Page 27 of Shattered In Darkness

I snort two lines off the cold countertop. Coke isn’t my favorite, but tonight it’s what I have. It makes my nose ache and my skull light. The relief is a lie. But I take it.

My reflection glances back, unfamiliar and pitiful. The girl who had hope, who thought she could outsmart Marcus, who believed love was a real thing you could carve a life from.

What would my mother say?

She would look at me with those soft, blue eyes and shake her head. I raised you better than this. I didn’t raise you to be weak, or to let yourself rot from the inside out. I didn’t raise you for this.

But she left. and Marcus stepped into the space she left behind, filled it with his rules and his cruelty and his hands. I became whatever he needed me to be. I performed like a child’s doll: smile, pose, say the right thing, stay quiet when the darkness comes seeping in.

He doesn’t hit me every night. Only when I disappoint him. Only when I’m careless or too loud, when I forget the script. When I seem like I might leave. Then he’s all hands and rage. Then he’s shaking, not me, his control splintered, voice low. Then love and hate are the same thing.

But sometimes he’s gentle. Sometimes he picks me up off the floor and tells me I’m precious, his good girl, his sweet gem. Sometimes he pets my hair or presses a cold cloth against the wounds and kisses my forehead and says he’s sorry, he didn’t mean it, I just made him so angry, and that I have to learn.

The whiplash is worse than the blows.

I close my eyes and think of Brody. For a moment, I pretend I’m seventeen again, ducking out my window and across the glittering grass, bare feet cold on the dew. Brody waits for me under the fire escape, hood pulled low, eyes burning with desire. He never made me beg, never made me perform. When he touched me, it was safe. No, not safe, but real. Like there was no lie between us. Like I was a person, not a doll.

I ache for that again. For that feeling of belonging to someone, even if it is fucked up and secret and doomed from the start.

Now, I’m a shell. A ghost. A body with nothing inside except the echo of someone’s daughter, someone’s lover, someone’s shame.

The drugs kick in; an hour late, but they do. My limbs float, I don’t feel anything but a dull, cotton-wrapped numbness. It’s almost peaceful. I could sleep forever in this state. Marcus is in his office downstairs, making calls. He’s been soft since he hurt me but I know what comes next. He’ll want me quiet and sweet, curled up next to him like a lapdog. He’ll want me to play along, to cradle his ego, to be grateful for the money and the house and the trips.

And I will. Because it’s easier than the alternative.

But inside, I am screaming. Inside, I am burning the whole house down a hundred times a day. This is the only power I have left: I can hate him. I can hate him until it wipes out everything else. I can hate him so much that it’s the only thing about me that’s real.

I think about my mother again. She’d weep if she saw me. She’d think it was her fault, but it isn’t. It’s mine. I never learned to be strong. I never learned how to get out, I just learned how to disappear, inch by inch, until there was nothing left but pretty skin, empty blue eyes, and obedience.

Standing too quickly, the room tilts. The floor is too far away, the ceiling too close. I steady myself at the dresser and breathe through the tremor. Marcus’s voice floats from downstairs. He calls my name, gentle, almost loving. Goosebumps cover my flesh.

My pulse thunders in my ears, from panic or the coke, it doesn’t matter. I go downstairs, one step at a time. I don’t limp, never limp, he hates that. I hold my head high, even though it feels like it’s hanging by a thread.

Marcus waits in his leather chair, relaxed, legs crossed. He smiles at me, his eyes hungry, but not the way Brody’s used to be. There’s no warmth in him.

He pats his lap. “Come here, sweetheart.”

I do.

I always do.

Inside, I rot a little more.

I fold myself onto him, careful not to wince when his hand slides under my hair and cups the back of my neck. His fingers are cold and gentle as he strokes my hair like I’m a pet.

He kisses my temple. “There’s my good girl.” My stomach turns over. I smile anyway. “You know I love you?”

“Of course,” I say, wondering if my voice sounds alive, or if it slipped away somewhere upstairs.

His hand drifts to my hip and squeezes. He says I shouldn’t make him angry, that I know how to keep him happy. He says he doesn’t want to hurt me, but sometimes I leave him no choice.

He says all the lines.

I think about screaming until I tear my throat open.

Be perfect. Be obedient. Be invisible.

I can do that. I will do that. This is who I am now. This is what Marcus made me. The pain never really leaves, I don’t think it ever will. But at least for a while, I can pretend. I can float in this numb haze and let the world spin without me. I can watch myself from far away, like a stranger or like a ghost. A caged bird who’s long since chewed her own wings down to the bone.