Chapter 33
Quill
Bone Cage
do you really want to hurt me?
Nessa Barrett
The slap hit me so hard that I stumbled backwards and had to hold onto the doorframe to keep my balance.
My father seemed to have calculated this, because he immediately stepped towards me, grabbed my trembling wrist and squeezed so tightly that I tensed up.
I hadn't seen him coming when I had sneaked through the back entrance into the house and up the stairs, but he had been waiting for me up here. And whenever he did that, there was no escape.
“You ungrateful piece of shit!” he yelled at me, drops of spit landing on my face before his hand slapped my cheek again, leaving another hot prickle there. Compared to that, the tear that escaped my eye was cool.
“What did you tell him?!” He grabbed my other wrist and pushed me into my room. “What did you say to him?!”
“Nothing...” I whimpered, on the verge of drowning in my panic.
“Why would he pick you of all people?! What did you say to Monica?!” He shook me until I felt dizzy and he had to hold me tightly in order to prevent me from falling backwards out of his grip. “What did you say to them, damn it?!”
“Nothing...” I sounded desperate, pathetic. “Nothing... Please... Let me go...”
I couldn't even look him in the eye, so quickly did my paper castle of self-confidence crumble.
With unexpected force, he pushed me across my room. I bumped into the edge of the bed and fell backwards onto the mattress.
With his eyes wide open and two veins protruding from his temples, he lunged forward, stepping on my leather bag, which must have just slipped off my shoulder, and an unpleasant crack sounded. He kicked it across my room before lunging at me.
Instinctively, I cowered, trying to dodge the next slap, but I didn't expect his hand to wrap around my neck.
My eyes wide open, I gasped as he pulled me toward him, his grip firm and unfamiliar because he had never done this before.
“Out there, you act like you're somebody, but apparently I should have beaten some respect into you in this filthy shithole!”
His grip tightened around my neck, but the shock that whipped through my limbs prevented me from fighting back.
“Your existence ruined my life! Just because that stupid bitch didn't want to abort you!”
Tears drowned every free millimeter of my face.
My frantic attempt to breathe failed.
“I hope she watches from her grave as her misguided mistake fails just as miserably as she did!”
He laughed, but there was something hysterical about it, something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“You think all this is going to lead to something, huh?!”
He shook me until my vision blurred and my head contracted from the inside, let go of me and I gasped for air, putting my hands to my throat as more water blocked my vision.
He slammed the door shut and began pacing back and forth.
An uncontrolled whimper escaped my throat and I pressed my lips together convulsively when that was exactly what made him snap around.
Everything in me begged me to close my eyes, wanted for Vincent to put his hand on my back and whisper to me how green the tall summer meadows, how blue the sky and how big the cloud towers in Wonderland were.
But my invisible friend only came to me once I had found a safe hiding place from my father. And over the years, it was as if I had lost more and more of my connection to my angel.
“Stupid girl!”
My father's fingers trembled more than usual.
He couldn't drink because he was still expecting guests. Guests who weren't supposed to see me, which was why Lorette had threatened me earlier in the driveway that if I left my room tonight, she would make me regret it.
But instead of tyrannizing me again with his unpredictable closeness, he suddenly turned around and opened my closet.
My heart began to pound threateningly, even though I had already moved everything fragile here to safety from him.
“Where are they?!” He looked at me angrily. “Huh?!” Then he ripped open my desk drawers and rummaged through my university documents, grabbing a pile and tearing up the papers as my whimpering, along with my breathing, quickened. “Where are all your useless fairy tales?!”
He ripped one of the drawers open so violently that it slipped out of its bracket, and the lump in my chest skipped a beat as he hurled the drawer across my room toward my desk, one of its wooden legs splintering as it broke.
I flinched.
“Please stop...” I sobbed, covering my mouth with my hand, but he continued to storm through my room.
I slid back against the headboard before the books he was throwing around at random could hit me.
Please...
Book spines broke, pencil tips snapped off as they hit the floor, pages from library books were torn, and the contents of one of the coffee cups spilled over all the notes I had taken in Monica's and Davian's lectures.
“Please stop...”
But he didn't stop.
“This room was never yours!”
He swept all the flower vases off my dresser, causing them to shatter on the floorboards, drowning my law notes in masses of stale water.
He trampled on the delicate buds of the white lilies before kicking the plant pots by my window with such force that large shards skittered across the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces the moment they hit the dressers.
“Please!” I cried desperately, ducking my head protectively between my knees before one of the shards could hit me.
“Shut your damn mouth, Onera!”
A book hit me on the arm. A pen.
“Shut up...”
Another book, this time on my head, causing me to flinch violently.
“...shut your damn mouth!”
Sobbing, I dug my fingers into my calves until it hurt, stiffened, just wanted to get out of this fragile body.
“One more stupid word and I'll completely forget myself!”
Trembling, I suppressed my sobs, held my aching throat, and tried to block out the sound of him rummaging through my room, not daring to look up, even when I heard more wood breaking.
Please, make it stop.
Please, make it stop.
Please, make it all stop.
“Hey, Tide. It's me.”
Just as I felt Vincent reach out his hand toward my back, a firm hand closed around my wrist and I jerked my head up in fright.
Nothing could ever prepare me for the hatred in his gray eyes, even though it lurked there every day. But there was something else in his gaze. Shock.
Confusion ate away at me. I had long since lost control of my tears.
“You're not leaving this room!”
I couldn't react fast enough as he spun around, grabbed the key from the dresser, and strode through the door.
“Not today!”
He slammed the door shut so hard that I flinched again.
“Not tomorrow!”
The door clicked.
“Not until you've withdrawn from Maplecrest!”
His hurried footsteps faded in the distance, but his shouts echoed throughout the house.
“You can rot in there until then!”
Medicine
Daughter
Minutes passed.
I expected more noises from his whiskey room or the ground floor. Yelling from Lorette. But there was nothing.
My gaze wandered to the clock above my bedroom door, but it was no longer hanging there.
Instead, it lay among all the loose sheets of paper, the drawer parts, the broken vases and flower pots, and the potting soil, some of which was soaked with coffee and some of which was floating in green-yellow water.
One of the torn curtains hung over the leg of my desk, which was stuck in the PC that Thomas had given me.
Sobbing, I slumped completely against the headboard, staring at the torn law books in front of me – which didn't even belong to me –, wishing I didn't have to feel anything anymore.
No matter how tightly I closed my eyes, there was no Vincent to take me to Wonderland, because I was in a place where my father could find me.
He had the key. He was in control. He could come back at any moment. He could break me until the pieces were so small that they would trickle through his hands like sand.
I curled up among all the legal documents that had landed on my bed and dug my nail deeper and deeper into my finger until the blood dripped onto the paper beneath my hands. Until the pain was even remotely as liberating as that from Anthony's razor blades.
The craving for more liberation forced me onto my unsteady legs, made me pace around my devastated room, and suddenly I didn't know anymore if I was nineteen or nine.
Drifting further and further away, I reached for one of the shards of the cup, but none were sharp enough, their edges crumbly.
My phone was gone, so I couldn't even find out what time it was.
The sun was just setting. Even though it had already set for me years ago.
Desperate, I sank to my knees in front of the mirror, surrounded by all the torn evening dresses I had never worn, and let myself be blinded by the last orange rays of the fireball sinking behind the trees of Richter Park until I couldn't take it anymore and had to close my eyes.
Only when the sun was completely gone did I blink.
My gaze immediately fell on the marks on my neck.
First he gave me bracelets, which were now yellow and faded just as quickly as all the scratches on my forearms, and now Papa gave me a necklace.
I laughed with a snort, because even though he hadn't been violent until three weeks ago, the marks he left on my body weren't the most severe traces of his destruction. He had already cut open the little girl in her cradle and let her bleed to death to this day. And the ink didn't stop running.
Unwanted. And yet here.
Two black mascara streaks ran down my cheeks. It looked as if I had cried ink.
A car door slammed somewhere in the distance on the extensive property. I heard a young woman laughing carefree, and it immediately reminded me of Lara.
It seemed that Father's dinner guests, whom I was not allowed to be seen by under any circumstances, had just arrived.
As if possessed, I stared at the reflection of the scarecrow in front of me. My gaze slid to the torn clothes and lingered there a little too long.
My hands wandered of their own accord to the dark blue evening dress I had worn to the gala. It was undamaged.
Eventually, my eyes fell on the slightly open window.
No, Quill. Don't ruin your plan.
Something flared up inside me. Something destructive that I had to stifle before I would twist a noose around my own neck from which there would be no escape.
If I went down there, I would ruin everything for him, for a brief moment. It would be over. Because once my father lost his reputation in front of important people, I would lose everything too.
I had to save that moment for the day when I would expose him in front of all of Maplecrest.
But what if this was the last moment I could ruin him? What if I didn't have enough strength left in me to survive these debates?
The bone cage that surrounded my soul crumbled a little more every day. I had been lost since the moment I had taken my first breath.
The mechanics of my inner construct were designed to ruin my chances. Again and again. So was this one.
Look What You Made Me Do
Taylor Swift
Slowly, I rose to my feet, slipped out of my clothes, and slid into the sparkling midnight-blue velvet dress that mentally catapulted me back to that intimate evening. However, I did not allow memories of an almost with an unreachable man to bring me back to my knees.
I opened the last drawer that my father had overlooked.
His mistake.
With a devilish smile, I pulled out the inkwell, stepped back in front of the mirror, and picked up the only quill pen still left in this room, now broken in the middle.
I dipped it deep into the inkwell, placed the tip of the quill pen against the skin beneath my tear ducts, and applied a drop of ink, which immediately left a trail on my face, ran down my neck, split at my throat, and disappeared into my décolleté in the form of two rivulets.
I did the same on the other side, watching the drop roll over my collarbone.
There, in the mirror in front of me, stood the damaged product of a world in which only those who could adapt perfectly were allowed to take a deep breath. And even they lost what they were meant to be in the process.
Those who did not die early were buried alive.
This world was a hopeless place. And it was only a matter of time before Peter Pan managed to lure me to Neverland. Wonderland. My home.
That evening, life gave me a chance to finally put behind me what was long overdue. And before I tortured myself any further, I should seize this opportunity.
Resolutely, I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, opened it fully, and peered out.
Night -time Forest Wind and Wildlife Ambience
Natural Sound Makers, Nature Recordings, Natural Sample Makers
Cold evening air immediately crept into my hair, making me shiver as I looked down into the dark depths, onto the dimly lit gravel path.
Light flooded through the large windows of the ground floor.
Down there was the dining room.
All I had to do was climb down the rain gutter, but I had never done that in the dark from the third floor before. On top of that, I was wearing this dress, which had already hindered me during my last attempt to escape from the library.
I had underestimated how high up the third floor was.
How many times had I sat here and wondered if this was the quickest way to end it all?
Yet I had never dared to actually jump. My fear of heights always got in the way.
Besides, I was sure that my father would make my body disappear, that no one would ever know I had ever existed.
And I would never give him that triumph.
I knelt down, grabbed the frame with sweaty hands, carefully stretched out one leg – grateful for my elegant black leather boots – and actually managed to get outside.
The wind immediately tugged at me. Stones crumbled down the facade beneath my feet.
I gritted my teeth, clutched the rain gutter, and somehow made it down to the second floor, to the next window, using the protruding stone decorations.
My fear of heights made my hands sweat more and more, so that I almost lost my grip on the gutter, but I reached the window frame safely.
Taking a deep breath, I looked down at the hedge below me, then grabbed the gutter again with both hands and fumbled along the wall with my foot until I found some decorations.
But as soon as I let my second foot wander into the depths, the first one slipped off the protrusion and I gasped, clinging to the gutter.
In vain.
My hands were too slippery, so I slid down a few inches until I released my hands from the gutter with burning pain and fell into the depths, my arms flailing.
I want you to build a city for me,
the man said to the boy, handing him a sheet of paper.
And so the boy folded houses and towers
like no one had ever seen before.
What animals are there in this city?
the boy asked the man, and the man replied
that there were birds as black as ink.
So the boy began to fold paper birds.
And he never stopped.
– Leaking Batteries Diary