*Being Published in 2022*
❝You can't deny that you're attracted to me, Nyx. Instead of fighting it, let's see what happens,❞ he grumbled, hands roaming my body. His thumb brushed my bottom lip. ❝Open up for me, baby.❞
...
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I felt that prickling sensation on my skin and I knew somebody was staring at me. I could feel it. There was a soft touch sweeping against my cheek, the very cheek that Melissa slapped. Memories of last night infiltrated my thoughts, and I repressed a shudder. I could still see the amusement in her eyes when she apprehended I wouldn't retaliate. And for a second, for a split second, I was being admonished by my dad again.
It was an out-of-body experience. With one tiny slap, Melissa unearthed a tsunami of buried emotions. Each time my dad raised his hands, I never reacted, took that fear and buried it six feet under the ground. And I trampled on it every day, refusing to be a victim. Never again would I flinch, never again would I cry at the hands of a monster, a bully. The last time I flinched at my father's brutal touch, I was ten years old.
Now I was nineteen, and all that emotions were hurrying back, dead-set on asphyxiating me. A feeling of fear built in my chest. I loathed it, didn't want it. Fear had no right to be inside of me. I felt violated by it. But it was there, nonetheless. I could feel myself disintegrating, the stray pieces being fashioned into that scared little girl with the blonde pigtails and sparkling blue eyes. My closed eyelids acted as a screen, and my memories played out before me. I could see that blonde little girl fleeing to the bathroom to hide. I could see Annie hastening after her, a three-year-old Poppy wailing in her arms. I observed them cluster on the tile, a blanket swathed around them.
Seconds later, a frail woman fell through the door, skin bruised and eyes swollen. She looked like me. And I hated it. I watched her fall to the floor with her three daughters, thin arms binding around them in a makeshift fortress. But it couldn't stop the inebriated man that blundered into the bathroom next. He was yelling, face red, and a bottle of whiskey in his hands. The bottle tumbled to the floor, and he prowled forward, yanking at the pigtails belonging to little Nyx.
Annie screeched until her throat was raw, holding Poppy to her chest as Eliza shouted at her husband, urging him to let little Nyx go. Eliza launched to her feet, ready to battle the man for her daughter, but he jostled her back and her head banged against the bathtub. And she was out cold. Annie implored him to leave her sister alone, Poppy still clutched to her small chest. But he didn't.
He was furious, and I knew why, could remember that day so clearly. Little Nyx had emptied all of his alcohol down the drain. She thought that if she got rid of the liquor that turned her dad into the monster that maltreated them, he'd be restored. But she was so naïve. Because it wasn't the liquor that made him a monster. He just was.
The intoxicated man hauled her to the kitchen by her hair and she cried for her mommy, for her sisters. But they couldn't go after her because he'd locked them in the bathroom. Little Nyx was frightened. Her dad filled the sink with ice-cold water and settled her on a broken stool. Daddy, please, she'd pleaded, tears gushing down her chubby face. But her daddy was long gone, substituted with this void of a human being. He clawed his hand into her hair, cupping the back of her head. Daddy, please, she whispered, blue eyes glowing with tears.
