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So when my uncle was charging at me, everything in me went cold, froze.
I should have run, should have gotten away, should have gone to Mikhail and asked if he could let me stay with him for a while because my uncle wanted to hurt me.
Because even as my soles stayed rooted on the floor, frozen with fear, I knew he was going to hurt me.
And then he did.
He was just in arms-reach when he pulled back, cocked his arm, and punched me, full-force across the jaw.
Aside from a scuffle with a spoiled, foul-mouthed boy who lived next door to me when we were both six, I had never been hit before.
I think shock overtook me for a long moment before the pain could even penetrate.
Because I was already crumpled on the ground before I could feel the point of impact, the pain ricocheting outward from there.
Again, I should have scrambled up to my feet and run, crawled backward, gotten out of his reach. But all I could do was cradle my hand to my jaw, feel the tears pool up and trickle down.
Then his body curled over mine.
"You stupid bitch. You have no idea what you have done!" His voice was a roar, as loud as the blood rushing through my ears a second before I felt his hand curl into my hair, yanking upward, sending shooting sparks of pain across my scalp as he dragged me up to my knees, then my feet.
"I should kill you for this," he added.
The fear was coursing through every inch of me, making goosebumps rise on my skin even as I broke into a sweat, made bile rise up my throat as my belly contracted, made my entire body start to shake.
Because I recognized a few things in that moment.
My uncle was not who I thought he was.
He was enraged.
He was absolutely capable of killing me.
And no one, no one would step in to save me.
Not even my sweet, maternal Ani.
Because these people, they likely had known for quite some time what I had just figured out in that moment. They knew that trying to step in to save me might cost us both our lives.
"You stupid fucking bitch," he raged, yanking viciously on my hair before whipping me to the side by it, making my face collide with the edge of a cabinet, my vision going black for a long second.
"Armen, what are you doing?" my aunt's voice asked, curious, but not shocked by her husband's behavior.
"This bitch..." he stared, releasing my hair.
I wasn't sure what he said then, couldn't hear anything over the pounding of my heart in my ears as my fight-or-flight instinct finally kicked in, as primal self-preservation had me turning and running away, intent to get to the front door, to get outside, get somewhere that my screams would bring someone who could save me.
I made it to the front door.
My hand was around the knob.
And then the world just exploded.
I was aware of the noise of it, the ear-splitting roar.
And then, the pressure.
It picked me up off my feet, threw me forward into the door.
Then, well, everything went black.
I wasn't aware how blissful that blackness was until I felt it pulled backward some time later, until consciousness came back to me. And pain assaulted every single nerve ending all at once, making a cry rip from somewhere deep inside, a place that had no concern for anything but speaking out the agony.
I couldn't even tell the pains apart at first.
It all mingled together into one, all-consuming searing, crushing, crippling sensation.
But as I lay there, trapped, alone, more scared than I had ever been in my life, the pains started to become distinct.
My leg.
My leg was the worst.
Crushing pain mingled with piecing and throbbing.
My head was next, and the warm, sticky sensation trickling down my neck let me know that I was bleeding.
Then there was my arm.
And despite the fact that it wasn't pinned like my legs were, I couldn't seem to make it move.
All around me was smoke and dust and disaster.
Disaster.
The place that had housed me since I came to Armenia was rubble all around me, just suggestions of what it had once been.
Something had exploded.
The word didn't even seem to want to penetrate through my brain, seeming so foreign, so unrealistic.
But there was no denying it was what had happened.
Even as the thoughts formed, I could hear the sirens, their shrill screams making my shoulders shrug upward toward my ears like I could somehow stop the noise from piercing through my skull as they got closer and closer.
I heard voices next, yelling in Armenian that my brain didn't seem capable of translating at the moment, too overcome with shock and pain to concentrate on the task.
It was a long, agonizing moment before I remembered that it didn't matter what language I yelled in. They just needed to hear me. They just needed to find me. Get me some place that could give me something for the pain.
