Page 91 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

No.

I think the hardest stories to write are the ones stitched together from memory.

The ones that ask you to pry open wounds you spent years teaching yourself to survive. To peel away scar tissue until it bleeds all over the page again. To relive moments, you would've buried forever if your heart had given you the choice.

People call that authenticity. I call it reopening a grave. Because some memories don't stay in the past. They climb out, sit across from you, and watch while you write them down.

Words can describe what happened.

They rarely survive what it feels like.

My chest was heaving. The kitchen was entirely too quiet, the air suddenly freezing against the bare skin of my ankles. Through the open window, the sound reached me a soft, rhythmic prittle-prattle as the sky finally cracked, the rain beginning to drop in heavy, fat beads against the tin roof of the porch.

I stood up so fast the chair tipped backward, hitting the floorboards with a loud, hollow bang. My mind was loud. It was screaming with the echoes of Bill's agony, with the wet crunch of the bones, with the horrific, suffocating weight of the dark room I had just built on the page.

I needed it out. I needed to wash the image from my brain.

I tore the screen door open and ran out into the yard.

The rain hit me like a physical slap, cold and sharp, immediately soaking through the thin fabric of my leggings and the heavy wool of Elias's jersey. I didn't care. I threw my arms out, my boots slipping in the dark, sour mountain mud as I began to spin. Trying to spin away the memories, my head tilted back, letting the freezing water pelt my eyelids, my mouth open as I tried to swallow the sky, trying to drown out the noise in my head. I tried to scream out loud, ragged sounds that felt like it was tearing my throat open. I wanted to forget the manuscript. I wanted to forget the valley. I wanted to be clean.

Then, my boot hit a slick root.

The world tilted. I went down hard, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs as my knees and palms slammed into the freezing mud. The cold water rushed over my skin, and suddenly, the laughter died in my chest, replaced by a sudden, terrifying shift in the air.

The rain didn't smell like pine anymore.

It smelled like damp carpet. It smelled like the mouldy basement of that house, the one with the rusted oil tank in the corner and the heavy wooden door that locked from the outside.

My breath hitched, turning into a sharp, choking sob as the memory slammed into me, pulling me under the mud, deep into the dark where memory doesn't ask permission.

I was ten. The floorboards above my head were creaking, a heavy, rhythmic thudding that meant he was coming down the stairs. The air was thick with the scent of cheap aftershave and the bitter, stale tang of cigarette smoke soaked into the flannel.

I tense at the sound of the creaky floorboards just off the stairway not far from my door, and I fist my t shirt tighter as my heart begins to race, knowing that what is about to happen, I can’t stop, that a little bit more of my soul is about to die.

"Be a good girl, Seraphina," the voice rumbled in the dark, close enough to feel the heat of his breath against my ear. "Good girls don't make a sound. If you scream, the social worker won't ever come back for you."

The door to the room slowly opens, creaking like nails going down a blackboard, going right through me as my tears fall.

The door shuts, the soft thud sounding like a gunshot, knowing what is about to happen and what happens every night…

I hear the rustling of clothes before the tell-tale sign of a condom wrapper crinkles, and I try to swallow my sobs. The weight of him was suffocating, a heavy, brutal force that pinned my small shoulders into the damp concrete of the floor. I screamed. I screamed into the dirty wool of the blanket until my throat bled, the agony sharp and tearing as his large, calloused hands left deep, purple bruises along my collarbone, turning my skin into a canvas of violation.

Without thinking about me or my safety, like every night, he thrusts forward hard, tearing through my walls and my tears fall as my body protests, trying to expel him, and he groans, “Fuck, Seraphina. Such a good girl.”

The urge to vomit climbs higher and higher,nothing but pain fills me as I try to swallow my sobs.

That said, he pulls out, causing me to bite my bottom lip again to stop the painful cry that I want to let out, and he stands. I don’t move, even when I hear the rustling of his clothes and the dark chuckle, knowing he’s most likely noticed the blood over his dick, the blood that always comes after he’s used me.

I even stay still as he kisses my head and whispers, “Be good, Seraphina.” then walks out, the sound of the door shutting, hitting my ears like a gunshot once again, while the creaking of the floorboards begins to disappear.

I allow myself to move only when I stop hearing the creaking of the floorboards above me.

The shame was a physical heat, a sickening, foul taste in the back of my mouth that made me want to rip the tongue out of my own neck. I was a child. I was supposed to be safe. Why couldn't he just keep his freaking hands to himself?

I dug my fingernails into the mud of the yard now, my body curling into a tight, shivering ball on the ground, the rain washing the tears into the earth. I was shouting into the wet grass, raw, wordless noises of pure anger and terror, a breaking point so many years in the making. I was trapped in the dirt, the grief and the memory holding me down like iron straps.

Then... a touch.