Pretty Little Bones

I've Been Dying to Tell You Anything You Want to Hear

I've Been Dying to Tell You Anything You Want to Hear 

Ava didn't wear her emotions on her face and she sure as hell didn't give them life through words.

She stopped doing that after her aunt's husband nearly broke her nose when she started acting out at school. She was five.

It was fucked up just how poetic his torture became. It was so sick it was perfect.

One of the worst things about him wasn't what he did to Ava; it was how he managed to keep doing it to Ava. It was how he put a leash on her and anytime she started feeling comfortable it became a noose he would string over a tree branch so he could watch her hang herself.

As repulsive as he was, I had to give him credit: he was smart.

He knew exactly what to do and what to say to keep Ava from talking. After a while it wasn't Ava's choice to keep her emotions as far from the surface as she could get them. If she didn't he would have killed her. I never doubted that.

Most people started small, leaving room to grow. He started by putting her in the emergency room and finished with her in the intensive care unit, incapable of walking for two weeks.

And no one did a goddamn thing, because he was good at controlling her and she was good at lying. It was almost beautiful the way their relationship worked like some sort of twisted circle of life bullshit.

As far as I knew, this cycle of torment started because Ava cried every day of Kindergarten and complained that she didn't want to go home after school with her aunt. Afraid of the attention she was gathering from our teacher, her aunt's husband told Ava she had to stop, or he'd have to punish her.

When she didn't listen, he started tying her up when they'd play their little game in the bedroom. If she couldn't act like a kid, he wasn't going to treat her like one.

I remember the first time she told me about it. Looking back, I realized that he got off on it, but at the time, it didn't make sense to me. Even the mutts taking up residence in my barn had more freedom than that man gave Ava. He was treating her like an animal—like the bitch he told her she was—when she hadn't done anything wrong.

He'd bind her wrists with duct tape, sometimes in front of her, sometimes behind her back, but he always left her feet free. It was too hard to get her pants off otherwise.

She wore bracelets as often as she could, to cover the pink tinge of her pale skin after days when she'd struggled hard. Although she already had an obsession for wearing jackets in the summer, the duct tape rings built the foundation for her attachments to her hairbands.

Sometimes when we'd play fight and I'd pin her wrists, she'd panic. Countless times our laughter turned to Ava gasping for air and forfeiting the fight to me, so she could try to stop the tears. Because of that, I didn't win any more fights after she turned six. It was worth the humiliation of being beaten by someone less than half my size if it let her feel like she was in control.

She was in control of a lot more than she ever knew. We all saw the symptoms, but we didn't do anything. She controlled everyone by making us think they were her quirks when they were lies.

On his birthday he tied her to his bedframe and that was harder to hide. She made up a lie about a jump rope that no one really believed, but didn't have enough suspicion to challenge.

All she'd say to me was that it hurt. And he hadn't made her wear the duct tape on her mouth, but she wished he had.

That was when her head started getting all fucked up. That was when he started breaking her.