Prologue #3
“You aren’t getting out of here alive, bitch.” Before they close the door to the locker, they pull whatever leash is around my neck, and leave it out of the locker, tethered to me. Tight enough if I gasp, it’ll cut off my air supply.
I scream anyway until my throat is sore and it hurts to breathe.
My eyes close slowly, it’s so… dark and nice in here, actually.
Silent.
______
I think I always knew I was going to die young.
Like I had this… silent, invisible clock ticking down to my final moments plastered above my head.
Maybe that’s why I was so reckless, crazy.
Why I sought after ad venture. Why nothing scared me…
Except, there was always this… feeling I couldn’t shake that something was in the darkest parts of every corner, under every bed, closet, or room, like a ghost watching me.
Waiting to take me. My own, personal reaper.
But it was always only during a lightning storm that I could see the outline of my reaper. No scythe. Just a tall, faceless shadow in a hood, staring at me in the dark…
If I had to guess, it started after my dad died. Used to beg Axel to sleep with me or I’d slip into bed with him. I’d shut my eyes tight and clutch to him until the sound of the storm and Axel’s scent soothed me to sleep.
That was the thing though. It was never the storm itself that scared me. Never the loud booming of thunder. Never the howling wind or the way the windows rattled. Never the sound of rain pounding against said windows. It was just that goddamn lightning.
Seems fitting, I suppose, that I’d die before my twentieth birthday during a freak lightning storm of the century…
I just always thought I’d die while I was cliff-diving in Acapulco, parasailing in Hawaii, skydiving in Germany, or snowboarding down the snow-covered mountains in Colorado.
Fuck it. I’d even take a boring death like simply dying in my sleep from a brain aneurysm or even an early onset heart attack.
Anything.
I’d take any other way other than this.
______
When I was eight, dad took me to watch the airplanes take off and land at the airport.
We had a picnic at a public park close by and even though I’d already been on a private jet with mama countless times, this was somehow way cooler.
It was just dad and me. He pushed me on the swing and I even tried pushing him but I could barely get him to move, he was so heavy.
I wanted to fly and take off like the airplanes. I can hear his laughter… hear the…
Tchaikovsky ?
“Papi?” but it comes out as, ‘pafi?’
But he doesn’t answer.
Just the swift changes of tempo. Fingers hitting keys .
Then… darkness.
______
When I was eleven, I wanted to take Karate lessons with Axel…
Sofia put me in ballet. I called dad crying…
he told me there were children out there crying because their mothers couldn’t afford to put them in ballet and I should be grateful even if it wasn’t what I wanted…
I didn’t speak to him for a month afterwards. It still haunts me.
Chopin lullabies me or wakes me up, and I’m not sure if I’m even alive still. My reaper is absent. Just Chopin and me in this… where am I again? My ankles hurt. I need to pee so bad.
Maybe… maybe if I sleep a little longer I won’t have to pee so bad.
_______
When I was thirteen, I wanted to take self-defense classes. Mom bought me a cello instead, stating I would never need them. We had guards.
Cello, I was good at. I fell in love with the weight of it between my knees, loved how proud my mother looked at all of my performances. I loved how I could now make music instead of just listening to it.
“You are so talented, Raven.”
“Mm?” Mommy ?
Silence.
So nice.
My eyes flutter.
Where’s Chopin?
_______
When I was fourteen, John caught me and Axel wrestling and he told me it was inappropriate, and that I was too violent.
“You’re already so tough, Ray.”
“Ah?” Axel? I call out, but the gag in my mouth doesn’t let me.
Nothing. He doesn’t respond.
_______ _
Metallica’s Enter Sandman was my favorite thing to play on the cello. Any old heavy metal, actually. It made it more haunting…. More… soul-racking. Yeah… like that . It’s so soft and heavy. The melody plays outside of my cage. So beautiful and haunting.
I open my eyes, in the darkness, the only light peeking through is through the small open slits.
“Ahh!” I throw my head forward, forgetting the leash around my neck and it cuts off my scream and throw my head back, making the ache in my head worse.
It doesn’t matter. Alex is playing too loudly anyway; he wouldn’t hear me.
I cry.
It hurts. Everywhere. Everything. My head. My leg. My side. My wrists. I’m still bleeding but not as much.
I cry harder, throat rasping when I realize my panties are wet.
I wince, grossed out I’ve pissed myself while unconscious.
That’s okay. It’ll be okay. You didn’t shit yourself yet, Ray.
If it’s Lex that finds you like this, it’ll be okay.
He won’t let anyone see you like this. Okay, think.
It’s daytime. He said he’d be back in the morning if it stormed.
That means it’s… Saturday? You’ve gone almost twenty-four hours without drinking anything.
Your last drink was that bottle of water at nine right before the game ended.
But you’ve pissed yourself and you can’t stop crying.
By default, you can go another forty hours here.
My stomach grumbles.
The music is so lovely. Go to sleep, Ray. You can’t be hungry if you’re asleep.
Stay awake. I have to stay awake.
But it’s so much warmer when we sleep.
Okay, but… but just for a little bit, okay?
Okay.
I fall asleep to Lex’s broken hand rendition of Max Richter’s The Departure.
______
When I was twelve, I wasn’t allowed to go to my dad’s funeral alone.
A month later, Ax and John surprised me with adoption papers.
Mom’s eyes were filled with happy tears.
“I’m not saying you have to call me daddy, I’m not trying to replace your father, Raven, I’m just saying, if you ever want to call me dad, it would be my honor. ”
“Mjm?” I’m sure I said “John.”
Debussy answers me instead. I blink awake as the melody sends chills down my spine.
It’s… Sunday. Maybe. I tap on the locker and the song switches to the Smashing Pumpkin’s 1979. I grin. Maybe if I tap again, the song will change again. Like a fucked-up iPod. Just one last song before I go. One last song to take with me.
The last of my tears slip free as I Taptaptaptaptaptap .
The song stops.
Taptaptap.
Some Sleep Token, please Maestro Lex.
Nothing.
Taptaptap… tap.
“That noise coming from?”
My heart leaps.
Taptaptap Taptaptaptaptaptap .
“Oh my god! Raven? Is that you?”
TAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP
“Oh my god, hold on, sweetheart! I gotta open the locker. They fused the fucking thing, oh my god, sweet girl, oh my god, hold on!”
Taptaptaptaptaptap
“I’m coming, sweet Jesus, please.”
Each whatever he’s doing that’s pounding into the locker, reverberates every ache in my body.
The door swings open and brightness fills my eyes, blinding me I have to close them. He tries to lift me out but when he sees the state of my leg, my bone sticking out of my skin, he shakes his head. “I gotta call 911. Okay? Jesus, Raven, they’ve been looking for you.”
They’ve been looking for me.
But I was here. I was here .
After the paramedics show up they pull me out of the locker. Even though the gag has been pulled out, and that thing, which I was right, was a leash, my throat hurts too much to thank him. Lex takes off his black leather jacket and puts it over me, not letting anyone see me like this.
Tears in both our eyes, I mouth thank you as the paramedics close the door to the ambulance and they dash to the hospital.
It’s the last words I ever attempt to speak.