Silence – Twelve years ago
My hand trembles as blood flows from my palm and through my fingers. It drips onto the carpet before I can stop it, but there’s enough of my blood spattered about this house already. What’s a few more drops?
My gaze moves to my doorknob—to the nail protruding from the metal. It looks like it’s been soldered on, and in the dark, I didn’t see it. It’s a miracle it didn’t go right through my hand.
“The enemy is everywhere, Silence.” I tense at the sound of my father’s voice, not turning to face him for fear he’ll want to add another lesson onto this one. “Clean yourself up.”
Avoiding touching the nail again, I twist the doorknob and push my door open. Crouching low, I tentatively run my hand across the carpet, and beyond the perimeter of the door are three more nails, sharp end up. I wrench them from the floorboards with my good hand, enter my room, and shut the door.
For the next thirty minutes, I inspect my room. The window, my bed, my closet, all my drawers, but those nails seem to be the only lesson I’ll be subjected to. For tonight, at least.
After dragging my first aid kit from under the bed, I clean the wound. I’d worry about an infection, but my dad isn’t out to kill me, only teach me. He can’t build an army if his first and only recruit is dead.
A squeak of wood against wood lifts my heart, and I look over at the window as it’s pushed open.
I stand quickly, the tightness in my chest loosening as I spot the familiar mask.
The weathered white skull over black cotton would look frightening to most in the dim light of my bedroom—especially when the person wearing it is climbing through my window.
But I’ve been waiting for this night for weeks.
His boots thud on the floor, his all-black outfit the only way he’ll have made it this close without my dad spotting him.
I rush over and wrap my arms around him, burying my face in his chest. He smells woodsy, and masculine, and safe. He hugs me, cradling the back of my head, and the sudden security has tears springing to my eyes.
“Where have you been?” I whisper. “It’s been two weeks.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Rose.” He holds me tighter, and I smile at my nickname.
The nights he could stay longer, I’d sing “La Vie En Rose” to him.
Terribly, but still. “I tried to get here, I really did.” I pull back from the hug, and his attention lands on the first aid kit.
Even with the mask, I sense his anger. “What did he do this time?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I whisper. “I haven’t seen you in too long. I don’t want to waste our time on him.”
He growls but doesn’t argue. Instead, he leads me to the bed. We both sit, and he takes off his gloves to patch up my palm.
I watch him with a small smile. “How’s school?”
“Same old.”
“You passed your maths class though, right?” He says nothing. “We studied for weeks!”
“I got distracted,” he grumbles. “I can redo it.”
“That isn’t the point, Odin.”
He huffs. “Don’t call me that.”
“Then tell me your name.” He meets my eye for a second before refocusing on my hand. “Besides, Odin was known as the masked one. It’s a cool nickname.”
“How’s school for you?”
I shrug. “Fine. Dad’s still insisting I quit.”
Odin’s gaze snaps to mine. “School’s important.”
“Says the guy who didn’t pass his class,” I point out. “I won’t let him make me quit, though. I want to stay. Besides, it’s prom soon.” He finishes cleaning up and bandaging my hand. “How long can you stay?”
“A while.”
I smile and climb under the covers, holding them open for him. He kicks off his boots and lies facing me.
As he traces love hearts on my good palm, I talk. “I thought you might have found a girlfriend, and that’s why you didn’t show up.” He shakes his head. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend? You’ll be nineteen soon, right?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly. So you should be dating.”
“Are you dating?”
I shrug. “No. But I’m not nineteen for another few months, so I still have time.”
“Is nineteen your cut-off age or something?”
“I dunno. I guess it just feels more grown up than eighteen.” We’re quiet for a moment. “You’ve been climbing through my window for four years, Odin.”
“And?”
“Don’t you think I should know your name? Or see your face? I mean … you haven’t even kissed me. All the girls I know are kissing guys.”
I think he frowns. “Are you kissing guys?”
“Are you kissing girls?”
“I’ve kissed a girl.”
“Well, I’ve kissed a guy.”
He’s glaring at me, I can feel it. “Who did you kiss? What’s his name?”
“Who did you kiss?”
“I didn’t kiss anyone. I lied.”
“Same,” I snap. “But it’s not like you’re kissing me, so you can just go out into the world with girls who see your face and kiss them.”
“I’m going to kiss you.”
My heart stalls, and my cheeks warm. “You are?”
“Yes. Do you want me to?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Then stop talking.”
I clamp my mouth shut, my skin suddenly vibrating with excitement. Anxiety swirls in my gut, and I hold my breath as he grips the bottom of his mask and pulls it up slowly, stopping it just above his top lip. His jaw is sharp, lips thick, and he’s clean shaven.
Four years and I’ve never even come close to seeing him.
One Halloween night, I woke to him sitting in my room, and I’d been so beaten up from my training session, I thought I was imagining him.
When he cleaned my split lip, and iced my bruised hands, I thought he was a guardian angel, or that I’d died.
Eventually, it became obvious that he was real.
For the first few months, he visited almost every night, but he only ever watched me.
Quiet, unassuming. He was tall, lanky, and I just knew he was the same age as me.
For so long, he didn’t move. Even as I wandered through the room talking about my day, folding my laundry, doing my hair, he’d sit and stare and say nothing.
Should I have screamed? Probably. But I was so desperately lonely that I didn’t want to scare him away.
No one at school wanted to be friends with me because I was either bruised or wearing crappy make up to hide it, and the teachers for some reason never asked about the Crowe girl with the dark under eyes and the skinny frame.
Odin was my first friend. My only friend.
When he first spoke, it was because I was crying. I’m pretty sure my dad had cracked a rib that night, and it hurt so much I couldn’t breathe. Odin finally left his chair in the corner of the room and sat by my bed. He’d whispered that he’d stay with me. That only made me cry harder.
Soon, he held my hand. Then, he told me about his favorite classes and things that happened at home. He was lonely, too, it seemed, and so he visited as often as he could.
I was sixteen when I realised I loved him and started scribbling Mrs. Odin in my diaries.
I always kept one, my notes meticulous and mundane, but I started going through more and more when Odin came into my life.
I’d write stories and daydreams, hopes of how he’d propose, and try to sketch his face.
My life was a story before, but he made it a fairytale.
And now he’s going to kiss me.
His gloves are still off, so when he touches my cheek, his palm warms my skin. My breathing picks up, and he leans closer.
“Rose?” he whispers.
My voice is barely audible. “Yes?”
“I … I think I love you.”
My breath comes fast. My tears do, too. “I think I love you, too.”
And he kisses me.
Oh my God, he’s kissing me. I’m being kissed. I’m kissing someone.
His lips are warm, he tastes like mint, and I suddenly wonder what I taste like. I had bologna for dinner. Oh my God, is it that?
Odin’s hand leaves my cheek and rests on my hip, pulling me closer, and I stop thinking about bologna. I part my lips and gasp when his tongue touches mine. The kind of heat I’ve only been able to give myself rises between my legs.
“I like that,” I say, smiling.
He smiles. “You really love me?”
My bedroom door flies open before I can answer.
I sit up, eyes wide. “Dad, no—” He seizes Odin and pulls him out of bed, throwing him against the wall.
“Dad, stop!” I scream, scrambling to my feet and trying to pull them apart, but my dad throws his elbow back into my nose.
Pain blasts through my face, and I fall back onto the bed, my eyes stinging, blood pouring over my mouth.
My dad punches Odin. Again. And again.
The tables turn so quickly that I can only watch as Odin shoves my dad to the floor. He hits him, and the crack of knuckles against nose is like a thunderbolt.
Odin pulls his mask down to completely cover his face again, his shoulders rising and falling with furious breaths as he stands over my dad.
“You’re far too comfortable hurting your own kid,” Odin growls, gripping him by his collar and lifting him before hitting him again.
Over.
And over.
“Odin, stop! You’ll kill him!” He doesn’t listen.
He keeps hitting him, blood spattering across my bare legs and face.
“Don’t kill him, Odin! He’s my dad! Stop!
Stop it!” I push him as hard as I can, and he moves away, his back meeting the wall.
He heaves in breaths, and I kneel by my dad, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Dad, are you—”
He slaps my hand away. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
I feel like I might puke.
Odin’s hand touches my shoulder. “Rose—”
“Get out!” I scream. “I want you to leave!”
Even though I can only see his eyes, I recognise the hurt that flashes through them, but he says nothing. He goes to the window, and he does as I ask.