Page 4 of Shattered In Darkness

Pain explodes up my thighs, through my stomach. I gulp air, wet, burning in my lungs. My own tears are bitter.

He growls above me. Nothing human, just a hungry wolf that’s dead inside. “This is what pretty girls get. This is what you were made for, Lola.”

He ruts into me, hips slamming hard, and making my head thunk the headboard. I’m pinned. He’s everywhere. His weight, his sweat, his grunts in my ear. Not a father, not a man. Just a black hole trying to find out if I can be emptied too.

I am sucked into his darkness.

He grinds his fist into my cheek, mashing it to the side until my mouth squishes open. Tears streak into my hair. I want my mother. But nobody’s coming. There’s just this.

His fingers wrap my throat, squeezing until spots explode in my vision. He spits in my ear, “Obedient. Just like I taught you.”

I stop fighting. The shaking turns into freezing. My body goes limp, boneless. I want to disappear. In my head, Brody is here. Brody is the arms holding me. His eyes, blue-gray and soft and wild. My love. My only real thing.

That’s not real. That’s not now.

Now he is the monster crushing me into the mattress, the stink of whiskey and aftershave. He groans like an animal, part broken, part hungry. “Fucking perfect cunt,” he breathes, voice thick with pride and greed, moving inside me hard, harder.

The sound of skin echoes, slap, slap, slap. My thighs are burning. My cunt is aches. All of me aches in a way that doesn’t belong to earth.

He bends down and licks the tears off my cheek as he calls me darling, telling me I’m special. Telling me this is what I was made for. Sometimes his words fall apart, nothing but rough groans and filthy noises in my ear.

This is what boys grow up to be. Monsters who take whatever they want and call it love.

He jerks my head back, forcing my mouth open. “You like it, don’t you?” He says it, but he doesn’t care about the answer. “You need to be owned. Just like your mother.”

He fucks me until I can’t feel my hips, until my ribs and wrists buzz with numbness, and I’m dizzy and sick. The violence never softens. He wants me blank, ruined. Wants me empty, just like him.

I stare at the ceiling and count cracks. I float so high above the pain, it barely registers as real. My body is below, and the monster is pounding away at it, and I’m grateful I’m not there. When he finally finishes, he shudders, burying deep inside me and still crushing my wrists like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go.

In this moment, I’m grateful for the knowledge that he got a vasectomy in the past. That’s what he told my mother when she mentioned wanting more children.

Seconds tick by, the only sound is his breath, harsh and ragged, fogging up my hair, my neck, the shell of my ear. He stays there, heavy, pinning me to the mattress. My arms have gone numb above my head; I don’t bother to move them. My gaze drifts across the ceiling, tracing the water stains, the cracks, the place where I used to stick glow-in-the-dark stars, back when I still believed in wishes.

Marcus exhales. A long, satisfied sound, like he’s just finished a meal. He pets my hair, gentler now. I hate that I flinch. I hate that he notices and smiles, that little private curl of his mouth. His thumb brushes the corner of my eye, collecting a tear.

“See?” he murmurs, all cooing poison, “you’re safe now. You’ll always be safe with me. You don’t have to think so hard anymore. You just have to listen. Be my good girl, and I’ll never let anyone hurt you. Not ever again.”

He pulls out. I feel the ache, the mess he leaves behind. He straightens his shirt, zips up, not looking at me, not even pretending to see the body he just used. He wipes his hands on the blanket, on my skin.

I lie there, dress bunched at my waist, legs splayed, wrists throbbing. My breath rattles and I want to curl up and disappear, but all I can do is stare at the ceiling and wait for the world to end.

He stands over me, looming, shadow blotting out the lamplight. “I know it hurts now, Lola, but you’ll thank me someday. You’ll see how lucky you are. I chose you. Not her. Not anyone else. You’re all I need.”

He leaves me there, tangled in sheets, ruined. I listen to his footsteps fading down the hall, the creak of the door closing, the lock sliding.

Silence again. Even quieter than before.

I pull my dress down and cover my legs, but it doesn’t matter. I am split open, emptied out, nothing left but a hollow ache where my heart used to be. I curl into a ball, fists pressed to my chest and count each ragged breath. When the crying starts, I press my face into the pillow and scream until my throat is hoarse, until there are no more sounds left.Until I am nothing but a bruise in the dark.

This is what’s left. This is what it means to be loved, to be chosen, to be owned.

I don’t sleep. I just wait for morning, for Marcus’s hand on my door, for the world to start again. This is the new silence, the one that eats you alive. And I let it.

You left me here, momma. You left me with this monster.

I miss you.

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