head whipped backwards and I writhed on the floor feeling like my head was being split in half.
No doubt I was nearing concussion territory. Or maybe God would finally end my suffering and take me now. All it would take is a hard enough blow and I'd be worm food.
A sharp pain struck my ribs, and when I looked down, I saw his foot crashing down onto me again and again. That calm demeanor gone. His hair had fallen into his face, and his cold blue eyes had turned murderous. Every inch of me hurt and I screamed out in pain, unable to hold it in any longer.
He must have hit me harder than I thought though, because the room appeared to be filling with smoke.
My vision blurred and then my throat felt like it was being squeezed.
A loud bang rang out all around me and I wondered if the house had been hit by lightning.
Maybe it'll all burn down. I could see the headlines now:
Beloved pastor and his charity case of a wife found dead in house fire. In lieu of flowers please send your donations to Kingston Prep.
I began to cough, and the pain wrapped around my lungs snuffing out any oxygen I could absorb. When I turned though, I saw something odd. A mask?
My fingers gripped around the black gas mask and felt a small piece of paper attached. As my brain struggled to make sense of what I was seeing, I realized John had stopped his attack and was on his knees gasping for air, same as me.
While my vision blurred, my eyes faintly grasped onto the words written on the note.
They said:
"Delilah, be a good girl and put this mask on."
In the haze, I didn't question it. With extraordinary effort, I pulled the mask over my face and breathed in deeply.
As soon as I did, I swore I saw a dark figure emerge from the smoke, coming towards me like an angel of death.
The stranger gripped me around the knees and told me to hold on.
My arms looped around his strong neck without question as my brain drifted.
It felt like I was having an out of body experience.
Maybe I was dead and this was how I entered the afterlife.
In the arms of a strong as fuck stranger that smelled like mint and cedar.
I wasn't complaining.
The last thing I remember was the stranger kicking John in the ribs so hard, I swear I heard them crack. It sounded like music to my ears.