We Watched the City Burn

Chapter 2

Living life, waiting for it to end. Unsure of the time, or the season. Or who's voice you hear when the tree scrapes against your window late at night. Screaming the words that you'll never say, flicking and rolling your tongue as you fling the syllables around in your head, trying to figure out if it would ever make a difference. It's like living in slow motion, this existence. The pain takes longer to fade, either that, or one wound blends into the next; hardly enough time to recover before the next blow is dealt. 

You hold the man that beats you as he retches into the toilet, sick from too many bottles of the sour water. You tie his hair back as he spills everything he has to give, dragging him to bed when he is finished. Sitting in that rocking chair, your eyes on him, to make sure he doesn't choke in his drunken sleep.

Because, no matter how many times he hits you, he is still your father. He is all you have left. And being beaten every night is better than being alone. This, at least, is what I keep telling myself.

I take a deep breathe, and release it slowly, so I sink to the bottom of the tub. The water is too hot, but I like it this way, it's how my mother would fix my baths every night, too hot, but with lots of bubbles. I don't have bubbles now, instead I see the bruises, fresh and old alike, splashed across my skin. I am nearly grown now, just seventeen. So close to freedom I can taste it. But I don't know why I want freedom if I have no dream, no plans for my future.

How do I plan when I cannot tell the time? Can no longer name the seasons, but only know the passing of time by the shade of the marks he leaves on my body. How can a life be planned by those measures?  How can a life mean anything, if it is only marked by this hate?

I come up for air, waiting until my lungs burn and beg. I gasp and drink in the steam that dances around me, fogging up the mirror and making me sweat. I brush my dark hair from my eyes, the colors and designs of my tattoos flashing into my vision.  

A Koi Fish, red in color with swirls and splashing water around him, he swims from  my left wrist to my elbow, enjoying the bath.  A trio of black stars are glowing on my right wrist, they remind me of space, of damsels that need to be saved from deep-space evils. They remind me to have adventures when I am free, regardless if I have no plans for what comes. 

My father, a fan of the art of tattooing, went with me to get my own pieces done. Watching me with a set jaw while the man worked over me, the hum of the gun oddly soothing. It passed quickly for me, quietly as well. I know pain too well to cry out when it bites. I have been taught to take the burn in silence, to push through it and how to care for my broken body.

The only difference between my father's fists, and the gun, was the art that it left behind. A light in my dark, abysmal life.  This was art that he could not take from me, unlike a piercing, or a ring in my ear. He could not rip it from my body, scaring me for life with the gash it left behind. This art, this light, was a part of me now. It always would be, no matter what darkness fell around me.

I stared at the ceiling, humming a song, singing softly to myself the words from London After Midnight's Nightmare.

"As she grew pale, as white as a flower, she collapsed on the floor. And was dead in an hour," my voice as soft as the steam, the lapping water around me. A rare ripple of sound, my throat burns, sore from lack of use. I do not speak, at least, not where I can be heard. My voice is only for me. A precious gem that only I can hold in my hands.

No one else deserves the sound, or the words I keep hidden inside myself. I find value in secrets, in secret stories and hopes. One day, I will have so many secrets that I will be carried away by them. As if I were being lifted into the air be a thousand helium-filled balloons, carried high above the Earth. Above the clouds. Into the stars, carried worlds away from all of this pain. From the smell of whiskey and cigars, from the guilt, from the memories. Only my hopes and I, high up in the stars. Dancing with the moon.