One Hundred and Thirty-Six Scars(19)

Shaking her head around another bite, she answered with a full mouth of food. “Nope, no way. You must get it off your mom or something.”

My jaw paused. I swallowed down what was in my mouth and took a drink of my water. Melissa glared at Phoebe, who was shooting daggers at her.

“Oh shit, did I say something dumb?” she asked, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t know if I did get it from my mom. I didn’t know her.”

Melissa glanced at Phoebe before bringing her eyes back to mine. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

I shook my head, clearing my throat and waving her comment away. “It’s fine, let’s just eat.”

After dinner, I excused myself from the table and walked into my bedroom. It was average. A white metal queen bed, green and white bedspread with autumn leaves spread over it. Everything in my room was light. I opened my white drawers and took out my pajamas before heading into the bathroom to take a shower.

Turning the faucet on, the room became filled with steam. Wiping the mirror to clear it, I looked at myself in the reflective glass, noticing how much I have changed since growing up. The comment about my mother had evidently surfaced some memories for me. If I thought I looked like my mother as a fifteen-year-old, then I could pass as her doppelgänger now. I slid my thumb over my plump red lips and bit down on the tip of my thumb. I was often told how beautiful I was from my friends and some men. And it was not that I didn’t believe them, it was that I didn’t want to be appealing. I didn’t want to attract attention to myself. I hadn’t had sex willingly before. I refused to. I didn’t think there would be a day where I’d find pleasure in something that had been forced upon me for so many years from such a young age. Phoebe and Melissa would talk about how great sex was, but all it did was test my gag reflex. Sex was a dirty word for me, and I hated Donald for stealing such a huge part of what should’ve been an amazing part of my life. I’d tried touching myself, it never happened. No spark, nothing. Even when I thought over the hottest guy I’d ever laid eyes on, I was reminded about the circumstances as to why he was there and the memories that came with him. He killed Donald though, and for that I was thankful.

Stepping into the shower, I let the hot water cascade off my slender back. Pushing my long brown hair to one shoulder, I squeezed a large amount of body wash into the palm of my hand before rubbing it vigorously all over my body, trying to rub away the dirtiness that sits within me. Showers are probably the closest thing I had come to feeling something pleasurable. And that’s because I felt clean when I was in the shower. But my memories would forever infect my view of myself. When I looked into the mirror, I would always see the dirty little girl who would get raped by her father glaring back at me. Sliding my hands down over my inner thighs, the lumps from my scars bore into the palm of my hands, like a reminder of why I was not loveable. Why no-one would love someone so dirty like me. I squeezed my eyes shut as a single tear dropped and goose bumps broke out over my skin. The shower being the only place where I could let myself go.

I would let it all out in the twenty-five minutes I had in there, but once I stepped out, I left it in the bathroom. It was where I closed my emotions, leaving them in there until the next night.

Turning off the faucet, I stepped out of the shower and wrapped my towel around myself, the fluffy plush material bringing me comfort. I pulled open the drawer and took out my night cream before I massaged it into my smooth white skin. My cheeks were blood red from crying along with my eyes. Placing the cream back into the drawer, I quickly threw on my pajamas, turned the light out and headed to bed.





Opening my eyes, I stretched out my stiff limbs. I must have slept on my left side all night again, still and not moving.

Walking out to the kitchen I caught Phoebe in a conversation with Melissa.

“What’s the plan?” Melissa asked Phoebe.

“We need to head back to Westbeach. Blake’s piece of shit accountant at his nightclub decided to walk her ass out of there. I have to go and pick up the papers, and run the books for him until he finds someone else.” Blake’s Phoebe’s brother who is a part of the Sinful Souls Motorcycle Club in Westbeach, California.

“Need to, or want to?” Melissa asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Both. He comes first. Also, I may be finding every excuse to get out of here for a while.”

I walked in, leaning up to take down a bowl from the kitchen cupboard. “You’re leaving?” I asked, pouring the granola I’d made from scratch into a white ceramic bowl.