Chapter 7
Constantine
No, no, no …
My heart is palpitating so much, I can hardly catch my breath. The anxiety is gripping my throat in a death vise. My mind is in chaos.
I was so close. So close to escaping.
Don’t do this to me.
Not now.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t supposed to wake up yet.
Not before the drug took effect. I hadn’t had the chance to give it to him before he lunged at me.
Everything was supposed to be calm and easy, to give him a pleasant transition.
I thought I’d prepared for everything. What I hadn’t counted on was how quickly he was aware of me.
I finally managed to slip him the drug right after I squeezed his nuts, which hadn’t been easy, as he beat me and I tried to fight him off. Once he was cupping between his legs, I quickly injected him before trying to escape.
“Not like this…” I rasp.
God, he saw my face. He recognized me.
As much as I want to run, I have to go through with my plan; otherwise, he’ll turn me in. I can’t go to prison. I’ll die there. There’s no way I can be confined. I’ve been trapped my entire life… not again. Never again.
But I can’t kill. Not just to save my own skin.
Then, as the all-consuming anxiety takes hold of me, I grip my hair and fall to my knees next to him, next to my supposed angel.
I’m gasping for air as my past slams into me like a baseball bat to my head.
I get lost in another violent night on Christmas Eve.
The beating I’d just received brings me back ten years ago, to one of my worst days.
No amount of fighting myself stops the flood, stops the horror as I relive that moment.
“God, please… no.”
Reliving my past in my head is nearly as bad as experiencing it the first time.
I’m sitting in bed, which is pressed against the dingy wall. I’ve shoved myself into the corner, holding my only pillow, trying to make myself as small as possible. But it’s useless. Steve will soon bust into my room and drag me downstairs for Christmas Eve dinner.
Dinner. What a joke. We’ll end up having what we always do. It will either be frozen chicken nuggets and fries, ramen, or a baloney-and-American-cheese sandwich. There’s never a turkey, a roast, or mashed potatoes along with vegetables. Steve hates vegetables.
I place the pillow over my head and ears to muffle Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ blaring downstairs.
I hate it. Hate it! Its happy sweetness makes me want to throw up.
It’s the worst song of all holiday songs.
Acid rises in my throat, burning as it goes, so I swallow it back down, letting it settle like fire in my gut.
I want to leave this hell, but I’m still too young at seventeen with no money or a job.
Steve, my stepfather, keeps me here with no one to turn to, not even my own mother.
He helps keep her alcoholism going, so she’s drunk all the time.
Too drunk to help me. Sometimes he gives her drugs.
So, I’m trapped. No one is coming to save me.
I have to suffer, like I always do. One day, he’s going to kill me. I just know it.
School is out for the holidays. I hate it there, too.
But at least I’m free from Steve for several hours a day.
I don’t have friends to hang out with or teachers I can talk to.
If the neighbors know what’s going on, they ignore it.
I’m not sure anyone even knows I exist except for the few bullies who like to torment me.
Steve practically keeps me prisoner in my body and mind.
Despite the Christmas music blasting, I can hear his heavy footsteps on the old wooden stairs, creaking and pounding under his dense weight. He’s intentionally trying to spook me, and it works. It makes my heart drum in my ears, and my palms start to sweat.
He’s coming.
The beast.
The monster.
A monster who doesn’t live under my bed, but in my house and in my soul. He’s all around me and doesn’t hide only in the darkness. Light doesn’t make him afraid.
Soon, my body starts trembling as he reaches my locked door and rattles it. I’m not supposed to lock it. Not ever. It’s his house. What he says goes.
Tears spill down my face because I know I’m in more trouble than usual.
He’ll get in because he always does. But I can’t deal tonight.
Not tonight. I fucking hate Christmas. It’s evil and cruel.
It hurts. It’s not only the pain he gives me or the horrible gifts.
But everyone else finds happiness this time of year?
People generally love Christmas. But the holiday is my personal hell.
I close my eyes and beg to be delivered to God.
To take me away from this nightmare. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve prayed for help.
No one ever comes. Sometimes I want to die, but that scares me, too.
I can’t do it myself. I’ve tried, but I always stop.
Why can’t there be someone to save me? To take me away or just end me.
Sometimes I even pray Steve will kill me. Just get it over with so my suffering will end. It’s been years and years. I’ve lost count.
My heart leaps out of my throat when he kicks the door open, which slams against the wall. The doorknob punches a hole through the drywall. He’ll punish me for that, too.
Instead of rushing at me like he did last year, he stands there calmly in his sagging jeans, his swollen gut hanging over the waistband, with his stained white T-shirt stretching over it.
His dark brown hair is curly and shines in the bedroom lighting from all the grease. He’s always gross, like he rarely bathes. And he smells, too. Unlike me, he’s tall, broad, and overweight.
Steve pulls out a crushed pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket and lights one up.
Then he leans against the doorjamb and watches me as he takes a drag, filling my bedroom with the smell of smoke.
I hate it, and it makes me cough all the time.
Sometimes my lungs tighten, making it hard to breathe.
“How many times have I told you not to lock the door?” he asks way too calmly. It’s his calm before the storm. He always does this before he lashes out. I know it’s coming. It’s not an ‘if’ but a ‘when.’
“I-I’m sorry.” I hate fucking crying in front of him. He hates it, and he enjoys it. Steve likes to make me cry and will do whatever he can to put me there. At the same time, he sees it as weak, and he beats me for it. You can never win with an abuser.
It started quickly after Mom married him when I was eight.
He really enjoyed tormenting me, particularly on Christmas Eve, for some reason.
It’s not only the beatings. He does that all the time.
It’s the promise of something beautiful.
Something kind. A reprieve from the pain.
I no longer fall for it, but I used to. I’d tried so hard to get him to like me and stop hurting me.
After a while, I learned that he doesn’t care.
He just wants me to suffer. He hurts Mom, too, but usually she’s too fucked up to care or notice.
We’re basically his punching bags. Mom fought it at first, but eventually, she just gave up.
As long as she’s fucked up, she’s good. I don’t know when she quit caring about me.
“Time to come downstairs. I have a special present for you.”
Younger me would’ve had a flicker of hope.
I remember smiling excitedly that I was actually getting a present for the first time, just like all the other kids at school.
But Steve has beaten anything positive out of me.
What’s worse are the presents he gives me every year.
I don’t get toys, clothes, or a book. No, that would be too normal.
Instead, I have an unhinged stepfather who gives me grotesque things.
Things that will make you barf and give you nightmares.
The tears come faster now. I feel so fucking helpless. Weak.
Steve blows a stream of smoke into my room, and even though his demeanor is casual, he’s tight and his jaw is clenched. He’s going to lose it on me soon if I don’t move. But what does it matter? He’s going to lose it no matter what.
“I-I don’t want it. It’s going to be bad.” Being brave is useless, but I have to try. I’d rather die than see what he’s given me.
Last Christmas Eve, the present he’d made me open had been a dead pigeon.
It wasn’t just dead, but the head had been severed and was lying next to its body on a bed of white tissue paper.
It smelled so bad that I threw up all over it.
Then the beating came. He’d been extra brutal because I’d gotten vomit on his gift.
Steve is fucking sick in the head, and each Christmas, I worried that I’d get a dead human instead of an animal or animal parts. Anything but that.
He finally explodes. I’ve set him off with my silence and not moving quickly enough. I scramble back farther on my bed, but there’s nowhere else to go. When he reaches me, he grabs my ankle and yanks me across the mattress.
I scream and try to get away, but he’s too strong. I’m not fed well, so I’m weak. He pulls me so hard I fall with a thud onto the floor.
My panic becomes full-blown when he sits on top of me, his knees pressed into my upper arms. I’m pinned down.
He’s so heavy, and my arms quickly lose circulation.
Soon, I start blacking out. Not in the sense that I can’t see or feel.
But in the sense that I begin to lose myself.
I go into the shadows of my brain, somewhere deep, to hide.
I imagine being on a beach, feeling warm sand between my toes as water laps on my legs.
Even though I’ve never been to the beach, I imagine what it might feel like.