I've never been good at escaping into my own mind, at finding any sort of distance from the things that torment me.  But I tried.  I tried to reach for some kind of solace somewhere in my being. 

And found none. 

For the first bit, I held onto a tiny grain of hope—maybe it wouldn't go that far.

Maybe he wouldn't take it that next step.  Or the next.  Or the next. 

And, most wretched and unfair of all—perhaps Dante will come bursting through the door at any moment—somehow he'll sense what's happening to me—that his angel is being damaged beyond all repair. 

Somehow he'll rescue me. 

By the first half hour, my eyes still glued to that clock, I gave up all hope of that.

I'm not sure why the words came to my brain then, but they did.  Gram had once told me that God answers all prayers. 

I worshipped Gram, but I had not agreed.  In fact, I was skeptical of God in general. 

But just then, I was desperate enough to try.  I prayed.  With an anguished heart, I prayed.   

Maybe God does answer all prayers, I really can't say, but if he does, sometimes the answer is no, I won't help you out of this. 

And so it was.  No one helped me.  No one stopped it.  No force of nature lessened the horror or the pain of it.  No act of God cut it short.  It went on until Harris was finished, and I'd lost what little faith I had that there could be some benevolent force watching over me.

And all throughout, I wouldn't look at him, though he wanted me to.  Ordered me to. 

He started slapping me when I refused, then pinching me, twisting my flesh, biting me hard.

He changed tactics and pleaded for me to look at him.  I still wouldn't do it. 

He started punching me in the stomach.

I still wouldn't look at him, and I swore I wouldn't cry for him either, but tears had been seeping steadily down my face since he'd first begun.

Still, I wouldn't sob for him, and I wouldn't beg him either. 

He started screaming in my face.  "Look at me.  Look at me."  Over and over.

No matter what he did, no matter how angry it made him, I would not look at him.  I kept my eyes on that clock.   

I didn't fear punishment.  What was worse than what he was already doing? 

He could beat me.  He could kill me.  Somewhere around hour number two, in fact, I wanted him to. 

At hour three, I begged him to. 

"Don't be silly," he panted into my ear, back on top of me again.  "I'm nowhere near finished with you.  Trust me, you'll learn to like this." 

I stopped begging and tried to think of something, anything else, but I quickly stopped.  I didn't want to taint any of my good memories with this, and the nightmare I was trapped in now was bad enough without adding to it. 

When he was done with me, for some reason I cannot fathom, and I go back to it often, he untied me.

I tried to get my bruised, overused body to sit up, had started to, but he quickly joined me in bed, yanking me to him, wrapping his limbs around me so tightly that I couldn't move.

"Shh, go to sleep, dear girl," he told me, and promptly passed out.

As soon as his body went limp, I slipped from the bed. 

I tried to move quietly from the room, but I was trembling so powerfully that I was sure the sound of it would wake him up with every limping step I took. 

I saw his gun, but it was close by the bed, close to him, and I couldn't make myself move toward him.  I struggled for a minute, trying to, but I could not do it.  I could only make myself move away from him.   

Once I was out of the room, my body just started to work of its own accord.  It moved fast, fluidly, ignoring all of my soreness, ignoring the fact that my spirit felt broken, and I still wanted to die.

I went mindlessly to my grandma's room. 

Feeling completely blank, I took the gun from her nightstand, checked the clip, and glided quietly back to my room.

He'd shifted in his sleep, turned so his back was to the bedroom door. 

I didn't linger.  I didn't stare at his sleeping form.  I did not contemplate. 

I don't remember making a decision.  I just remember clearing the door, raising the gun, aiming it, and emptying the entire clip into his back.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other." 

~Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't know if I fainted, dozed, or blacked out, but what brought me back was a consistent, warm drip, drip, drip of fluid onto my chest. 

I was huddled outside of my old bedroom.  I'd shut myself out.

I didn't look down at my body.  I was numb in a way, but still coherent enough to know that I wasn't ready to see the damage.  Wasn't ready to face it. 

My jaw was slack, and so my first assumption was that I'd been drooling on myself, but as the drip, drip, drip continued, I realized there was too much of it, whatever it was, for that.

Had I thrown up on myself? I wondered.  It seemed as likely as anything.  My mouth tasted foul enough for it, acid burning in my throat.

I kept my eyes trained straight ahead, at the stained yellow wall in front of me as I took a shaking hand and wiped my chin.  I held it up all the way to eye level, not lowering my gaze even an inch to see what it was. 

Red.  So much red, but as I saw it I was not completely surprised.  I felt at my lips, and to this day I wonder, I honestly have no recollection, which one of us had ravaged them, bit them bloody, that monster in his depravity, or me, in my anguish?