ELEVEN
“Stop! Dad, stop.” But he doesn’t stop. He yanks on my hair harder and pushes my face further into the wall. Any more pressure and he’s going to fracture my skull. My eye already feels like it’s trying to squeeze into my brain just to escape the hard edge of the doorframe.
“You think you can poison my boys against me?” Spittle hits my cheek before he grabs it with his free hand and pounds my head against the frame twice. Black spot dance in my vision with bright white stars bursting between them.
The boys are screaming my name over and over, and Casey’s just screaming. If they don’t stop, they’ll draw his attention. I need to close the door, but he’s holding it open with my body pressed to the frame.
“I don’t need to poison anyone against you. You do that all on your own!” Shut up Jules, shut up, my brain screams, but self-preservation takes a backseat to getting that door closed.
He smashes my skull again, then yanks me toward the living room so fast that I can’t catch my footing to follow. I hit the floor hard, but Dad doesn’t stop. I feel individual hairs ping when he pulls them right out of my scalp as he hauls me along, and then he kicks me in the stomach for making him go to the effort of dragging me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch TJ’s blue pyjamas streak by as he grabs Dad’s leg, diffusing the power behind the second kick, but not preventing it altogether. Dad grabs TJ by the throat and hauls him into the air. My stomach sinks. I pull myself up as fast as I can, but what can I do?
“You’re fucking pathetic!” I scream. I’ve got to draw him back to me. “You think you’re a big man, hurting little kids?” His eyes blaze and promise death, but I’m not afraid of death. These days, I only fear it being my best means of escape.
He puts TJ down and backhands me across the face. I cut the inside of my cheek on my teeth and wince as blood pools in my mouth. I nudge my head at TJ telling him to get back to his room, but Dad hooks him by the collar and grins.
What the fuck now? How much more do I have to take?
“These are my boys, Juliet. They’ll be Feelan men. I support them. They’ll eat when I feed them. They’ll do what I tell them.”
“They’re not wild dogs, Dad! They’re kids. You don’t give a shit about any of us. You can’t even protect them from yourself. Did you know they saw you hit Mum yesterday? Can’t you even shelter them from that?”
He laughs. The sound is wicked and depraved. There’s no arguing with him. He doesn’t care what they see or what they hear.
“I’m teaching them that no bitch is worth their care. Not siblings, not mothers, not wives. They’re men—they’re the top of the food chain—and if their women step out of line, they’ll do what’s right and whip them back into shape.”
“Fucking neanderthal.”
“Get on the floor. On your knees.”
“Fuck you.”
He lifts TJ by his collar. His little hands scramble for the bunched cloth now cutting into his throat.
“Stop!” I yell.
“On your knees,” he reiterates.
I do what he wants. He puts TJ back on his feet.
“Andrew James, get out here!” AJ’s head peeks around the door. Dad glares until AJ stumbles out into the hallway. “Hurry up. Stand next to Thomas Joseph. You’re going to learn how to be Feelan men, today.”
What the hell is he planning?
He turns back to me and grins. “Take those fucking bandages off and put your hands on the floor—palms up,” he adds. More bleach? Is he going to show them what happens when you get punished?
I unwrap my hands. The skin feels like it’s still on fire, and the sensation only worsens when the cool air touches them. I lay them on the ground. The action forces me to bend over slightly, making me even more vulnerable. It’s a submissive posture, almost begging. Everything in me screams to sit up…get up…get out. He can’t use the kids against me if I’m not here. But he might hurt them in my place, and I can’t ever let that happen.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, but there’s only a sick pleasure in his voice.
“Nah. Had worse,” I sass, though more for the kids’ sake than his.
He laughs like I’m telling a joke and mumbles, “Good…good. Let’s see what we can do about that.” He grabs the boy’s shoes from the rack by the front door and makes them put them on. When they’re both ready, he drags AJ to my left side and TJ to my right.
“Juliet’s been a bad girl. She tried to take something from Daddy that wasn’t hers to take,” he begins, faux sweetness in his voice, the kind that often comes before a smack. I brace for the hit, but it’s so much worse than I expect.
“She’s gotta be punished. We’re going to stomp on Juliet’s hands until she says sorry.”
What? What does he mean by we? Don’t tell me —
“Stomp as hard as you can. If you don’t stomp hard enough, I’ll make you do it again and again until every one of her fingers breaks. Ready?”
“You can’t…you can’t make them do this.” Tears stream from AJ’s eyes, his chin jerks with silent sobs. TJ shakes his head, refusing to do it, but Dad just glares at me. “They’ll hurt you or I’ll hurt all of you for disobeying. Which will it be?”
I smile sadly at both my brothers. They’re four years old. They should be watching cartoons or playing with other kids at pre-school. “You’ve got to do what Daddy says. It’s my fault.” I can’t tell them it’s okay or that it’s not their fault because Dad will only make this worse for all of us. I’m not an idiot. He’s punishing them too. In his head, this is his way of making sure they grow up to hate me. They’ll blame me for always getting into trouble, until they’re so desensitised, they’ll do it because they think it’s the right thing to do.
“Stamp hard, you hear me?” he reminds them. “Or we do it again.”
I can’t stop the tears. Not mine, nor the boys’.
“Three.” He sneers at me when my hate-filled eyes meet his.
“Two.” AJ’s entire body shakes.
“One.”
I close my eyes. TJ stomps hard; ever the practical one, he wants this over with fast. But AJ can’t bring himself to do it. The sole of his shoe barely touches my skin.
“Again!” Dad shouts. AJ’s sobs fill the room.
“You can do this, kiddo. Like splatting a spider,” I whisper, but Dad hears anyway and finds it hilarious that I’m encouraging my baby brother to hurt me. “One big stomp and it’s done.”
He nods. TJ grabs AJ’s hand. Then together they stomp again. They aim for the meat of my hand. There are dozens of bones in the palm and I’ve no doubt some of them are broken, but it’s the skin that sings high notes in my brain and vibrates with the heat of a mini supernova. The agony sucks my breath from my lungs.
“One more,” Dad grunts, glaring now. Has he even realised that this backfired? That they didn’t do this for him, but for me?
They stomp again, a little less power in the pressure this time, but I’m already hurting so it pulls an involuntary hiss from my lips.
I won’t give Dad the opportunity to demand another. I get up and nudge each boy with the back of my hand, pretending with all my might that I’m okay. “Go to your room,” I tell them softly.
I’m not okay. Nothing about this is okay.
“We’re done. You say you want an apology and yet you’re supposedly sick of hearing me say sorry. What you really want is for me never to have been born, but I can’t apologise for that, Dad. That was never a choice I got to make.”
“Get out of my house!”
“Gladly!”
Something in my tone must make it sound like I’ve won because he shifts his demand slightly. “Sit outside the door and don’t budge from that spot until I tell you to.”
I roll my eyes.
“You want me to punish Casey in your place?” He clearly knows all my buttons and will press them over and over again to keep me compliant.
“Pouring bleach on me and having the twins smash my hands, smacking me around, pelting me with food, smashing my head off door frames, pulling out my hair…none of that was enough?”
“You’re still fucking back-talking me, aren’t you?” He isn’t wrong.
“Fuck you!”
“Outside or I’ll drown her in a bath of bleach and tell the world you did it.” He looks at my hands and smiles again. How long has he been planning this? Is he just an opportunistic bastard or a psychopath?
I grab my bag and turn back to give him one last glare, but he’s already turned away from me and pulled out his mobile phone. Am I’m already forgotten, or will he hurt Casey regardless?
Stepping outside, I shut the door and lean against it with my ear pressed close, listening for Casey and praying he is only bluffing. No screams. No crying. No panic. The apartment is eerily quiet. The corridor is dead too, despite it only being lunchtime.
I clutch my bag to my chest and sink to the floor. Should I laugh at the way my day has come full circle? The way this echoes last night is both sad and ironic. Perhaps I should push my bed out here and have done with it?
God, my hands hurt. My teeth, my jaw, my head, my ear, my stomach—maybe it’d be easier to catalogue the parts that don’t hurt?
I mean, my big toe feels kind of good.
This time I do laugh. The sound is tinny and small, but at least I’m not crying.
There’s still not a peep from inside. I regret not keeping a pastry for myself; the growling, gnawing agony in my gut is almost as bad as the thrumming ache in my hands. A drink of water would be nice, too. I’m still breathing, though. That has to count for something, right?
I close my eyes. Sleep feels like the best way to use this time. Who knows when I’ll next get the chance, and sleeping in the day is safer than at night, especially if he makes me stay out here all night long.
It all feels like one never-ending day. If I’ve learned anything, it’s never to underestimate life’s potential to fuck shit up. Just when you think things can’t get much worse, life whispers hold my beer and shows you the new depth of how low you can sink.
I need rest. I’m weary to the core.
With my eyes closed, my mind is set adrift, but I can’t quite sink into the oblivion of true sleep when every breath is sharp and every pain-filled motion startles me half-awake again. I settle instead for a daydream state where I plan out the house I’m going to buy when I make enough money to escape the Vale. I decorate it in a thousand different ways and still keep one ear out for trouble.
Or at least I think I do until something moves against my arm.
I register it in that surreal space between wake and sleep, the place where reality filters into the haze of dreams, but you exist between them both with neither quite able to catch you.
The pressure against my arm is delicate…considerate. It brushes down my arm and over my fingers in a gentle caress. Where my hand rests at the juncture of my thighs, the pressure lifts and begins again at the top of my arm. It moves inward, this time daring to trace the curve of my breast and then it isn’t gentle anymore.
I try to open my eyes, but it takes forever. I’m not asleep. I can’t be asleep, but I’m not awake either. What was just a disembodied pressure, now becomes a hand. I acknowledge the crush of all five fingers as it squeezes hard against my chest. The stench of cigarettes and booze smothers my face.
Like sleep paralysis, my exhaustion fights me as I struggle to regain cognisance. Sleep has full control over my body, but my mind is already fully engaged and screaming curses. Why did I fall asleep? Why hadn’t I been more careful? Why is it taking so long to realise I’m not alone?
I’m not alone.
My eyelids spring wide, my unfocused vision blurs at the unexpected proximity of the man who leans into me with his face only inches from mine. The stench is worse now. Thicker. Pungent and mixed with the ripeness of sweat and dirt. His hand stays on my breast but over my T-shirt, I’m too well coiled for him to get underneath the fabric.
“Do it. I fucking dare you. See what happens, you sick fucker.” It’s bravado speaking, not any genuine sense of strength. I won’t give him my fear. That’s what he wants after all, the power to make me nothing at all, because you can’t regret nothing. You can’t feel sorry for it or empathise with it. You can’t respect it.
But I’m not nothing.
“Tha’s no way to speak to yer guardian angel, is it?” The weaselly drawl, the stink, and the pervasive creepy vibe are all unpleasantly familiar. Gresh. With the realisation of his identity comes the anger and a wash of relief. I’m not safe—not by a long shot—but I know Gresh well enough to talk him down, threaten him, maybe even call my dad for help?
“Gresh? I should have known. I told you, didn’t I? I warned you not to follow me home again.” I jerk away from him, dislodging his hand from my body and sliding away just enough to pull myself upright. “And don’t you ever take liberties with me again.”
“I was just checking you were alive, baby.”
“You were copping a feel. You are one sick little pervert, Gresh. I’ve had enough of you. I’m telling my dad.”
“Who do you think told me you were alone on the corridor?”
Liar. Dad was an arsehole, but he’d never…there was no way he’d tell Gresh I was alone and vulnerable. No way. He knows the type of creep Gresh is. Telling him I’m alone here is inviting me to be…no…he wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t —
“Starting to understand, huh?” Gresh grins, a face full of broken yellow teeth and red gums. He flicks his finger under my eye and pulls away. “Your daddy gave you to me.” A single tear puddles on the tip. He holds it out to me, grinning wider and then thrusts his finger into his mouth, sucking until his cheeks hollow much deeper than normal.
Why am I surprised? Because a father wouldn’t set his daughter up to be molested by a pervert? But a father wouldn’t bleach his daughter’s hands or force children to assault an adult or threaten to drown his baby. I should know better than to judge him by the expectations of fatherhood. This is the man who threatens to sell me to the local brothel at least once a week.
But surely, this is too far? Threats are just words. Actually calling Gresh…no.
No matter which words I use to convince myself, my tears tell a different story; one where my father might set rape up as another punishment. It’s a whisper of doubt, spoken in the back of my mind, but it’s still a doubt.
I can’t trust him.
A voice, laced with authority and ringing with fury, lances like a physical bolt along the corridor.
“Get the hell away from her.”
I press further into the wall as Gresh launches himself away from me, his back hitting the wall opposite. Gresh turns to look at the speaker. His expression falls, his beady eyes expand, he stares for a moment and then drops his gaze submissively to the floor.
Seeing Gresh so cowed, I risk a glance at my saviour, but I know who it is. My heart hums in my chest, my body relaxes, I’m safe. There are only two people it could be.