Darkest Before Dawn (13 page)

I
can’t sleep
. My mind travels into those dark places, wondering if today is the day I’ll die. My cuticles are bleeding from where I’ve picked at them. I listen to the noise upstairs. It sounds like there are more than just Earl and Max up there. There are a lot of footsteps and I can hear the faint hum of music. I listen as the footsteps cross the floor, watching the ceiling and trying to imagine where exactly they are above me. They disappear and I swallow. They are no longer in the room above me, which means they may be coming down the—

The sound of voices in the outside room forces my heart into a sprint. They’re all deep. Men. It really is a terrible feeling—waiting. Playing the horrible thoughts over and over in your mind. I swear, I keep thinking I see shadows, but there are no windows. So I know that can’t be right.

At times I feel like I can’t breathe.

Sometimes I scream for no reason other than to just break the silence. You’d be surprised that silence actually does have a sound. And I think it is the loudest, most unbearable sound I’ve ever been forced to endure.

After a while, you start to actually think you hear yourself thinking, the noise of your own breathing makes you want to scream. And then I realize…there is a radio. Funny how conditioned I’ve become to think there is only silence when Max is not with me. I’m reaching over to turn the radio on when the lock slides out of place and adrenaline jolts through my body.

Earl steps in, followed by Bubba and some other middle-aged, pudgy man with straggly pieces of red hair combed over his balding head. Earl lifts a finger at me. “There she is. She’s a purdy little thing.”

Bubba snorts in a laugh and the other man waddles into the room, slamming the door closed. “And fucking Max’s got a hard-on for her.” Bubba laughs.

“Hell,” the redhead says, spitting dip on the floor, “I gots one right here just looking at her.”

“Fuck her if you want,” Earl says. “Just give me an ounce and we’ll call it even.”

No. No. No
! I scream inside my head. On the outside I remain unflinching, praying to God if I don’t fight, if I don’t let him see the fear threatening to pour off me in waves, maybe he’ll lose interest.

“Ai’ght,” the nameless hick says, digging in his pocket and pulling out a baggie with white rocks in it. Both Earl and Bubba snicker and open the door.

“I’mma lock ya in,” Earl says. “I’ll be out here when you’re done. Just don’t kill her; all that matters is she stay alive. Fuck her up as much as you want.”

The door slams closed behind them. The lock slides in place. And that disgusting man is already wiggling his pants down.

I hate him. I hate every last one of them.

Do I fight? Why make it worse on myself?

I lie back on the bed, angry with myself for being so weak, but is it weak or is it a will to survive against all odds? Is this weak of me to take it, or is it a strength to accept that nothing I do will stop this? He was just told not to kill me, so I can’t hope for that. No, if I fight, he will hurt me, but not end me. It will make it worse, so I make peace with the fact that love is a lie, that all people are cruel and terrible, and that I—just like I was told when I was nine years old by the man who destroyed me, shoved me into the darkness—I
am
unworthy of love.

The second he grabs my thighs and forces them apart, I close my eyes and turn my face to the side to try and avoid the rancid smell of his breath. Just like I did all those years ago, I pretend this is not me. Time and time again, I used to sing songs in my head, sometimes screaming them out loud to drown out my cries. But that won’t work now, because as a child you aren’t able to actually comprehend what is happening, at least not the first few times. There is a buffer of innocence that protects you, where you think surely this can’t be what is happening because people are not this evil. But each time you are forced into this position, that innocence is stripped.

I was stripped—and when it was finally all scraped away, that was when I realized how terrible it all really was. I have no innocence to protect me here, so I pretend this is some terrible movie where all you can do is see the poor girl in a dark room, hear her stifled cries and the vile grunts of the piece of shit doing his business on top of her.

Over the course of my life I have learned that if you tell yourself something enough times, you will start to believe it, so I tell myself I’m in hell. Hell. Because then I could comprehend why all of this is happening to me. Everything fades to black and I will my mind to forget everything. But I know I won’t…

He climbs on top of me. My heart is hammering too hard, adrenaline too high. And turns out, old habits are hard to break, so I sing. I sing “Unsteady” to myself because it makes me think of Max, and I cry like the weak victim I am, wondering what in the fucking hell is wrong with me. What is so wrong with me that things like this keep happening to me?

I ignore it all. Somehow, I ignore it all. And when he’s finished, his disgusting sweat dripping onto my bare flesh, he pushes off of me. He hitches his pants back around his waist, then slaps me hard across the face. “I came in you.” He laughs.

And I’m sucked right back into this horrid nightmare. Everything inside of me shakes, my stomach turns and twists, flips and winds in on itself before I sit up and vomit on the floor. My stomach keeps lurching, and I heave again. I can’t get the feel of him off of me—
out of me.
I try scratching at my skin over and over, and it takes a minute for me to realize I’m screaming. I hate myself. I hate him. I hate every-fucking-thing. I just want to die.

The man knocks on the door. “Let me out. I’m finished with her…” He glances over his shoulder at me. “For now at least. I’ll come back for
that
again. An ounce ain’t shit for pussy like that.” He smiles and his rotted teeth make my stomach turn again. He bangs over the door once again. “Earl? Bubba? Let me out now, guys. I’m done I said.”

There’s no sound.

“Aw, hell.” His fist bangs over the door again and again. And I find myself searching the room for something I can kill him with. I just want to kill him. I want to watch him bleed. I want him to cry. But there is nothing. Not one damn thing.

The lock slides open and I yank the covers over my lap in a pathetic attempt to cover myself up. He tore my clothes off of me so they are now useless. But the door doesn’t slowly creak open, it bangs against the wall with a loud thud.

Max rushes in, his face red and fists clenched. He takes one fleeting glance at me before he grabs the man around the throat, picking him up and pinning him against the wall. He leans in to his face. “I’m going to fucking kill you, you worthless piece of fucking shit.”

The man scratches at Max’s hand to no avail. Max uses his free hand to punch him in the face before he releases him. His body crumples to the floor and Max kicks him. The man blocks his face with his hand, flinching when Max squats in front of him.

“Tell her you’re sorry,” Max says in a growl.

“Sorry, I’m sorry.” His tone is thick with fear and it makes me smile.

Without another word, Max reaches inside his pocket. I barely see the glint of the blade before he plunges it into the side of the man’s flabby neck. Blood spurts out, spraying both Max and the wall behind him with crimson drops. The man clutches his neck, eyes wide as he falls on to his side, gasping. A gurgled noise fills the air, and although I want to look away, I can’t. I watch him bleed. I watch the blood shooting out from his neck with each beat of his heart. I watch it puddle on the floor under him, and I’m happy. I’m happy he’s dead because he is a bad person.

Max stands and turns to look at me, his face and chest covered in blood splatter. His brow furrows with concern as he quickly approaches the bed where I’m huddled against the wall.

“Fuck,” he shouts, dragging his hands through his hair. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” He paces for a second, the bloody knife still clutched in his hand. “He fucking…” He hurls the knife across the room and drops to a knee, grabbing onto me and dragging me against his chest. His hold on me is so tight, and I can’t help but find comfort in his embrace. It’s not until I throw my arms around his shoulders that I notice I’ve clawed at my skin to the point of drawing blood. I just wanted the feel of that man’s touch gone from me. I just want it gone. I close my eyes and shake my head.

“This was not supposed to happen,” he says, his voice low. He holds me closer and rubs his hand over my bare back. “Fuck.”

Opening my eyes, I stare over his shoulder, my gaze locked on the man’s lifeless body in a heap on the floor. My brain attempts to make sense of this all. It wants to forget the feeling of that man on me. It’s screaming at me to get away from the one holding me. Max is angry and remorseful. He is bad, but he is good. I know it makes no sense and my mind keeps repeating to let go of him. To get away. To hate him because that would be right. But my heart…my heart is telling me to cling onto him with everything I have because when in hell, the only person who can hand over the key is the devil.

S
lowly
, the tunnel vision dissipates. My heart is still clanging against my chest like it’s going to break out at any moment. I can’t catch a good breath. I am coming down from blind rage. When I came into the house. Earl and Bubba were smoking crack by the back door, and I panicked because Jeb wasn’t with them. His ratty-ass truck was parked outside, but he wasn’t with them. The second I got to the foot of those cellar steps, I heard him and I nearly had a coronary right there and then. And just that thought sends my pulse into another unbearable sprint.

Ava buries her face in my shoulder, and I rub my hand over her back. I swallow. I try my damnedest to calm myself down before I say anything to her. Hell, I am trying to figure out what to do now because this game has shifted. Lila is dead. I have no purpose here any longer with the exception of Ava. I care about her, I can’t deny that. And all I can think about is putting a bullet in both Earl’s and Bubba’s heads right now for letting that piece of shit in here. Closing my eyes, I rest my chin on the top of her head. There is a certain comfort I find with her, from her scent, and I take all this in in an attempt to calm myself down for her.

“Come on, darlin’,” I say, slipping my arms beneath her knees. I pick her up and cradle her.

There’s blood coating the inside of her thighs and my jaw tightens, my teeth grinding against each other. I grab the blanket from the bed and cover her up, exhaling to keep myself from losing it as I head toward the door. When I glance at Jeb’s body in the corner, that white-hot rage nearly consumes me again.

“Where are you taking me?” she asks. The fear in her voice breaks me away from the cycle of anger, tossing me directly into a wave of guilt.

“To get you cleaned up.” I throw the door open and head up the stairs.

The entire way up, she stares at me. I kick the door to the kitchen open and it slams against the wall. Earl and Bubba are still standing by the open screen door smoking a pipe. Earl’s eyes drift from me to Ava before he peers back toward the stairs to the cellar. Ava buries her head in my shoulder. I can’t look at him because I will kill him if I do. And I will not do that in front of her. Not again.

I don’t say a word before heading into the foyer and up the stairs to the bathroom. My shirt is soaked with her tears by the time I get to the top of the stairwell. My throat tightens and heat washes over my skin. Nothing will ever take this away. Nothing will ever chase away the monsters that will live in the recesses of her mind when this is all over, but the one thing I can do is change the path this shit-storm is on.

I set her on the edge of the tub and turn the taps, warming the water before I plug the drain. She’s shaking, still sobbing. I turn to her and rub my hands over her arms. “Look at me, dear,” I say calmly.

She doesn’t budge.

“Ava. Please. Look at me.”

She lifts her chin and the desolation in her eyes nearly breaks me in half. This is too much. Lila. This…I take a deep breath and bite down on the inside of my cheek. “We’re going to clean you up, and then…” I swallow because I haven’t exactly figured everything out yet. “We’re leaving.”

Her eyes widen before they narrow with confusion. “You’re…letting me—” Suddenly, her chest begins to rise and fall in rapid swells. “Are you
leaving
me? Max, please. I don’t want to—”

Shaking my head, I grab both sides of her face with my hands. “No,
we
are leaving. Me and you.
Together
. This is not where you belong.” I can’t help myself, can’t fight the draw I feel to her, so I kiss her lips—gently, apologetically, innocently—because even after all of this, there is still a sliver of innocence left somewhere deep inside of her. “You belong with me,” I say before I even realize it.

I lift the tattered shirt over her head, pull her messy ponytail loose, and help her into the tub. When the water touches the battered parts of her body, she winces.

I pace in front of the tub, dragging my hands through my hair, trying to steady my breathing, but I can’t. The longer I think of Lila, of Ava, of all the girls I’ve helped beat down to nothing—I lose my ability to rationalize. The blood shoots through my jugular in hard pumps. I’m dizzy with hate and anger, my skin literally on fire and covered in sweat.

“I’ll be back,” I say through a clenched jaw.

Ava glances up at me from the tub. She shakes her head, her lips trembling. “Please don’t leave me. They’ll…” She swallows, choking on her words.

“No, they
won’t,
I promise you.” I give her a stern look. “They won’t, understand?”

She gives a quick nod, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth as she goes back to washing herself off.

“I’m going to get you clothes.” I place my hand on the doorknob and stop, but I don’t turn around to look at her. “And no matter what you hear, don’t leave this room. I will be back.” And with that I open the door, closing it behind me and locking it with the key.

Garth Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls” floats up from the kitchen. I pull my gun from the back of my jeans, cocking it, the distinct click becoming lost in the twang of the guitar.

Death will come for us all, but some people don’t deserve to slip away quietly in the night. People like Johnny Donovan and Andrew Biddle, Earl and Bubba and Jeb, they need to be snuffed out. And that is why there is a hint of excitement drumming through me right now. Murder, to some, may seem cruel, but I can tell you, the power that surges through you when you watch some sorry motherfucker take his last breath, when you know you are the last thing they will ever see, that is unmatched by anything else.

My pulse remains steady as I calmly descend the stairs, my finger resting over the smooth curve of the trigger as I approach the doorway. Earl’s singing along with the radio, shuffling a deck of cards with a cigarette dangling from his lips. I step into the room and he barely gives me a second glance.

“Need to get yer head on straight, boy. That girl ain’t—”
Bam
. Bear scurries out from under the table as Earl slumps over in the chair. Blood pours onto the table from the hole in his head, and within seconds, it’s trickling over the edge and splattering onto the linoleum floor. Bear cautiously creeps over, his tail tucked. He sniffs the puddle and looks up at me before lapping up some of the blood.

The cellar door flies against the wall with a bang, and I spin around. “The fucking shit?” Bubba mumbles. I lift the gun and he holds both hands up, his face going white. “Now”—a nervous laugh bubbles from his lips—“Max, put that gun down. You don’t wanna…” The
splat, splat, splat
of
the blood hitting the kitchen floor pulls his gaze over to Earl and he swallows hard. “You don’t wanna do anything more than you done did. Jeb and Earl…I ain’t gonna say shit. I’ll help you cover it up, just don’t kill me.”

“You took my sister.”

His brow furrows as he shakes his head. “I don’t know what the hell you’re on about, Max.”

“Shut the fuck up.” I feel the rage battering my insides. My chest heaves, my pulse clangs in my temples. I step toward him and shove the gun in his face. He backs away and I follow until his heels are hanging over the threshold of the cellar steps. “You let Jeb do that to Ava, you sick fuck!”

His jaw clenches and his eyes flicker. He goes to grab the gun from me, but I pull the trigger, the bullet flying through his jugular. Flesh tears loose, blood gushes out in an arterial spray, and he falls back, his heavy body banging down the old steps until he’s nothing but a lifeless heap at the bottom.

“She wasn’t yours,” I say. “She’s mine, she’s always been mine, motherfucker.”

I lift the gun and pull back on the trigger three more times. Each time a bullet disappears in his body. Smiling, I tuck the pistol into the waist of my jeans before I make my way down the steps, carefully sidestepping around Bubba’s body on my way to Ava’s room.

I quickly gather several pieces of clothing and grab her journal from the end of the bed, then hurry back through the kitchen and up to the bathroom.

“It’s just me,” I shout through the door as I dig the key from my pocket and place it into the lock. When I round the corner, I find Ava is already out of the bath with a towel wrapped around her and a blank stare on her face. She doesn’t question me when I hand her the clothes, but instead, quickly dresses.

I reach out to her and she places her hand in mine. “We need to get outta here, darlin’.”

She gives a subtle nod. We leave the bathroom and hurry down the stairs. Passing through the kitchen, I see Earl face down in a puddle of blood. Ava’s breath catches and she pauses, her eyes wide and fixed on the gory mess.

“Don’t look at him,” I say, leading her to the foyer and straight out the front door.

The cold night air nearly takes my breath. Ava gasps and I pull her close to me, her damp hair sticking to my neck. It’s not until I open the door to my car that she really looks at me. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for saving me.”

And those words cut me. I didn’t save her. I broke her and she doesn’t even know it yet. Ushering her inside, I shut the door then jog over to the driver’s side and climb in. I immediately crank the engine, not waiting on it to warm up before I throw the gear into reverse and back out of the driveway.

We ride in silence. My hand rests on her thigh, my thumb gently drawing circles over her jeans. About a mile down the road she places her hand on top of mine and our fingers intertwine. “Don’t stop until the sun comes up,” she says. “I just want to see the light. I want to see the sunrise.”

And I drive, not knowing where the hell I am going. We keep barreling down the country highway until the dawn breaks, and as the sun rises above the horizon, painting the sky in that faint blue that so quickly turns to bright orange and pink, a soft cry slips through her lips.

I don’t want her to break anymore and I turn to look at her, surprised to find a deep smile on her face.

“I never thought I’d see the sun again.” Her smile widens. “I don’t think I will ever appreciate another sunrise the way I do this one.”

I pull the car over into an empty grocery store parking lot, park, and climb out of the car. And we just stand, she and I, watching as all of the darkness vanishes. Sometimes in life there are such subtle things that symbolize significant events, the thing is, we so rarely notice them. This moment, it’s one we both notice.