D-Topia ~ One

… Continued …

Gareth stared me perfectly in the eyes, trapping and holding my gaze like some sort of evil hypnotist; I was powerless to glance away. He proceeded, in a very controlled, purposefully calm voice – which completely belied the waves of barely contained rage rolling off his taut frame – and promised, in a voice devoid of anything, “If you ever try something that stupid with me again, little Sasha, you will regret it very, very much.” His speech was punctuated by a large drop of blood, from the wounds I had inflicted, falling from his face and splashing grotesquely onto the side of my jaw, making me flinch, then continuing its travels down my neck, mirroring the line of my jugular vein; I shuddered in revulsion.

I focused on his words rather than envisioning the path of his blood on my skin; not very terrifying words, in and of themselves, but I had absolutely no doubt that he meant every single one of them – with an unshakably firm resolve – and I was terrified. I couldn’t even hold back the tremors that wracked my body.

He made certain that I continued to maintain eye contact as he slowly lowered his mouth those last few inches onto mine and kissed me. It was a warning – a power play – that made me aware, like nothing else could have, that I didn’t have any. If he wanted something from me he would take it, end of story.

I was shocked – and utterly betrayed – to learn, just then, that my body didn’t give a rat’s ass how much my mind hated this man. I tore my lips away from his, turning my head aside, spitting, and wishing that I could erase this – my first kiss – as easily as I could wipe my mouth off on the couch cushion, but there’s no going back from that. I hated that he’d corrupted something that was supposed to be so special, even as my traitorous nipples hardened with their first lustful awakening and my womb began a confusing, aching throb.

I was sickened by myself, embarrassed by my body’s reaction, confused, exhilarated, and so filled with rage – both at myself and at him – that I wanted to throw-up from all of the swirling emotions, but beyond all else, I needed to escape. I began to buck and twist in a frenzied panic, trying desperately to gain my release.

He held me down easily until all my fight had run out, and I collapsed, panting in exhaustion, my body spent. Then he calmly and slowly released me, making sure that every inch of him rubbed against me as he rose up off of my body. The malicious smirk on his face was as far as my gaze would travel. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to meet his eyes again.

Finding a last desperate bit of strength, I scrambled up from the couch and pushed quickly past him to the front door, but not before I felt the resounding smack of his large, open palm on my ass cheek. I yelped, and scrambled out through the door.

I ran farther and faster than I ever had before, and didn’t stop until I found a safe place to hide, away from everyone and everything. I stayed in the woods for five full days before my hunger, and the cold wind and rain forced me to find my frozen way back home.

By the time I got back he had already begun the slow process of poisoning my mother’s brain and heart against me, manufacturing believable tales of my willful and wild behavior, depositing them into her weak brain, and holding her close, consoling her, while she cried about the loss of the sweet innocent child she had once nurtured so lovingly – I imagine that’s how she saw it anyway.

I ignored Gareth as much as I could: avoiding him, staying out of his way, and keeping my head down. But I rebelled in small ways, with passive aggressive things, like partially severed boot laces that were bound to give out at the most inopportune moments, a red sock in with his snug white t-shirts, or only leaving a few squares of toilet paper on the role when I knew he was about to need the bathroom – things that couldn’t, with any degree of certainty, be pinned on me.

He was a pretty canny man; he knew what I was doing, and he retaliated by finding excuses to roam around the house barely clad: like the time he marched up to me, while I was seated at the dining room table eating cereal, still glistening wet from his shower and with just a washcloth cupped to his front – completely bare-assed, and said, ‘if you wanted to see me naked, sweetheart, all you had to do was ask. No need to steal all of the towels.’ I hadn’t done that. I never would have done that.

I had choked on my cereal then but couldn’t make the image of his taut behind, as he walked away towards the laundry room, leave my head for weeks. Weeks of tortured agony and frustration, weeks of sleepless nights – afraid to shut my eyes and dream of his glistening body revealing things to me that I didn’t want to understand.

The worst was when he would catch me unawares and ‘accidentally’ brush his body up against mine, as he reached into a cupboard or slid past me in the narrow hall, causing goose flesh, embarrassment and unadulterated rage. I had to learn a restraint beyond my years to keep from responding with fists and nails.

It was an untenable situation – him knowing that his body had this ability to affect mine, while I hated him and knew full well that he hated me in return, and yet was powerless not to feel this unwelcome attraction. I knew he wasn’t attracted to me, a twelve year old girl barely into puberty; he was only attracted to breaking my spirit because I had dared to challenge him. I knew the only reason he had kissed me was to ‘put me in my place’. That somehow made my unwanted attraction to him even worse.

I began to grow slowly sick on the inside, becoming emotionally cold in an effort to avoid feeling the pain of being slowly severed from my mother’s love, and also because: if my body could betray me so completely, and I could feel that way, about that man, then feelings had no place in my life, and would need to extracted with final, surgical precision.

The destruction was a cyclical drawn out event, my mother watched me withdraw more and more, receding deeper into myself, and in her terror of being left completely alone, she let this handsome man infiltrate her life – insinuating himself into all of the openings he was manufacturing with his devious machinations and subtle manipulations – and destroy our bond completely. It didn’t happen all at once, but by the time her liver gave out a little over two years later, she’d already been dead to me for quite some time.

I don’t know why he kept me. Perhaps to relish his power over me, perhaps because in his own way he really did love my mother and felt he owed her this small thing. I don’t know, but what I did know, was that I would not be kept for long. Not by him.

I hadn’t been just biding my time quietly, and waiting to be kicked out on my ass in the cold. I had been studying and planning for the time when I must leave. I taught myself wilderness skills. I grabbed any books that I could, from the library, on any subjects I thought might come in handy: wilderness survival, first aid, edible and poisonous wild plants, medicinal herbs, trapping and fishing, subsistence living, disaster preparedness, end of days – anything.

I began jogging, and strength training in the mornings before school. I made friends with people who had skills I wanted – even the class delinquent who was wicked with a set of throwing knives. I think it secretly amused him when I followed him around after school for a whole week – after I’d caught him practicing on the couch in the student lounge – refusing to be afraid of him, begging him to teach me to throw and refusing to take no for an answer. I threatened to narc on him, he said he didn’t give a fuck, but that he was bored, so what the hell.

I had also gotten a part time job, under the table, and rented a storage unit – on the sly – slowly filling it with the gear and supplies I would need when I made my break.

My routine became precise and regimented. I exercised in the morning – my body slowly starting to grow in height, in strength, in endurance, and in discipline – then went to school during the day and from school straight to work, then from work to home, where I studied my books with a feverish intensity. I absorbed them like a sponge; devoured their contents like they were the last morsel of food I’d ever eat: like my life depended on it – because likely it would, at some point in the not too far off future.

I was more right than I had known at the time.

…TBC…

© 2015 Kat Crimson