Page 39 of Penance
Mercy
M y lungs burn as I gulp down air. It tastes like rain and dirty car exhaust, and I gag on it, my stomach churning and flopping, but not bringing anything up.
I need to run. I need to get away from here.
I need to get away from him.
But the thought hurts and I don’t know why.
What’s wrong with me?
My heels wobble as I stumble down the uneven sidewalk.
I don’t know how to carry all this pain.
I don’t know what to do.
My Sunday dress clings to my back, damp with sweat and wrapping around my body like cling wrap. Each breath comes ragged and shallow, pulling against my ribs like they’re bound with barbed wire. Puddles reflect the blue sky like broken mirrors, and I refuse to look into them.
I don’t wanna see myself.
I don’t wanna see the pain in my face.
The street stretches before me, populated with Sunday afternoon strollers—families holding hands, couples window shopping, all these normal people living normal lives untouched by what’s happening to me.
Untouched by Draco’s cruelty.
Draco.
Even thinking of him now is like a knife twisting in my chest.
I don’t want anything to do with him.
I never wanna see him again.
Yet at the same time, for a reason I can’t explain, I’m desperate for him at the same time. He has made me feel safe in a way no one else ever has, and now I feel anything but safe.
I need him.
I need his arms around me to keep out the cold, but that doesn’t make any sense.
How can I need him to keep away the pain when the pain is all his fault?
I weave between the people on the sidewalk, shoulder clipping a man in a pressed suit. I hear him call me a bitch, but I don’t hear what else he says. I don’t apologize. I can’t even think the words, let alone say them.
A family with small children scrambles to get out of my way, parents pulling their kids out of my path as if maybe whatever is wrong with me is contagious.
Maybe it is.
I don’t know.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Not to me.
I’ve done everything right.
I’ve recited every prayer, every confession.
I was good.
I was a good girl.
Why do I deserve this?
Pastor Wilson’s face flashes in my memory, the way his expression changed when he looked at me. The way his eyes narrowed and his mouth turned down in a disgusted frown.
Judgment.
He was judging me.
He didn’t believe me.
None of them did.
They only believed Draco.
A delivery truck honks as I dash across the street without looking, and I feel the rush of air as it passes too close behind me.
I don’t stop.
I can’t stop.
If I stop, I’ll have to think about what happened, and if I think too hard I’ll have to accept it.
I step off the sidewalk and onto the grass between the road and the treeline.
It’s a sudden and stark transition. One moment I’m surrounded by concrete and metal, car horns and engines, the next I’m pushing past the first scraggly trees, their branches scratching at my arms like bony fingers trying to hold me back.
The ground changes beneath me, from unyielding pavement to a carpet of leaves and hidden roots.
I can be alone here.
I can be away from the eyes and the voices and the sounds.
I can be by myself.
There will be no one here to judge me.
I can be alone with my thoughts, and that’s the realization that almost sends me back onto the sidewalk.
I don’t want to think about what Draco did to me.
I don’t want to be forced to remember it.
My ankle twists on something under the leaves and I stumble, catching myself against the trunk of a huge, towering oak.
Bark scrapes skin, but the pain is distant, almost too faraway for me to feel it.
It’s nothing compared to the pain that wraps itself around my heart.
The woods smell like damp earth and pine needles.
Sunlight filters through the canopy in dappled patches, shifting and blinking across the forest floor.
“This isn’t happening,” I whisper to myself.
I need to hear my voice. I need to know that I’m still alive. Still awake.
I push deeper, branches snagging at my hair, pulling strands loose and ripping at the skin on my face.
It hurts.
It burns.
I might be bleeding.
It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I need to get away.
Draco’s not safe, and yet somehow he’s my safety.
I don’t understand it.
It doesn’t make sense.
I just know both are true at the same time.
My foot catches on a root, and this time I do fall, landing hard on my hands and knees. The impact jolts through my bones, and something inside me cracks—not physically, but something like a dam keeping my emotions at bay. A scream tears from my throat, primal and raw.
It hurts.
The pain is everywhere.
It’s all consuming.
“No!” The scream echoes among the trees, and in a nearby pine tree a flock of birds explodes into the air.
“No, no, no!”
I’m not even sure why I’m screaming.
What am I denying?
My fists pound against the soft earth and I scream again, louder this time. It echoes in the air around me, bouncing off the trunks of the trees and coming back to slap me in the face.
It hurts.
My heart hurts and I can’t do anything about it.
I force myself back to my feet, mud staining the knees of my dress, strands of hair clinging to my tear-dampened cheeks.
Why?
Why would he do this to me?
I force myself to keep walking, moving deeper into the woods where the trees grow closer together, the trunks wider, the roots more twisted and gnarled. My shoes are not made for this. It’s more pain, only now it’s physical.
What am I supposed to do?
Where do I go?
I couldn’t go to my parents, not after everything that happened.
They won’t believe me.
They won’t believe that Draco hurt me.
But, did he?
Has he hurt me at all?
The thought strikes me like lightning.
But I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes.
He raped me.
He—
Did he? A voice in my head asks. You liked it. You came harder than you ever have .
No.
No, that can’t be true.
Can it?
My legs burn as I climb over a fallen log, my heel sinking into the muddy earth and nearly landing me flat on my face again.
I’ve never been this deep in the woods before.
Good girls don’t wander alone in forests.
Good girls don’t cum on their rapist’s cocks and confess their love while they’re doing it, either.
I laugh, and the sound is unfamiliar. It’s swollen with anxiety and tinged with hysteria.
I haven’t been good, I’ve just been afraid—afraid of stepping out of line, afraid of disappointing my parents, afraid of God’s judgment. All that fear, and here I am anyway, fallen from grace.
The trees suddenly thin, and I stumble into a small clearing where sunlight pours from the sky, unfiltered by the skeletal, leaf-bare branches. It feels like a spotlight, like I’m on display.
Ripe for the picking.
Ripe for the judgment I deserve.
I stop, bending over with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. The air tastes different here—cleaner somehow.
My heart pounds in my ears. My lungs burn as I suck in breath. My stomach flip-flops, and I feel something coiling within me, writhing like a snake in my guts.
I stop.
I hold my breath.
That’s not panic writhing inside me.
That’s… my baby?
I pull in a breath, and it shakes as I drop my hand to the bottom of my stomach. I feel it again, like a tiny wiggle, though it’s something I can only feel on the inside, not on the outside.
My baby is moving inside of me.
My baby.
No.
No, that’s not right.
It’s our baby.
Draco is the father.
How many nights had I laid awake and prayed for that to be true? Now it is?
I wanted this.
I prayed for this.
And God made it come true.
“What do I do now?” I whisper into the empty clearing.
I could turn back. Return to the church, apologize for my outburst, submit to whatever cleansing ritual Pastor Wilson prescribes for me.
I could pray harder, believe stronger, deny the evidence.
No.
I don’t want to go back.
There is nothing left there for me now.
I keep walking, out of the sunlight and into the shadows.
Everything just became more tangent, more real.
My baby is real.
My baby is counting on me to do the right thing.
The undergrowth grows thicker here, thorny bushes snagging at my dress like grasping hands.
I don’t know what I’m going to do, I just know I need answers.
The forest spits me out near Willow Creek Apartments—home.
The parking lot stretches before me, its asphalt cracked and buckled. It’s like a mirror, and it reflects the way I feel in my heart.
Cracked.
Falling apart.
I’ve lived here for two years now, ever since I decided that twenty-three was too old to still be living with my parents. Draco has lived here almost as long as I have.
Did he move here before I did?
Or after?
I can’t remember now.
How long had he been watching me?
Why would he go to the trouble?
I need to know.
I step across the asphalt, and I can see Draco’s car.
How long have I been in the woods?
I look up at the sky. The sun is high overhead.
It’s been a couple of hours, at least.
Did he look for me?
Does he care?
I hurry down the sidewalk and pull the door open, stepping into the lobby. It’s warmer in here. I don’t realize until I step through the doors that I am so, so cold.
I could go home.
I glance at my apartment door as I step past it.
I could go there. I could unlock my door, step into my neat little apartment with its cross hanging over the sofa and its bookshelf full of the books my mom gave me. Could wash away the forest from my skin, change into clean clothes, pretend that today never happened.
I could pretend it never happened, take the money I’ve saved and get as far away from Draco as I could manage.
But I’d still feel it inside me—this otherness, this thing that screams for his touch.
But no.
I can’t.
I love him.
I hate myself for it, but something inside me calls for him like a siren song.
I need him.
It scares me, but I can’t deny it anymore.
I just need to know why.
I turn away from my own door and face the stairwell instead. The handrail is cool beneath my palm, sticky in places from who-knows-what. I try not to think about it as I climb up to the second floor.
What am I doing?
I’m so stupid.
Stupid girl.
But my legs move on their own.
I can’t control it now. I am a woman possessed.
Second floor.
The hallway stretches before me, identical to my own, yet somehow more forbidding. I hurry down the hall, listening to the sound of my heels clicking over tile, like the ticking of a clock counting down to my own death.
777
That’s his door.
I stop in front of it and just stare.
Why?
Because I don’t know what else to do.
I lift my hand to knock and then pause, my knuckles hovering an inch away.
What if he pushes me away?
What if he doesn’t want me, or the baby?
What if he tells me he never gave a shit?
No.
He asked me to marry him.
He bought me a house.
He loves me.
Draco loves me.
I knock, three times, loud, and the knocks echo around me.
I wait, heart hammering against my ribs like it wants to escape my chest and flee back down the stairs without me. My palms are slick with sweat, and I wipe them against the fabric of my ruined dress.
Time stretches.
It feels like an eternity.
Has it been seconds or minutes since I knocked?
Should I try again?
Maybe he’s not home.
But just as my hand rises to knock again, I hear movement on the other side of the door, a click as a lock is turned.
The door opens, and there he stands—Draco, with his sharp eyes that stare right through me.
He’s wearing a pair of black jogging pants and he’s shirtless.
His dark hair is still slicked back, pulled away from his eyes.
I can see the tattoos that cover his arms, the bat wing tattoo on the front of his throat.
The wings come together in the front to form a heart.
Why hadn’t I noticed that before?
“Mercy,” he says, my name falling from his lips like he’s been expecting me.
No surprise, no confusion, just a simple acknowledgment.
Tears well up, hot and painful in my eyes, but I blink them back. I haven’t come here to cry on his shoulder. I’ve come for answers.
Except I don’t speak, because I can’t.
I don’t talk.
I don’t think.
I reach up, and I slap him hard across the face. It’s a sharp sound that echoes on the empty hallway and his head whips to the side.
When he recovers, he straightens and looks at me, and he studies me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. When he reaches out, wrapping his hand around my throat and pulling me into the apartment, I don’t fight him.
I let him lead me, for he is my shepherd.