Page 4

(11-years-old)

Cami can't hear. I figured it out when she was around three and a half years old. We’ve been working on ASL ever since. I blew into the local public library like nobody’s business, and I was spit out the backdoor with a book all about sign language not long after.

Of course, that wasn’t enough, and I was forced to pick pocket a cell phone so I could do some online research as well.

Cami's five now and she is sooooo smart. We are sitting on the living room floor, where I'm giving her a math lesson and she never fails to impress me.

I beam at her with immense pride when she gets the answers right and support her whole heartedly when she's wrong.

“I'm still hungry. . .”

She signs with a frown.

I made the last two PB and J’s that I could, and she scarfed hers down immediately. Being that I haven't gotten around to mine with the lesson and all, I push my plate toward her in offering. She hesitates and peaks up at me from beneath her lashes. She knows food is pocket-sized around here, but she grabs it anyways because she also knows she's the only thing that matters.

We continue with math for a bit before moving on to reading and handwriting. Finally, we settle on lip reading. Cami is still so young she has a long way to go in that department, but we will get there.

A bang sounds outside of the front door of our run down home and ice wraps around my veins, shooting all over my body in trepidation.

Mom barrels through the door a moment later. Her boyfriend Cliff hot on her heels.

Fear sinks further into my gut until I have to hold back dry heaving on my empty stomach.

Cliff hates me. For no reason at all other than he can. I've tried communicating with him and talking out the issue to no extent. It's useless like my existence.

I stop that line of thinking immediately and look to Cami. The sight of her feral hair and big eyes is always a cold splash of water over my stupidity and selfishness.

Cliff walks right up to me like he was always meant to. Like he was put here for this very reason, as if it's his right. Then shoves me.

I hear a deep inhale and I know it’s Cami doing as we practiced to keep her tears in.

I lay on my side sprawled on the floor where Cliff thinks I belong.

“Stop laying on that dirty floor.”

Mom says when she breezes past me acting like she didn’t just see him push me.

It's always the same dance. When mom needs me she swears she only keeps Cliff around because we need him and the money he offers. The thing is Cami and I never see that money. Mom always has new designer items and carries herself like royalty though. As if I didn’t use the rest of the Narcan on her just last week.

None of that matters though. As soon as I hear the lock click softly on moms bedroom door my eyes well with tears. And although I would never let the streams see the light of day and flow on my pale cheeks, it doesn't stop the mental battle from ripping me apart.

My eyes flick to Cami and I watch absently as she takes a deep breath and leaves me to Cliff alone.

“Come here.”

He's spread out on the couch, arms on the back of it and eyeing me eagerly.

Deep breath in.

Get off the floor.

Deep breath out.

Take a step forward.

This process goes on until I stand directly between his spread legs, and he snakes an arm around my waist. I'm small for my age and my body lifts from the ground easily before he plants me on his lap.

His hands grope at everything before a familiar rocking starts from underneath me. My waist is in his bruising grip, and I want to take a rock from outside and bash my own head in with it. It's never an out of body experience for me. I always remember every second of every encounter. He is a bit more rough this time though.

He whispers nasty things in my ear that I successfully block out with mental shields in the form of music. I listen to my favorite song on repeat inside my head before a sharp slap echo’s in the space and intense pain flares on the side of my head a moment later.

I must have missed something important, but I'm not sure what. I wasn’t listening.

Oh no this isn’t good.

“I said take these off.”

Pure unmasked panic overwhelms my whole body the second the demand leaves his nasty lips. As If a thousand bugs live under my flesh and are chewing their way out from beneath my only protection from this deranged monster.

He's never asked this of me before. . .

It's always the same. He comes inside with mom; he grinds his huge body into my small one and soaks the back of my pants before taking his leave.

Why do I need to take my pants off this time?

This isn’t happing. . .

This can't happen to me.

Mom will have to forgive me, she must.

The thought of her kicking me out over her boyfriend and leaving Cami to fend for herself only gives me a moments pause.

I'll figure it out if it comes to that because this is NOT. HAPPENING.

The familiar scrape of the blade at my ankle-Lola-slows my pulse and I take a deep breath. It's the same knife I used all that time ago to kill the three men who held me down at their mercy. I haven't had to use it since then, but I’ve always kept it on my person just in case. It's like a blanket of a sort. Providing me mental ease. Making me feel like I could take on anything.

Right now, is no exception.

“Hurry the fuck-”

The rest of his words come out in gurgles as blood rains down on my face from where my knife is lodged in his neck.

I don’t move for a minute; I just sit there and stare at his soaked form. Mesmerized by the red lines cascading down his white button up like art.

It's beautiful I suppose. Which is a scary consideration on my part, and I probably need therapy.

He's dead now, I'm sure of it, but yet. . .

I draw my knife out slowly and watch a gush fall down like I tipped a bucket. I flick the blade in my hand and bring the pointed end to the center of his forehead and glide the sharp tool over the skin there. Only putting enough pressure to make small beads of blood well on the surface.

I'm not sure what I'm creating until I'm finished with my work.

A devil.

He was a monster and now anyone who sees this will know it too.

More. . .

A small voice in my head demands. It says I deserve this. That I am not nothing, that I matter. That he didn’t get to take my spirit and heart, but I can take his.

That’s the last thought I had before I found my blade deep in his chest cavity. It takes a lot of physical exertion on my part to carve him up.

When a jagged square is formed, I put the tip of the knife in and flick the top off. The process is nasty and gruesome just like him. I feel no remorse as I cut the remnants holding his heart in place.

When it's outside of his body and in my hand I feel as if I've taken my power back.

Climbing off of his lap I sit on the floor and relish in it. The control and autonomy for however fleeting it may be.

I'm not sure how long I sit like that. Nothing but the crickets from dark corners chirping and the sound of my steady breaths.

A click sounds from moms door, and I don’t even have it in me to prepare for whatever stunt comes next.

A loud gasp and an audible retch bounces off the walls.

I glance up and face mom head on, heart in hand with wide eyes. Her lip curls in disgust and try as I might it doesn't stop the throbbing sting in my chest.

I don’t know where the belt came from, but I lay on the floor and take it as she launches it with expertise in my direction over and over again. The metal clocks me in the nose one too many times causing my blood to mix with Cliffs on my skin.

I recognize with astonishment that I didn’t have to use any of my coping mechanisms during the beating. My nose never tickled. My eyes never throbbed. In fact, I felt zilch.

Moms gone already and I lay there for hours before she returns with a water bucket and towel to clean me up with her gentle hands.

I don’t perk up when she tells me what a good son I am and says I'm still her baby. I don’t protest when she says that I'm too big to walk into parties and steal now. I don’t panic when she tells me she has a new job for me.

She keeps talking, small bits here and there and it's all I can do not to throw her off of me and carve the small devil into her forehead and sit her next to Cliff. Because she slipped up just then. She says Cliff wasn’t even her boyfriend so I shouldn’t feel bad.

Realization dawns on me with a sickening crack to my whole being. He comes here for me. He paid for this. Has been paying for this. He must have paid extra this time to want my clothes off.

It was in that moment that I finally understood that my mom was the worst monster of them all.