LOLA
The pain refuses to dissipate. It claws at me like a vicious beast, jaws pulsating around my veins.
It hurts to smile. It hurts to blink. It hurts to laugh.
The ache is gnawing through me; hungry and wild.
Bite, bite, bite. It feeds off helplessness.
Off memory. Off every failed attempt at being untouchable.
I woke with blood on me. Did I do that? Did Marcus do it? The terror inside of me is an immense thing, eating me from the inside out. I do not remember anything except falling into a deep sleep.
The blood came off easily, staining the white rag to a dark red. I threw the rag away, not wanting any reminder of it. Marcus must have done it, who else would spread blood on me?
My hands shake as I lift the pill bottle and count out three before dry swallowing. I don’t wait for relief. There’s never enough, not for this. It’s not about curing pain, just changing the shape of it.
I snort two lines off the cold countertop. Coke isn’t my favorite, but tonight it’s what I have. It makes my nose ache and my skull light. The relief is a lie. But I take it.
My reflection glances back, unfamiliar and pitiful. The girl who had hope, who thought she could outsmart Marcus, who believed love was a real thing you could carve a life from.
What would my mother say?
She would look at me with those soft, blue eyes and shake her head. I raised you better than this. I didn’t raise you to be weak, or to let yourself rot from the inside out. I didn’t raise you for this.
But she left. and Marcus stepped into the space she left behind, filled it with his rules and his cruelty and his hands. I became whatever he needed me to be. I performed like a child’s doll: smile, pose, say the right thing, stay quiet when the darkness comes seeping in.
He doesn’t hit me every night. Only when I disappoint him. Only when I’m careless or too loud, when I forget the script. When I seem like I might leave. Then he’s all hands and rage. Then he’s shaking, not me, his control splintered, voice low. Then love and hate are the same thing.
But sometimes he’s gentle. Sometimes he picks me up off the floor and tells me I’m precious, his good girl, his sweet gem.
Sometimes he pets my hair or presses a cold cloth against the wounds and kisses my forehead and says he’s sorry, he didn’t mean it, I just made him so angry, and that I have to learn.
The whiplash is worse than the blows.
I close my eyes and think of Brody. For a moment, I pretend I’m seventeen again, ducking out my window and across the glittering grass, bare feet cold on the dew.
Brody waits for me under the fire escape, hood pulled low, eyes burning with desire.
He never made me beg, never made me perform.
When he touched me, it was safe. No, not safe, but real.
Like there was no lie between us. Like I was a person, not a doll.
I ache for that again. For that feeling of belonging to someone, even if it is fucked up and secret and doomed from the start.
Now, I’m a shell. A ghost. A body with nothing inside except the echo of someone’s daughter, someone’s lover, someone’s shame.
The drugs kick in; an hour late, but they do.
My limbs float, I don’t feel anything but a dull, cotton-wrapped numbness.
It’s almost peaceful. I could sleep forever in this state.
Marcus is in his office downstairs, making calls.
He’s been soft since he hurt me but I know what comes next.
He’ll want me quiet and sweet, curled up next to him like a lapdog.
He’ll want me to play along, to cradle his ego, to be grateful for the money and the house and the trips.
And I will. Because it’s easier than the alternative.
But inside, I am screaming. Inside, I am burning the whole house down a hundred times a day. This is the only power I have left: I can hate him. I can hate him until it wipes out everything else. I can hate him so much that it’s the only thing about me that’s real.
I think about my mother again. She’d weep if she saw me. She’d think it was her fault, but it isn’t. It’s mine. I never learned to be strong. I never learned how to get out, I just learned how to disappear, inch by inch, until there was nothing left but pretty skin, empty blue eyes, and obedience.
Standing too quickly, the room tilts. The floor is too far away, the ceiling too close. I steady myself at the dresser and breathe through the tremor. Marcus’s voice floats from downstairs. He calls my name, gentle, almost loving. Goosebumps cover my flesh.
My pulse thunders in my ears, from panic or the coke, it doesn’t matter. I go downstairs, one step at a time. I don’t limp, never limp, he hates that. I hold my head high, even though it feels like it’s hanging by a thread.
Marcus waits in his leather chair, relaxed, legs crossed. He smiles at me, his eyes hungry, but not the way Brody’s used to be. There’s no warmth in him.
He pats his lap. “Come here, sweetheart.”
I do.
I always do.
Inside, I rot a little more.
I fold myself onto him, careful not to wince when his hand slides under my hair and cups the back of my neck. His fingers are cold and gentle as he strokes my hair like I’m a pet.
He kisses my temple. “There’s my good girl.” My stomach turns over. I smile anyway. “You know I love you?”
“Of course,” I say, wondering if my voice sounds alive, or if it slipped away somewhere upstairs.
His hand drifts to my hip and squeezes. He says I shouldn’t make him angry, that I know how to keep him happy. He says he doesn’t want to hurt me, but sometimes I leave him no choice.
He says all the lines.
I think about screaming until I tear my throat open.
Be perfect. Be obedient. Be invisible.
I can do that. I will do that. This is who I am now.
This is what Marcus made me. The pain never really leaves, I don’t think it ever will.
But at least for a while, I can pretend.
I can float in this numb haze and let the world spin without me.
I can watch myself from far away, like a stranger or like a ghost. A caged bird who’s long since chewed her own wings down to the bone.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs, mouth close to my ear. “You know this doesn’t happen when you behave.”
He means the bruises. The split lip, the busted cheek, the colors that bloom and rot across my skin. He means the way time slows down right before his palm hits my face.
I nod, because that’s what’s expected. It’s always my fault. Always.
He tilts my chin up, hard enough to make my eyes water. His smile is perfect, cold. “I don’t like having to do that to you.”
Liar.
He likes it. He needs it. Power is the only thing that gets him hard. I know this, I learned it years ago.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. The words sound thin, a lie even as I say them. I’m not sorry, not really. I just want the world to go quiet.
He pets me, slow strokes down my arm before his hand slides to my thigh, fingers pressing, possessive, marking me even through the fabric. “If you’re a good girl, there won’t be any more pain for a while. You know how to keep me happy, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I say.
He lets his thumb wander, tracing circles close to the hem of my skirt. I freeze and hold my breath. He wants me scared and frozen, wants me to remember who owns me.
His voice drops, softer but sharper. “You’re mine, Lola. Don’t ever forget that.” He kisses my temple, then my mouth, brief and punishing. “Behave and I won’t have to teach you any more lessons.”
He says he has to go out tonight. Business. He says it like it’s a treat, like I earn freedom or grace by being his puppet.
“My good girl can have a quiet night,” Marcus says, smoothing my hair like a reward. “Order food. Watch a movie. Be ready when I get back.”
A coil of dread forms in my stomach. Be ready. For what?
He stands and fixes his suit, checking his reflection in the glass, and flicks imaginary dust off his cufflinks. He’s so composed; no one would ever believe what happens inside this house.
He looks at me again, hard, like he’s searching for any sign of rebellion. “No more mistakes.” I nod, frozen. He leaves a credit card on the table. “If you need anything, you know the rules.”
Of course I do.
He touches my chin one last time, a mock caress. “Smile for me.”
I do and he grins, satisfied. Then he leaves, the door slamming with a bang. Silence swallows up everything.
At first, I just sit there, staring at the wall, at the shadows lengthening across the floor. It’s unreal, the stillness. My pulse thumps against bruises, reminding me I’m still here. Still his.
I am so tired of being haunted by him. By what he does, what he says, by the way he can wreck me with a look or a word or a laugh.
He says I’m the problem, that the pain is my fault, my doing, my weakness.
That if I was better, prettier, smaller, quieter, there wouldn’t be any reason for punishment.
The sick thing is, sometimes I believe it.
Sometimes I catch my reflection and think: yes, he’s right. I am nothing. I am trash. I am the bruise that won’t fade. I am the daughter who failed.
But sometimes I remember the girl I used to be. I want to be her again. I want to kill her, too. Both at once.
I contemplate the pill bottle. I contemplate the razor in the drawer. I settle for more powder, chasing numbness like it’s air. Maybe it is. Maybe everything else is poison.
I don’t know how to be alone anymore. I don’t know how to stitch the pieces back together. But when I’m alone in the dark, I hope the universe blinks and erases me. Just for one night. Just until the screaming stops. Until the world goes still.
I give up on sleep and pace the hallway, bare feet slapping the hardwood, pulse drumming in my throat.
Something is eating me from the inside. Boredom, hunger, desperation, maybe all of it together.
I want to claw out of my skin, or just curl up and die.
Silence isn’t freedom, it’s a different kind of cage.