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My arms shake under the added weight of the foreign object and I’m only forty pushups in. I go down and press up with difficulty, my muscles screaming.
“You’ve been distracted. Unfocused. You come to practice tired and not ready to work. I’m starting to think you’re a lost cause.”
It’s not true. Okay, I have been more tired recently because of the time spent at Tristan’s, but when I show up, I show up. It’s a baseless, unfair accusation and he knows it.
But this isn’t about what’s fair.
It’s about power.
It’s about control.
And in this situation, I have neither.
I get through twenty more when I feel a second weight added to my back.
“Your father has okayed me to use some more…hands onmethods if your lack of commitment continued. Those will be in effect until you learn some discipline.”
I whimper loudly, the pain excruciating. Every nerve in my body is screaming for release, begging me to just stop as I push past it once more, giving everything I have.
A third weight, even heavier than the first two, gets added.
I collapse to the ground under it, unable to hold myself up any longer.
I don’t get to stop.
His hand wraps around my ponytail and he yanks it, wrenching my head back. I scream in pain but he forces me to follow. He holds me by the hair as I struggle to lift my body back up.
“You’re not stopping until you’re finished.Keep. Fucking. Going.”
I disassociate, my mind breaking.
I don’t remember finishing the pushups, just like I don’t remember the four exercises that come after, each more agonizingly painful than the next.
All I know is that when he finally walks away without a kind or acknowledging word, he leaves me sprawled on the ground in acute pain.
The ligaments in my arms are throbbing so badly that I can’t bend either elbow. It’s unbearable. Black spots cloud my vision as I roll onto my back, yelping when the emerging bruises make contact with the ground. A faltering breath pains my abused stomach, sore from where he punched my abs as I bench pressed under the guise of “strengthening my core”.
I won’t crawl to the locker room. I won’t let him do that to me.
I need to stand.
I know I can do it.
I’m strong.
I cry out when I attempt to sit up and fall immediately back down. My breath works like I just ran a half-marathon. It feels like large shards of glass are ripping through my entire body when I try again, but this time I get to a sitting position.
Next, I stand, and I’m proud that I’m only slightly limping towards the locker room.My progress is slow, each step costing me.
This was the worst punishment training session yet. They’ve happened in the past, but never this bad. Never with the clear intent to hurt me, to bend the few remaining pieces of my soul that are still intact into submission.
When I’m just outside the door, a hand wraps over my mouth and someone pushes me inside the women’s locker room.
For a moment, I think it’s Tristan.
It’s barely a half-second lapse in judgment before I realize that it’s all wrong.
It’s not the same large hand or wide shoulders pressing against my back. Not the same heat that spreads through my body when he touches me.
