Chapter 37 #3
He took the bowl. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.” He spoke so kindly I relaxed, thinking it was over. Maybe he felt guilty for pushing me that far. I rose from my seat and he guided me from the kitchen, steering me down the hall.
But upstairs was the other direction. Remembering the cupcake incident, I pulled back.
He grabbed me and shoved me against the wall. My head slammed with a crack of glass. Mom’s picture of a white-hatted chef fell and smashed against the floor.
I went lightheaded. The hallway spun. My knees wobbled and I dipped toward the floor, but Hank caught me.
Next I knew, he was half dragging, half carrying me past the office and the open door to the bathroom.
Dimly I registered another door opening, lights flickering on.
A big step, and the air around us turned thick, infernal.
Hank’s workout equipment pitched and swayed as he lugged me through the room.
What were we doing in the garage?
He tossed me down onto one of the machines. It had a slanted, upright seat, two horizontal handgrips winking in and out of focus. The chest press.
Hank was coming toward me. Triggered by the length of rope in his hand, I lurched forward. He forced me back and looped the rope around my midsection, binding me to the seat.
“What are you doing? Let me go.” I fought, but was too sluggish and weak to break my restraints. He disappeared back into the house and reappeared a moment later holding the bowl.
“What are you doing with tha—?”
I gagged. His fingers probed my throat, scratching me as they dug around my uvula.
I bent forward, hurling into the bowl.
He pushed my head back against the seat and shoved his fingers in again. Vomit sprayed past them, and he thrust the bowl forward to catch it. Wet on wet, the bowl filling up. My eyes and nostrils streamed, bile bitter on my tongue.
“Why are you doing this?” I sobbed. He finished cleaning his hand with a sweat rag and shoved it into my mouth, stifling my cries for help.
Next, Hank was rooting through a storage unit.
The steely grin of a circular saw caught my eye and supercharged my panic.
But no: not that. Hank extracted an oil funnel from a drawer, plastic and wide-mouthed, with a long accordion-style spout.
Before I understood what was happening, he was fishing the rag out of my mouth and shoving the end of the spout down my neck like a feeding tube.
Desperate, pleading noises escaped me as the bowl eclipsed the lights above. Hank hawked back and spat into it—then looked me dead in the eye.
“Got room for a little more, sport?”
He tipped the bowl over the funnel. I screamed, “Unh! Unh! Unh!”
A full, wet warmth gushed into my throat.
I shut my eyes and choked, spraying the vomit back up into the air.
It continued to chug down me, hot and half-solid.
I had no choice but to swallow. I gagged, revolted, but managed to suck a breath through my nose.
It was the only way. Another reluctant swallow, another quick ragged breath.
“That’s what happens when you don’t listen, sport,” Hank said, almost kindly. “I only wanted what was best for you. For your health.”
A sudden, earth-shattering noise; light streamed into the room. The garage door was opening.
Hank dropped the funnel and the bowl, vomit splattering across the floor as Mom’s Volvo pulled into the drive.
Things get a little blurry after that.
The last thing I remember is screaming—mine, calling out for my mom; hers as she ran into the garage and saw me tied up, my face slicked with tears and vomit; Hank’s as she lugged a dumbbell off his weight rack and swung.
Then the satisfying crunch of his skull, like the first potato chip fresh from the bag.
Hank was fine.
Of course he was. That’s how these things always go, isn’t it? A few days in the hospital, a bandage on his head, and a furtive agreement that neither he nor Mom would press charges.
She filed for divorce the following week. Not long after that, she and I moved into a one-bedroom apartment near my school. If she’d fought harder, she told me later, we probably could have stayed in the house, but she thought it was more important to get me away from him as fast as possible.
Better late than never, I guess.
“If only I’d known,” she went on to say. “If I’d known what a monster he was, I never would have…”
What? Fallen in love with him? Married him? Forced me to live with him for six years? Left me alone with him? Hesitated to come straight home when I begged her?
What she “never would have” done, I don’t know. She tended not to finish that sentence.
She still doesn’t.
But at least it was over now. Although the apartment was cramped and money was tight, life there was easy, the cabinets fully stocked.
When I got home from school, I had the place to myself for a good hour.
I could do, and eat, whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted—as much as it took to dampen the feelings of shame and self-loathing I took away from that place like a chronic illness.
Mom continued to apologize, and I tried not to blame her too much. She was a good mom and had always tried to do what was best for me, even if she got it wrong more often than not.
That Christmas, she upgraded my Game Boy Advance to a Nintendo Wii and my old Pokémon Sapphire to Pokémon Battle Revolution. I played through it, but it wasn’t quite the same as the RPGs. I tired of it, fighting battle after battle.
If you’re wondering what happened to Hank, your guess is as good as mine.
All I know is he sold the house and moved to Irvine.
Mom doesn’t talk about him, and I haven’t seen him since the final days of the divorce, when we returned to the house to grab the last of our stuff.
I still remember how he gawped at me when he saw me.
Years later, I still wonder what it was that disturbed him so much. I’d like to think it was my bravery in facing him: that after everything he’d put me through, I was stronger than he ever imagined.
Honestly, I hope I never find out.