Chapter 4 #3
I press my hand over my mouth, a silent scream tearing through my chest as I watch my father rape my mother.
It is brutal. It is visceral. I watch the violence of it—the way he slams into her, the way her cries for help turn into desperate pleas for mercy.
He doesn't stop. He doesn't care that she's in absolute agony.
He doesn't stop until he is completely satisfied, leaving her broken and sobbing on the mattress.
He doesn't stop there. He strips her completely, throwing her dress and bra away, leaving her naked and shivering in the damp cold of the basement.
"You'll stay like this," he sneers, looking down at her. "If I have to torture you into loving me, if I have to break every bone in your body to make you submit, I will. I won't stop until I hear 'I love you' from those lips."
The camera lingers. There is blood on Marguerite's thighs, staining the mattress a dark, sickening crimson. She is shaking violently, her eyes wide and vacant, her body racked with pain.
Thomas turns to the camera, walks toward it with a look of utter satisfaction, and clicks the tape off.
The silence that follows is deafening. I can't breathe. I can't move. I feel like I've been hollowed out, leaving nothing but a cold, aching void where my heart used to be.
Rhys gently turns my face toward him. His expression is solemn, his eyes searching mine. "We don't have to watch any more of this, Ophelia. Not if you don't want to. I can burn them all right now."
I look down at the black rose still clutched in my hand—the one he gave me at the carnival at 3 a.m. It’s a symbol of his dark, twisted devotion, but right now, it's the only thing keeping me grounded.
I look back up at him, a hot tear rolling down my cheek. "I want to see it all," I whisper, my voice trembling. "I need to see it all."
Rhys doesn't say a word. He reaches out, wipes the tear away with his thumb, and kisses my forehead with a lingering, possessive warmth.
He pulls me tightly against his chest, wrapping his arms around me as if he could shield me from the images already burned into my retinas, and slides the next tape into the machine.
The room feels like it’s shrinking, the walls closing in as the grainy footage continues to flicker. I can’t move. I can’t even fucking blink. I am trapped in this nightmare, forced to witness the systematic destruction of the woman who gave me life.
It becomes a repetitive, sickening loop.
Tape after tape of the same horror. Thomas forcing himself on her, over and over, while Marguerite fights with every shred of strength she has left.
She screams, she begs, she claws at him—and every single time, she fails.
He is a wall of meat and madness that she cannot break through.
Then, the footage shifts. Marguerite starts getting sick. I watch her heave, vomiting into a bucket, her face pale and gaunt, looking like she’s about to fucking faint from the sheer exhaustion of existing.
The camera zooms in as Thomas forces a pregnancy test into her hand. When the two lines appear, he doesn't look like a father; he looks like a predator who just caught a bigger prize. He speaks to the camera, his voice dripping with a delusional, manic joy.
"She's carrying my child," he beams, looking absolutely mental. "Now she'll see. Now she'll finally love me. Who could hate the father of her own baby?"
He comes to her later with a blanket and some food, acting for all the world like a doting husband. He tells her how happy he is, how they're finally becoming a family, and he leans in to kiss her. Marguerite flinches, jerking her head away with a look of pure disgust.
He doesn't snap immediately. He just smiles, that thin, terrifying smile. "It's alright, darling. I know this baby will make you love me."
"I will never love a man who raped me," she rasps, her voice a ghost of what it once was. "You didn't listen to my cries. You didn't stop when I begged you. You're a fucking monster."
The mask slips. In an instant, he lunges, grabbing her by the hair and yanking her head back with a violent snap.
"You think being raped by me is bad?" he snarls, his face inches from hers. "Wait until I let other men have a go. I'll bring them in one by one, and you'll beg me to be the only one to touch you just to save you from them. Then you'll love me. Then you'll fucking crave me."
I feel a surge of nausea so strong I almost gag. And then, the tapes prove he wasn't lying.
The brutality that follows is beyond words.
I watch, shaking in Rhys's arms, as Thomas invites Andrew Griffin and Luke Adam into that hellhole.
I watch them take turns on her while Thomas stands by, watching.
They never seem to notice they are being recorded because I don't see them once looking at or acknowledging the camera.
Every single time they finish, Thomas leans over her broken, shivering body and asks the same question: "Do you love me now, Marguerite?"
She never says a word. Not one fucking word.
The tapes progress. Her bump grows larger, a cruel irony—life growing inside a woman who is being treated like a piece of meat.
When the rapes aren't enough to break her, Thomas turns to violence.
He hangs her up, using her as a human punching bag.
I hear the thud of his fists hitting her ribs, her stomach, her face.
He screams that he'll only stop when she says those three words.
She remains silent. The only reason he ever stops is the fear that he'll kill the pregnancy. He doesn't care about her pain; he only cares about the "gift" she's carrying that he thinks will buy her affection.
Then come the others. Four more men. Six in total, and then including my father, repeatedly assaulting her.
And through it all, Marguerite spends every waking second trying to find a way out, protecting the unborn babies with a fierce, silent desperation, refusing to give Thomas the one thing he wants.
The final tape begins.
Marguerite is a skeleton of a woman. She's covered in bruises, open wounds, and filth. She's malnourished, her eyes sunken, barely able to move her limbs. She looks like she's already dead, just waiting for her heart to realize it.
Suddenly, her water breaks.
Thomas panics. He’s nervous, fumbling with towels and water. He tries to "help," but Marguerite whispers, her voice barely audible, "Hospital... please... I need a hospital."
"No!" he shouts, the panic turning back into rage. "The police are still looking for you! I'm not losing you now. You're staying right here."
He lays her on some clean sheets, and for the first time in nine months, he unties her. I watch the agony of a woman in bad labor, with no medical help, no support, only her rapist hovering over her.
She pushes, screaming in pain, and the first child is born. Thomas holds her, a look of triumph on his face. "I know the name you wanted for your daughter. This one... this is Rosalind."
But the labor isn't over. He looks shocked as Marguerite continues to push. "More? Were they twins?"
Blood is everywhere, soaking the sheets in a dark, visceral crimson. With a guttural scream, the second child arrives.
"Name her," Thomas demands.
"The names I wanted if I ever had daughters… are three. Rosalind... Cordelia..." she gasps, her voice fading. "And... Ophelia."
"This is Cordelia," he says, ignoring her pain. He tells her to push the placenta out.
Marguerite tries, but she's fading. She's slipping away. Thomas looks down and his mouth drops. There's another head. Another baby.
"Hospital..." she begs, her eyes fluttering.
"No!" he bellows. "There's one more! We're almost a family! You're going to love me!"
But Marguerite can't push anymore. She's gone limp. In a fit of desperation, Thomas reaches in and violently pulls the third baby out along with the placenta. He holds the infant up to Marguerite's face.
"Here is Ophelia."
I watch my mother look at me—the tiny, screaming version of me—and a small, weak smile touches her lips. "Ophelia..." she whispers.
And then, she stops.
She doesn't move. The blood continues to pool around her, a widening lake of red that swallows the sheets.
Thomas, still holding me, starts to shout. "Marguerite! Wake up! Marguerite!"
He drops me and the others on the sheets and lunges for her.
He checks her heart, feels for a pulse, and begins frantic, clumsy CPR.
He's sobbing now, begging her to wake up, screaming that they were supposed to be a family.
He hugs her cold body, wailing into her neck, pleading with a corpse to love him.
She dies without ever giving him what he wanted. He had her body, he had her children, but he never, ever had her heart. He lost.
He cuts the umbilical cords, wraps us in rags, and places us next to her. Then, he just sits there in the pool of blood, legs stretched out, crying like a pathetic, broken child for twenty minutes.
Finally, he stands up and walks to the camera. He picks it up, his face a mask of bitterness and grief.
"Marguerite is gone," he tells the lens. "I'll have to put her in the attic. Buy a big box. I can't move her to a cemetery without being caught."
He stares into the camera, his expression twisting into something truly demonic. He screams at the top of his lungs, a raw, hateful sound that echoes through the speakers:
"YOU BITCH! YOU COLD, HEARTLESS BITCH! I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING! I GAVE YOU A HOME! I GAVE YOU CHILDREN! WHY COULDN'T YOU JUST FUCKING LOVE ME?!"
The screen goes black. Static fills the silence.
I am shaking so hard I can barely breathe, my face buried in Rhys's chest. I can feel his heart beating—steady, possessive, dark.
I don't know if I want to scream or vomit, but as I clutch the black rose in my hand, I realize that the monster who created me died the moment he realized he would never be loved.