“Oh, really, enlighten me then,” she says, shaking her head, ignoring my last comment. It ticks me off.
“All right, you want to know? I’ll tell you everything there is to know about them and what they do. What I do.”
She looks my way with her brows furrowed as if she doesn’t believe me. Oh, I’ll make her believe me.
I lean in too close for her comfort. “You think that I do this because I want to?” The moment she moves her head, I say, “Wrong.”
“If you don’t want to do it, then why would you?”
“Refusing is not an option. Not with them.”
“So you just do as you’re told?”
“You don’t know what I do,” I scoff.
“I know that you’re robbing me of my freedom. What do you gain out of keeping me prisoner?”
“I gain you. And I took you out of their claws, but if they find out that I am keeping you close to me, they’ll kill me. The things you know, the things you forgot, they put you in danger. The things that I’ve told you put you in danger. They don’t want that information out.”
“I have no idea what you mean. I don’t have any information other than the fact that they fucking used Ashley like a sex doll and made me watch! That they fucking killed my mother and my pet!”
“Shhh …” I say, placing my finger on her lips. If she yells, people on the street might hear her. They have ears and eyes everywhere.
“No!” she mumbles. “The world should know this.”
“No, see that is what you don’t understand. The world won’t know about this, because they would prevent it from ever getting out. That’s how bad it is.”
“And you participate in all of this?” The way she looks at me, like I’m even more disgusting than before, twists my soul. I hate the way that she looks at me, and I knew this was the only outcome … if only I hadn’t fallen for her, then she’d be free.
I’m selfish for wanting her, for needing her the way that I do. But I cannot let her go anymore.
It’s time to come clean.
“Tell me. Tell me everything,” she says.
“You want to know? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you all about my fucked-up life. But know this—from now on, you are mine. Forever. No freedom. No way out. This is it. You want to know my dirty secrets? Fine. You’ll become a part of them.”
Accompanying Song: “Speak in Silence” by Hannah Cartwright and Ross Tones
16 years ago
Numbness to death started at a young age for me. There is no choice but to feel indifference toward killing. It’s become a means to survive—a means to accept and cope with the world and the consequences that my actions have.
I was five when muggers killed my mother.
One shot was all it took to take the breath from her lungs and mine.
I stood there, watching it unfold, doing nothing to prevent it. I barely knew what was going on. All I saw was a group of men running toward us, grabbing my mom’s purse while she screamed at me to run. So I did. Except that I didn’t get far. I stood behind a tree and watched from a distance. They murdered her when she wouldn’t surrender her belongings. And for what? Twenty bucks?
Scrubbing the stones outside my house, I still feel guilty thinking about it. I just stood there with my hands clamped around the tree, horrified at what was happening. I cried for hours. Only after days did I realize that it would not bring her back. The police never caught the thieves, and I always believed that it was my fault. I couldn’t tell them the details they were looking for. I saw nothing. I remembered nothing. Only her death.
And my father’s fury.
He blames me for everything.
Of course, he knows that I wasn’t the one who killed her, but still he blames me for not doing anything to save her. I didn’t just lose my mother that day. I lost my father, too.
I dip the brush back into the bucket and throw some of it over the stones, covering them with water and soap before continuing my sweep. Sweat drips from my forehead and my muscles are cramping. The red stains are almost gone. Just a little more, just a little longer.
I need to finish this. I’m not allowed inside if I don’t.
This is how it always goes after a hunt. I clean up all the mess that’s left of the deer and brush away the blood from the butchering. I guess it’s become some sort of tradition, but this is the only one that I’m happy with. Hunting is the only time outside when I’m actually keen on proving to my dad that he can be proud of his son. There isn’t much else that he likes about me. He hates that I like books, reading, and chess. Hates that I don’t take after my brother.