Keep calm, Keeley, keep calm.
“You mean when you framed me because I wouldn’t put up with your piece of shit ass anymore.”
I look at him through my good eye, I’m getting to him, the look on his face is furious. I smile. “You’re nothing but a disgusting sicko who gets off on praying on women,” I lean forward, feeling braver than I probably should. “You can go fuck yourself if you think-”
My ears ring as he hits me full force in the side of my head again. “This is how you wanna play it Keeley? Don’t test me!”
I don’t know what happens next because my head swirls with pain and lolls forward as the room fades to black.
I first saw what was going on when I was six years old.
“Kirsten, where are you?” He shouts.
Mom picks me up, puts me in her closet, and whispers, “We’re gonna play a little game of hide and seek. I’ll count to one hundred and no matter what you hear, you don’t come out until I come find you, okay, sweet girl?”
She closes the concertina doors but I can still partially see out of them. I watch as my Uncle Merl walks into her bedroom. I cower back, I’ve never liked him.
“Where’s the brat?”
He looks left, then right, and mom stands glued to the spot as he walks over to her.
“She’s over at Arlene’s playing with Hunter,” she grinds out and tenses as he runs a finger down her cheek. “But Daryl will be back any minute now.”
He grabs her hair and drags her to the bed, her pleading with him to stop the whole time, but he ignores her.
“Better make this quick then.”
He pushes her over the end of the bed and lifts up her skirt, pulling down his light denim jeans at the same time. He starts thrusting his hips into her and I hear her muffled cries as he keeps her head pushed into the bedsheets.
As a little girl, I had no idea what was going on, but it soon clicked as I got older.
I’m woken by icy cold water being thrown over me and I suck in a breath, steeling myself for the second bout of water, only it doesn’t come. Instead, I hear a loud clanging noise and I try to clutch my head, it feels like someone has it in a vice, but I still can’t move my hands properly.
I try to open my eyes, my left I can hardly see through and my right is a little blurry so I don’t see when he grabs me, until it’s already happening. He pulls me by my bound ankles and my stomach lurches at the dizziness the movement brings on. He drags me, scraping my back against the dirty floor, into a smaller room. My vision in my right eye starts to clear up and I see it’s got a small dirty mattress in one corner and a bucket in the other.
I start to thrash no matter how much it hurts me, I’m not being subjected to this. “Have you not learnt by now, Keeley? You’re mine! Now be a good girl and I’ll let you have your hands back.”
I don’t process his words as I manage to slip from his grasp and kick my legs up into his face as hard as my waning energy will let me. He stumbles back, cursing me and I try to drag myself along the floor to make it out the door before he gains his balance, but he grabs me by my hair and pulls me back into him before I’ve even made it over the threshold.
I scream as he pushes me down onto the damp, grimey mattress, and I’m scared at what he’s got planned for me.
When I get the courage to open my right eye again, he’s on all fours above me, deathly still, and I think this scares me more than his fits of rage. I flinch when he brings up his arm to wipe the blood dripping from his nose, he looks down at his arm after and laughs. He actually laughs.
“You’ve grown extra feisty. I think I like it, we’ll have so much more fun.” My eyes shut tight and my skin breaks out in goosebumps as he cups my face and traces his thumb over one of the cuts on my cheek, not bothering to be gentle. “I’m going to get off you now and you’re going to lie here until I come back, can you do that?”
I give him a quick nod and he gets up and is out of the room quicker than I can sit up.
I hear the lock turn as he leaves and the tears start rolling down my face. I’ve never felt so out of control.
This is it, I think as I look around, the unknown sending me into a blind panic.
He’ll use me as he sees fit and I won’t have any say in it. As that thought passes, I hear heavy footsteps coming toward the room and my breathing picks up as a key turns in the lock again.
His eyes flash as he looks at me. “I thought I told you to stay lying down.”
His voice is strangely calm, he reaches me in two strides and hunkers down in front of me. I can’t see what he’s holding in his hand properly so I look up at him. “My head hurts more lying down.”
I make my voice sickly sweet and his face changes into something unreadable but he doesn’t say anything, he just clicks open the small box in his hands and my heart picks up.