When I wake, the first thing I feel is his hand. My hair is balled up in it as he smashes my face into my pillow and mattress. His weight feels immense, or perhaps his strength is. Regardless, I can’t move my head. The pressure is painful, my neck aches, and my nose is pressed painfully flat. I flail uselessly, trying to twist my body around despite the pain as panic grants me strength far beyond my norm. It doesn’t matter though. He mounts me, legs to each side to prohibit my movement. He feels massive over me. The adrenaline does nothing to protect me. It just allows me enough strength to hurt myself twisting under him, to tire me, not save me.
Then I hear that sound and fight harder, inadvertently smashing my own fingers on the headboard as I grab it to try to pull myself free. The violence of a zipper is a terrible thing. That sound alone deflowers me and robs me of my innocence and maidenhood. I know I’m about to be broken and ruined as I feel the cool air on my butt when he hikes up my gown and exposes me. I feel his eyes long before I feel his thumb or finger poke at my ass. My tears and screams do nothing but excite him. The pillow instantly absorbs the salty moisture pouring from me and the drool from my mouth. Then he moves, shifting, and I feel so god damned tired and weak. It’s been a minute at most, maybe less. An eternity that will never, ever, leave my mind.
My legs part under his power and size as he forces them apart, defiling me. When the cool air hits my vagina, I scream again. It’s all I have left, my voice, as everything else falters. And the pillow takes even that away from me. My hands tear at the wood but the only thing that gives is my fingernails and skin, beat and bruising as I pull and push to no effect. And then it happens, the whisper in my ear.
“Just relax”
I know the voice, drunk and slurring, my mom’s new boyfriend. The one who accidentally walks in on me changing. The one who walks in on me getting out of the shower. The one whose hugs linger too long. The one who slaps me for talking back to him. His fingers, wet, slimy with spit, touch me and I want to die. Not him. I don’t know why, I should be wishing him to fall over dead but instead it’s me that I wish to die. But I don’t. Instead, I struggle harder to breathe as he shoves my face down harder, my nose feeling like it should buckle, and then, an explosion of pain that tears through me.
He ruins and deflowers me as his urgent thrusting begins. The pain overwhelms me and I’m so fucking tired. I feel myself go numb and simply go away. Not from the pain, but perhaps the shock. I’m there, being rutted in, but I’m not there. I’m in a white space and some other girl is under my mom’s fat boyfriend. Some other girl is having the worst night of her life. Some other girl doesn’t realize this is simply the first night of many. Not me. I’ve gone away.
Later, he does too, leaving me bleeding, sore, angry, numb, tired, furious, and empty. Empty most of all. Eventually, I get up and wash as the shower burns my skin pink. The showerhead scalds my vagina and when mom asks why I’m washing the laundry I say nothing. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I sure as hell don’t.
The years go by and I drop out of college and just leave. I can’t take it anymore. His leers, his touches, and my mom’s blindness to reality. I leave and hitchhike. I pay along the way with a mix of stolen cash and my body. A few are soft with me but most aren’t. They see a whore and since I offer my body to them, they aren’t wrong. I learn to avoid the ones who look at me like he did. Even if I offer, that type doesn’t accept. They want to take. A couple more do. I don’t fight and I still get hurt. I do fight and I get hurt again. I learn how, as I cross the country, who to avoid.
Most of the time.
I learn things along the way. Molly is awesome. It makes everything awesome. If I had unlimited access to it, I’d happily fry my brain on it to feel good. I learn not to trust anyone. I learn men are bad. I learn women are worse. I don’t trust men enough for any of them to betray me. But from other women running away or offering me a couch to sleep on, I learn I am nothing to them. No sisterhood will protect me. I didn’t learn that from mom. Maybe I’m stupid.
Days turn into weeks which turn into months. I start over and keep my head down. A year comes and goes and I hide from everything but the emptiness. It followed me across the country and it follows me now. The closest friend I have.
Eventually, I date again. Empty. I get drunk one night and fuck some guys I meet at a bar. Unlike me, they didn’t drop out of college. I feel a flicker that returns to emptiness after I get home. He’s always there for me, my emptiness.
Then one night I see that familiar look. A man old enough to be my father, I assume, since I never met him. Twice my age at least and maybe more. Mean eyes that see my body but don’t see me. I’m tired of being empty. So I pretend to be drunker than I am. Ditzy, stupid, and alone. So fucking alone; I don’t have to pretend that part. He takes the bait of the drunken slut and offers to bring me home. I don’t say anything when he doesn’t follow my directions. He either believes my act or simply doesn’t care. Ultimately it doesn’t matter to me.
When I protest when we pull into his driveway, a shithole on the far edge of town, he grabs my hair and balls it up in his fist as he shoves my face against the glass.
“Just shut the fuck up and relax,” he tells me. I’m wet. And I’m not empty. Before long, my body isn’t empty either. His weight on top of me, using me, pounding into me. I’m angry and in pain as he smashes into me. I tell him to shove my face into his pillow and he complies, using me harder. I scream so hard I get dizzy as he rapes me. It’s rape because I beg him to stop when he moves to my ass. If anyone lives within a mile of him, they would hear me scream, but I’m alone. But I’m not empty.
The next morning I limp out of his house and get in the Uber I called. Bruises cover my body as I shamefully hide them from the driver. I tell him where I live as he drives me to my home. I cry as I hold the card in my hand, the card he gave me as I walked out. It simply reads Daddy and has his phone number. I swear to myself I will never do anything like that again.
But the empty, it comes and calls, and I pick up the phone and do the same.
I’ve run away across the county and somehow, I’ve come back home.
