The Dark Light of Day (9 page)

He moves his hand to my waist and over to my stomach pulling me around to lay flat on my back.

The time is now.

I pull the mirror out from under my pillow, and as he pushes me down flat onto the mattress, and while his attentions are upon my naked body, I aim for his left eye, hard and fast, and don’t stop pushing in until my hand meets resistance.

Thunder muffles his screams. He coughs and produces a red spatter on the white wall, choking on the blood spilling into his mouth. He clutches what is left of his eye as he falls over on his knees to the floor.

I run from the room, still holding my squirrel, and then out the front door and into the awaiting storm. Why was I ever afraid of the storm? Out here it is just wind and rain, the real storm is back in that house, a house I vow right then and there I will never see the inside of ever again.

I run until I reach the vacant field at the end of the street. I no longer care that I am naked. I no longer care about anything. I stand in the middle of that field and raise my arms up to the storm, giving myself over to it. The cold rain rinses the blood from my body, and I pray that the blowing winds will take me away.

Now, I am no longer a nine year old girl, but my seventeen-year-old self. Still naked in the middle of the field, still asking to be taken from this
life.

The wind responds by carrying me up in its embrace, and in an instant I float out of this life and out of this world.

“Are you a virgin?” a voice asks. “Because I don’t want to have to be gentle with you.”

Fear assaults me at first, the pounding in my chest so hard it turns painful, but then I realize that although the words are similar, the voice is not. This one is much younger, less weathered, although it sounds strained.

The wind dies down quickly, suddenly dropping me from its embrace. I start to fall, slow at first then faster and faster as I plummet back toward the earth.

Right before I crash into the very field where I was rescued by the
storm, I see a face appear.

Jake.

What is he doing here? Just as quickly as his face appears, it disappears.

An eerie calm washes over me.

The hurt is gone, and I feel… good.

Too good.

***

I didn’t wake up right away. I let the unfamiliar good feeling take over for a minute or two. But as the pulling sensation intensified in my lower stomach, a familiar burning started to replace it. As the heat grew, I was coaxed further and further out of my dream…and smack dab into a cluster-fuck of a situation.

I was surprised to see Owen—or feel him, rather. He was on top
of me, supporting most of his weight on his elbows, which were
caging me in, resting on the mattress on either side of my head. My knees were spread apart. Owen’s hips were grinding against mine. White-hot anger flashed behind my eyes. A quick mental inventory told me
that I was still fully clothed, my shirt still firmly in place, and
thankfully Owen still had his boxers on. He ran his mouth up and down my neck from my ear to my collarbone, nipping and sucking at my skin.

The true cause of the new sensations pooling deep in my belly had been the result of Owen rubbing the hardness between his legs against the most sensitive part of my body, just under the thin fabric of my shorts.

Owen whispered in my ear, “You have no idea how much I
want you Abby. I’m going to make you feel real good baby. Gonna make
you scream my name real loud when you come.” The friction
between my legs caused the tension in my stomach to grow.

In the battle between pain and unwelcome pleasure, pain would always win.

Even in sleep, my body had been responding to his touch, while my mind…well, my mind was
pissed
. And my skin was on fire.

I used both of my hands to push hard on Owen’s chest. He fell
sideways onto the bed. “What the fuck, Owen?” I screamed. I
jumped from the bed and found my boots. I smashed my feet into them, then found my backpack and threw it over my shoulders. I raced for the
door. Owen was behind me in an instant. He wrapped his arms
around my waist, pulling me against him. I could feel his hardness against my back. My skin felt like it was going to blister off. I struggled to get free from his grip, but he held me tighter, digging his fingers into my shoulders. When he leaned down to press his lips to my neck, I took the opportunity to elbow him in the ribs.

“Fuck!” he yelped, releasing me and gripping his side. “You
wanted it, you bitch. You were moaning like a goddamned whore!” Owen stood up straight and looked me in the eye. I carefully backed away,
toward the door. The look from earlier was back now. His pupils
were
small and the whites of his eyes were tinted red, like he was
straining for some sort of control. This was the Owen from the truck, the
angry, jealous one. All traces of the helpful friend I was stupid
enough
to think I had were gone. This person was some sort of monster. There was no apology in his tone, no remorse for what he’d almost
done.

“I was sleeping! You thought it was a good idea to try to fuck a drunk, high,
sleeping
girl!”

“No! I thought it was a good idea to fuck YOU and give you what I know you want—what we
both
want.” He spat between his teeth and lunged for me as I opened the door, he caught me by the legs, and I fell forward, smashing my jaw on the threshold. I kicked my foot out of his grip and managed to right myself as I ran out the
door. Owen reached out to me from behind, but I turned and slammed the door as hard as I could, smashing his hand in the process.

The motion lights turned on, illuminating the house and the
grounds around it. I ran as fast as my legs would take me into the safety of the darkness.

“
Abby, you bitch!
” Owen wailed in the distance.

I reached down into my boot and grabbed my knife, then kept running down the road. If he decided to chase me, I was going to be ready for him.

I should never have agreed to stay with him. I tried to tell myself that he’d offered it because he wanted to genuinely help me out and
be my friend. I should have listened to my instincts to stay away earlier when he was breathing fire because some other raging
sociopath knew my name. It was odd that my thoughts even went to Jake, because something occurred to me in the moment after I fled Owen’s house. I felt safer staring down the barrel of Jake’s gun than I did looking into Owen’s eyes.

It’s amazing what poor judgment you can have when your
options are limited to practically nothing.

I SLOWED TO A WALK
somewhere between the two-and-a-half mile span between the Fletcher family compound and the rest of the town. Clouds shut out the natural light from the moon and stars. Crickets chirped, and the occasional coyote howled. The shell road crunched beneath my boots.

My grand plan was to head back to Nan’s, slit the screen on the back porch, and sleep there for the rest of the night. Morning wasn’t too far away. I would have to come up with another plan by then. Going back into foster care wasn’t an option. I would do something that would send me to prison, before I would allow them to put me back in the system.

I was pretty sure it was about four in the morning, and I
estimated it would take at least an hour to get to Nan’s, if not longer. It gave me plenty of time to berate myself over and over for making one bad decision after another.

The breeze helped to cool my skin, the fire died down with each step I took. I hated that Owen had touched me. I hated that my body responded without my consent.

I hated that I hadn’t been able to reach my fucking knife.

Why was Owen even interested in me anyway? I wore baggy hoodies or long sleeved t-shirts. I never put on makeup. I didn’t put
myself out there like the other girls in this town. Up until very
recently, I was blissfully invisible.

Until Owen.

I wasn’t even given a choice in the matter, and what was worse
was that my body liked it, wanted it even. “Fucking traitor,” I
whispered.
The thing that really bothered me was that I had been coming around to Owen. He was sweet and nice when he wanted to be, and he wasn’t too bad to look at, either. If he would’ve just given me
time, then maybe…

No. Not even with time.

I just wasn’t built that way. No amount of time would make me want something I detested so much.

Anyway, it seemed that my desires were apparently very limited to “narrowly being raped” because before that, I’d barely felt even a trickle of desire... except maybe for a certain blonde with a penchant for leather.

Great
.

I wondered if there was a box to check for my neurosis on
Match.com. I wouldn’t know, it’s not like I had a computer. Shit, maybe if Owen had really gone for it, I’d have had the time of my life. In my head, I was yelling at myself. If anything, the incident just proved that not only was I one fucked-up cookie, but I needed to build a bigger wall of defense.

One with cannons and guards with big guns.

Of course, it was the moment I was thinking about guns of all things that the ground beneath my feet started to quake, the loose
shell rattled around my feet. A single bright light illuminated the
night, temporarily blinding me as the motorcycle that was heading right toward me slowed to a stop beside me in the road.

Jake cut the engine and removed clear-lensed goggles from his eyes, but I kept walking. “Little late for a walk of shame, don’t you think?”

“You have no idea,” I said. I wanted to be offended by what he insinuated, but I wasn’t blind to what this looked like: a disheveled mess of a teenaged girl walking home before dawn after attending a party. I would have thought the same thing.

In an instant, he was off his bike and keeping pace beside me. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one taking a deep drag.

“Why are you out and about? Are you doing the
ride
of shame, or did you have to pop a cap in someone’s ass?” He held out the pack of cigarettes toward me. “No, thanks. I don’t smoke.” He raised a brow at me. “Cigarettes,” I added. He opened his pack and pulled out a joint instead. Then, he lit it and handed it over to me.

What did this guy want?

“Why are you being nice to me?” I took the joint from him,
careful not to touch his fingers. “If you feel bad about the gun thing, don’t. I would have done the same thing if someone broke into my
place.”

“I’m not nice.” Jake took another drag of his cigarette and gave me a small smile. It was the same way I saw him in my dream.

“But, you are being nice to me,” I corrected him. He ignored me.

“You need a ride?” he asked. I stopped walking and took
another hit from the joint. Jake stopped next to me. I held the smoke in as long as possible. “That kind of night?”

I just shrugged and let my high round off some of the sharp corners of the pain I’d experienced that evening.

“Town is a ways away, and on the off chance you don’t get hit by a car you will probably be eaten by either wild boar, coyotes, or at the very least these fucking annoying pterodactyl mosquitoes.”

“Well, aren’t you the eternal optimist.”

“Are you always this sarcastic?” he asked.

“Yes, but usually in my head. Around you, the words just seem
to come faster and more…” I was trying to think of the word.
“...wise-asser.”

I took another hit and passed the joint to him. “Good word,” Jake said. He stomped out his cigarette in the dirt and took a hit of the joint. “I guess I bring out the best in you then.”

“Why do you carry a gun?”

“Dangerous people out there.” He looked down at his feet.

“Like who?” I knew who was dangerous to me. The question
was about who was dangerous to him.

“How about we save the twenty questions for another time, and you let me take you home so I am not responsible for your untimely death by rabid raccoon?”

“I thought it was mosquitoes that would be my undoing.”

“That, too.” His stiffness slowly faded away with the change in conversation.

“All right,” I said. “Get me out of here, please.” I bent down and
scratched my thighs. The mosquitoes had already done some
damage.

“This way, then.” He gestured with a sweep of his arm, back to where he’d parked his bike.

The moon and the stars had just started to peek out from behind the clouds, finally shedding some much-needed light on the very dark night as we turned around and headed back to his bike.

“You are just going to take me home right?” I asked. After the events of the evening, I felt like I had to ask. Not that this guy would try anything with me, anyway. I was the girl he’d caught sleeping in his junkyard, after all.

When we reached his bike, he took the helmet off the seat and
handed it to me. “If you just want to go home, it’s gonna really ruin my plans to dismember you and feed you to the town’s people at the county fair,” he joked.

“Just thought I’d clarify,” I muttered. Jake reached for the strap under my helmet, and I flinched. “I can do it.”

His eyes went wide. “Bee,” he said slowly, “where the fuck did
you get all that?” He pointed to the bruise and the scrapes I had gotten on my chin when Owen had lunged for me at the door.

“Dodgeball.” It was none of his damn business. I must have been really tired by that point, because the most important thing about riding the bike seemed to have skipped past my thoughts altogether.