DEATH DIDN’T DRAW ME INTO ITS EMBRACE that night, although I truly believed that it had. I’d rather have been dead than have to be the fucking victim again. I'd rather have been dead than hold the knowledge of what happened, to have the power to see those images whenever my thoughts felt like wondering beyond the walls I’d built. All the reminders of the blows to my face and body would come with them, the revisiting of the horrific intrusion inside of me.
It was too much to ever think that I could be happy.
I wasn’t the happy ending type, after all. I was the fucked-up kid that fucked-up shit happened to. Why had I ever thought I deserved more?
I didn’t know how long I’d lain there, didn’t know if it was day or night. I didn’t open my eyes for hours. I kept them shut and wished for a quick death. I thought if I concentrated hard enough I could will myself into oblivion. People like me were only meant to feel pain and suffering, I opened my eyes —or, I should say, I opened my eye.
And pain I felt.
I was in my room. Jake’s room. Our room. That was all I could make out before having to shut out the harsh rays of daylight. My mouth was dry and cracked, and seemed glued shut. One of my nostrils was clogged. I couldn’t catch my breath. I used my swollen purple fingers to pick the dried blood and scabbing from my lips so I could open my mouth to take a deep breath. It felt like glass shattering inside me.
How did I get back here?
Did someone save me?
No, someone hadn’t saved me. Someone moved me.
He moved me.
A wave of nausea came over me. Unable to stand and run to the bathroom, I tried to wretch onto the floor beside the bed, in the process unclogging a dried blood-filled nostril, sending chunks of black and streams of fresh red into the bile on the side of the mattress.
So much for puking on the floor.
Exhausted from what couldn't have been more than a few minutes of consciousness, I drifted back off to sleep lying upon the mess I just created.
The next time I awoke, it was night, and I needed to use the bathroom. My legs wouldn’t cooperate. The second I tried to stand, I started to go down again. I tried to catch myself on the nightstand, but my arms weren’t strong enough. I fell chest-first onto the floor. A tingling sensation in my spine erupted into a tearing sensation from my neck to my ass. There was no way I was going to be able to walk the twenty feet or so to the bathroom.
So, I crawled.
With only the support of my forearms, I slowly dragged my own meat-bag of a limp body across the cold ceramic tile floor inch by agonizing inch. I left a bloody dirt trail from my bed to the bathroom. I don’t know how long it took. It seemed like days, years, an eternity. In another turn of universal cruelty, once I finally got there, I discovered that the bathroom door was shut. I summoned every inch of determination I still had to reach a shaky, nearly-useless arm up to the door handle. I leaned on it, forcing the door open and falling to the bathroom floor like a broken rag doll.
I needed to see what he’d done, to know what I was dealing with.
I gathered my strength and slowly pushed myself to my knees. In one huff, I launched myself up onto my feet, grabbing the countertop to regain my balance and hold myself up. I had to lean into the counter so far my chest was almost in the sink. I used my elbow to nudge the light on.
What I saw in the mirror, the girl staring back at me, wasn’t me at all.
My eyes were both as black as night, with smudges of purple and yellow. My usually-pale skin was unrecognizable under the red stains of blood. Blue and yellow bruising extended all the way down my cheeks along my jaw. My copper hair was slicked back and caked with dark crimson chunks. I ran my fingers over my lips, flinching at my own touch. The tank top I wore was smeared with dirt and vomit. I was naked from the waist down. Streams of red ran along the inside of my legs, like thick veins that spilled over onto my feet. I opened my mouth as much as I could in order to press a finger inside to feel for my teeth. As far as I could tell, they were all there.
I need Jake.
When I was eight years old, my mother’s drug dealer beat her to within an inch of her life. She looked very much like how I looked now, except she was unconscious and in a hospital bed for over two weeks. When she was released, I was so happy to finally have her home. To have her all to myself, sober for once. That had to be her rock bottom. Almost dying had to be reason for quitting and even more of a reason to start being a real mom to me. I convinced myself it was going to be a new start for all of us.