I Chose to Die (Siren Suicides, Book 1)

Chapter 3. Bathroom Door

The wide expanse of the back of my father's hand nears me as if in slow motion. I can see his meticulously manicured nails, a few hairs at the bend of his wrist, his titanium Panerai watch showing a few minutes past six in the morning—all peeking out from the cuff of his silken maroon pajamas. Kicked up from the floor by his handcrafted, Italian leather slippers, a million dust particles swirl and dance in the air, reflecting the early morning light and forming a tunnel of movement for his hand to follow. Aimed at me. Aimed at my face. Aimed at beating sense into me so I won't turn out like my mother. As if it wants to say, You thought you could play a joke on me, did you?

Smack!

His hand strikes my left cheek and my head comes alive with livid fire. I convulse in a bout of coughing, sputtering water out of my lungs. My throat and mouth burn with a scorching sensation of chlorinated liquid rushing out. Every breath brings pain and a low whizzing noise. I try to swallow, but it hurts. I try to stand up and promptly recede into dizziness. The bathroom doesn't just double-spin against me, it seems to turn inside out and fold onto itself in consecutive waves. A pulsing rhythm matching my heartbeat.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Papa yells into my ear. "Answer me."

Perhaps there was a time when my head and my brain were one. Not anymore. My brain floats on its own in my skull, a mere container for its syrupy presence. It sloshes to the side as I tilt my head in an attempt to hide from his yelling. Every syllable, every word that flies off my father's lips, threatens to pierce my sanity and explode my head into a million little pieces.

I don't need to listen to what he says, it's the usual concoction. A string upon a string of swear words and accusations and warnings that one day, you just wait, one day you'll turn out just like your mother. Nothing will ever become of you. Would you look at what you did. You made me break my bathroom door. Do you even know how much a door costs? How much it costs to replace the lock? To fill in holes in the wall and to paint it?

All I see is his mouth opening and closing, his thin lips stretching over his teeth in a dance of forceful monologue that's supposed to teach me, to do me good, to help raise me in such a way that I manage to survive in this world, as a woman. Because, in Papa's eyes, women are second class. Women are weak creatures who need to be controlled lest they decide to charm off men's pants and make them do stupid shit. They corrupt men's very spirits. I don't just stop listening to him drone on and on, I even stop listening to my own thoughts repeating to me automatically what I have heard so many times.

I'm really good at tuning things out, years of practice pay off. My focus shifts to the door. It lies on the tiled floor, its oak paneling covered with a layer of white particle board dust. I feel sorry for my only refuge, the only room that can't be locked anymore. And I want out. Out of this room, out of this house. I want to run away and never come back, like mom did on that rainy September morning.

"Did you hear what I said?" Papa's voice jerks me from my moment of contemplation. Out of habit, without being fully present, I play along.

"Yes, I did," I say, shifting my gaze to Canosa, making sure she doesn't move. Suddenly, I have a hard time suppressing the urge to jump out of the tub and look at the marble sirens, touch their marble faces to confirm that I haven't gone insane.

"Then, please, explain to me what this is doing in my bathroom?" Papa shoves his hand under my face.

I make myself look up, wincing at the searing pain that starts at my eyelids and continues crawling under my eyeballs and beyond them, directly into my brain, ramming two metal spikes with every blink. I smell it before I see it and I know what he's found. Papa's unturned palm displays three joint stubs, twisted and stuck to the top of the crushed soda can that I didn't even care to dispose of because, by now, I was supposed to be dead. Every ounce of pain vanishes, swept away by the terror of being caught.