RAGE (13 page)

The next time I woke, I was aware that something wasn’t right. As I lay there, my mind raced to figure out what was wrong. I heard nothing, I saw nothing, and I felt nothing. At first. Of course, I was lying on my right side, facing away from the door, so I couldn’t trust my senses completely. Plus, I was coming fresh out of a nightmare. I wasn’t sure whether I had brought the feeling with me to the real world or if the feeling was genuine.

As painful as it was for me, I rolled over onto my back. That’s when I saw him.

Travis stood at the side of my bed, shirtless. He wobbled on his feet, a sure sign of being drunk. Then the smell hit me and confirmed it. Although, at this point, I never needed physical proof that he was drunk. He was always drunk.

I trembled. My stomach knotted. My throat formed a lump so big it became difficult to breathe. My palms grew damp. And out of fear, my bladder threatened to release itself again. Maybe I shouldn’t have drunk so much soda at the diner.

No. Maybe this butthole shouldn’t be coming into my room at night to do unspeakable things to me. I can drink all the soda I want. It shouldn’t matter.

But when he undone his pants and told me to roll over, it mattered.

I didn’t move. My heart pounded, threatening to beat its way out of my chest. I’d never been defiant before like this, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. But the two most horrific things that he could ever do to me he’d already done, and had been doing them for years, so really, what did I have to lose?

He stood there, staring at me.

I lay there, staring back at him.

“Roll over, damn it.”

I slowly shook my head side to side, positive that I was going to throw up, half-wishing that I would. Maybe if I puked, he’d leave me alone.

He slid the belt out of the belt loops on his jeans, and folded it in half, his favorite hitting position.

“Roll over,” he said, saying each word slowly and deliberately.

I rolled my head from side to side, just as slowly and deliberately as he had spoken.

“You little son of a bitch,” he yelled. He raised the arm holding the belt high above his head, and brought it down with all his strength. It caught me across the belly, creating instant hot pain from one side to the other. My knees jerked up toward my midsection as a reflex, and my hands covered my belly to protect it.

As much as I hated it, a cry erupted from me that was so sudden, I couldn’t have held it back if I’d tried. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked quickly to push them away. I wouldn’t let him see me cry if I could help it.

“Roll over,” he said, raising the belt again.

And again I shook my head no.

When he brought the belt down this time, it hit my arm. The buckle connected solidly with the bone, sending flames from my elbow to my shoulder. This time, I’d been expecting the cry to seep out of me, and had been able to contain it.

“Roll over,” he demanded, and again raised the belt high above his head.

I shook my head from side to side. As I watched the belt come toward me this time, I wondered what I was doing. This was crazy. He was going to keep hitting me until I rolled over, and then he’d get what he wanted. So all I was doing was causing myself a lot of pain, and in the end, I was going to be raped anyway. My defiance was of no use.

When the belt hit my ribs, the same ribs that were still sore and tender from the fall on the coffee table, tears escaped my eyes. They rolled down the sides of my head, falling into my ears and forming pools.

This time, when Travis demanded that I roll over, I did. I imagined the smile on his face as he watched me, knowing that he’d won. Again. But I took comfort in knowing that tomorrow when I told my mother about him, he would be gone. This was the last time he was going to beat me, and the very last time he was going to rape me.

I heard him take off his jeans, and I knew that it wasn’t a good sign. If he was going to take his time and be in here a while, he took off his jeans, and let them fall in a crumpled pile to the floor beside my bed. Otherwise, he just pulled them down to his knees. So having him crawl onto my bed naked meant I was in for a long night.

As Travis climbed on top of me, jerked down my shorts and underwear, and took his usual position, I wanted to cry, I wanted to run away, I wanted to throw up, I wanted to scream, I wanted to die. These were the same feelings I had each and every time this happened.

In the beginning, I would lay under him and wonder what I had done to cause this to happen. Surely it was my fault. Maybe I was a bad kid. Maybe I didn’t listen. Maybe I didn’t behave as I should. Maybe I asked for this in some way.

Throughout the years of laying here finding ways to blame myself, I began to realize that this was in no way my fault. This was all him. I wasn’t to blame, not even a little bit. I never asked for this, in fact I begged him to stop more times than I cared to remember. This was not a punishment for something I had done. And I wasn’t a bad kid. I never had been. This was all Travis’ fault. He had a problem, and I had to suffer for it.

Usually, I felt sorry for myself. How could I not? But this time, I didn’t feel so bad because I knew that everything would change in the morning. When I told my mother what he’d been doing, this would all be over. I was going to save myself, and my mom was going to help. Knowing that I’d never have to see him again, or hear him yelling my name, or feel his hands on my body made it easier to deal with the anger that always came with lying under Travis.

As he continued to do the unspeakable to me, I felt that anger now. It was a fire in my belly that sometimes stretched outward. There were times when it burned so hot and stretched so far, it flushed my cheeks. This wasn’t one of those times. Feeling secure about ending my nightmare in the morning was keeping that fire contained where it started, and that was a good thing, because there had been a couple of times when it had scared me.

All I had to do now was keep my mind off what was happening to me. If I could make it through this I’d be okay. After all, it was going to be the last time.

I turned my head to the left, facing the window and the wall, and did my best to ignore the pain. When my neck began to hurt from this position, I raised my head as far off my pillow as I could, and turned to the right, toward the door. The door stood open, but it didn’t matter. The evil was already inside the room with me.

As my head fell back to the pillow, I thought I heard something other than Travis’ ragged breathing, the thumping of my headboard against the wall, and the sound of skin slapping against skin.

I raised my head off the pillow and listened. I heard nothing else, so I put my head back down, and continued waiting for this horror to be over.

What seemed like hours later but could only have been minutes at the most, I heard a floorboard creak. I knew the board because I’d spent most of my life avoiding it. To step on it was to bring attention to myself, and I didn’t want that. It was in the middle of the floor at the beginning of the hallway.

Someone was coming.

My mind raced to figure out who it could be. Surely, if it was Dale or Mike, they wouldn’t have been so quiet. They were just as drunk as Travis, and they couldn’t be quiet when they were drunk, even if their lives depended on it. They weren’t even quiet when they were sober. But who did that leave?

Travis, either in his drunken stupor or in his sexual excitement, didn’t hear anything. He kept going at me as if it were just another night.

But I heard it. A few moments later, another creak.

Whoever was in the hallway was so close now, I could sense them. It was the feeling you got when you knew someone had came into the room, even if they never made a sound.

I continued to watch the doorway, curious to know who was sneaking down the hall in the middle of the night.

Then, it came to me. It had to be my mother. Who else?

My heart began to pound and I nearly cried with excitement. This was going to end! She would sneak down the hallway, catch Travis in the act, which was better than me just telling her because now he wouldn’t be able to lie about it, and she’d fly into a rage and throw him out.

Into my pillow, I breathed a sigh of relief. All my years of suffering were about to end. It was going to be over. I could live a normal life, and finally be like everybody else. No more worrying about Travis sneaking into my room at night. No more fear of bringing attention to myself. No more staying in my room. No more walking on eggshells. It was over at last.

I kept my eyes on the door, waiting to see my mother burst into the room and throw Travis off me. I waited for her to scream at him, and call him some of the horrible things he’d called me. With growing excitement, I stared at the door and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, I saw her head slowly ease into the open doorway. Her body followed, and she stood there silently, watching her husband rape her son.

I tried to read her face, but it wasn’t easy to do with her hidden in the shadows of the dark hallway. I expected her eyes to widen, her jaw to drop, and her to come rushing into the room to save me. What I saw instead was her looking at what was taking place with no expression whatsoever. She might’ve easily been watching television, or a bird on the lawn. It was a blank stare.

I lay there in agony, watching my mother’s face with high hopes of her rescuing me from this nightmare. I watched her eyes slowly fall from Travis’ face to his lower body and up my body to my face. When her eyes met mine, I held my breath. This was it. This was the moment when she would save me. She would surely see the pain and suffering in my eyes and on my face, and would come in here and make it all go away.

Then, she closed her eyes, turned, and walked away. I listened to her footsteps as she walked quietly to her bedroom and closed the door, leaving me underneath her husband wondering why she hadn’t stopped this from happening. Why hadn’t she said something? Why hadn’t she done something? Why hadn’t she even looked surprised? How could she walk away from me? How could she shut her eyes to what was happening in here? Didn’t she love me?

I began to cry now, no longer caring if Travis saw me. All my hopes were gone, so why hold on to the shred of dignity I’d been clinging to so desperately? I let go of it and bawled openly, tears and snot mixing on the pillow and sticking to my face.

There was no one to save me. My only hope, the one person whom should’ve died if necessary to save me from any harm, had turned her back on me at the exact moment she should’ve sprang to my defense. I had no hope. Help wasn’t coming. This was my life now, and there was nothing that anyone would do to stop it. That she knew and did nothing was far worse than her doing nothing because she didn’t know. She abandoned me. At a time when I needed her most, she turned her back on me and walked away, leaving me to deal with this. Because it was easier for her, I’m sure. Well, easier for her was harder for me. I realized now as the tears and snot came faster and harder that my mother was selfish. All these years, I’d been defending her and keeping things to myself, all bottled up inside in order to protect her feelings, and all these years, she didn’t care about me at all. If she did, she would’ve burst into this room and ripped Travis off me, ending my nightmare for good. She would’ve thrown him out of this house and our lives forever. But she didn’t. She didn’t care. Because it was easier for her not to.

The anger that burned in my belly grew hot, and started spreading throughout my body. I considered fighting it back like I always did, but decided to let it go this time. I had nothing to lose now. There was no reason to fight it. Help wasn’t coming. Hope was gone. Why fight it?

Before I realized I was going to, I began to yell. No words came, just yelling. I yelled into my pillow and clenched my fists. I felt Travis lose his rhythm, but he didn’t stop. Not yet.

The yelling grew louder and louder. I began to pound my fists against the mattress out of anger.

“Shut the fuck up,” Travis said.

As he continued pounding away at my backside, my yells turned to screams out of frustration. I wanted him off me. I wanted him as far away from me as he could possibly be. I felt like I was going to die if he touched me one second longer.

I screamed louder.

“What are you doing, dipshit? Why are you screaming like that? Knock it off,” Travis demanded.

I didn’t know why I was screaming. I was barely aware that I was. When my mother had walked away as though nothing were happening in this room, everything seemed to fade into the background. The sounds, the smells, the feelings, everything was duller now. In fact, Travis was gone from my room before I even realized that he’d gotten off me, or that I’d wet myself.

My fists continued to pound the mattress, the tears and snot still ran down my face and smeared into the pillow, and I still screamed. This continued for a while until I ran out of energy.

I lay there exhausted. My throat ached from screaming, and my eyes burned from crying so hard. I wanted to die. This wasn’t even close to the first time I’d wanted to die, but I thought maybe this time, since I’d already given up, I could actually force myself to die. If I squeezed my eyes shut tight enough and thought about it hard enough, maybe my heart would just stop beating, and my lungs would quit sucking in air.

I tried it.

With my eyes squeezed shut, I held my breath and focused on dying.

When that didn’t work, my eyes popped open. I was disappointed. Why couldn’t I just die, and put an end to this misery?

I lay there for a while, angry at my body for continuing to live. The anger that had begun to build was still there, stronger than ever. My body shook with it. I’d never been this angry before. I’d always managed to calm myself down before I let it take over, but this time, I hadn’t bothered to stop it. I didn’t know what was going to happen. It scared me the way my body was shaking uncontrollably. I tried to relax, thinking it would make the shaking stop, but it didn’t work.

I slowly rolled over and sat up. The smell of the urine on the mattress hit me, and I knew I had to take off the sheets and replace them with clean ones. I stood, wobbly. I felt the air, cool on my private areas and looked down. My underwear and shorts were still pulled down so I pulled them up again, covering myself. Mostly unaware of what I was doing, I began taking off the bedcovers. It felt like I was sleepwalking, and had anyone been watching me, they’d have thought I was. My movements were slow and jerky, though I’d pulled off the bedcovers a hundred times. But something was wrong this time. My mind wasn’t there.

After throwing the soiled blankets to the floor, I began pulling the fitted sheet from the corners of the mattress. When I’d freed both corners on the side next to the door, I half-walked, half-stumbled to the other side and began pulling those corners free.

The corner by the headboard was giving me trouble. It didn’t want to come loose. I used my right hand to lift the mattress, and my left to grab the sheet and pull. But once my right hand went under the mattress and locked around the pistol, I no longer cared about the sheets.

I was suddenly thrust back to the night Travis had put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger, laughing with his friends as I was horrified. I remembered how I’d felt in that moment, and I became furious. I felt a rumble start deep within me, quickly forcing its’ way outward, becoming a tremble like no other before it. My body shook so hard it caused my teeth to chatter, my vision to blur, and I seemed to disappear from myself.

While I checked out of reality and disappeared into the recesses of my mind, I stood beside the bed, smelling of urine and holding a pistol.