Train Game

Memory: Angelique

|--Memory: ANGELIQUE--|

‘‘Aaah, Angelique’‘ he growled into my ears night after night.

‘You were so beautiful on the stage today.’‘

‘‘You were like a mermaid in the recital!’‘

‘‘You aced another test!’‘

‘‘Well, I must reward you my dearest, Angelique.’‘

Night after night. Every excuse was valid to ‘reward’ me as he said.

Ever since mom’s death, he had felt obliged to keep me closer to him than ever before. He claimed that the need for me to sleep in his bed at night was to keep me safe from the kidnappers. He claimed that kidnappers liked little girls who had no mother. I was seven when I started sleeping in the same bed as this man. My mother had always told me to sleep in my own bed, that it was my only possession. This man had married my mother when I was five and had cared for me like a father. When he started making me sleep in his bed, I trusted him. He was the man who had supported my mother and I through the debts of the medical bill for her cancer.

Things were fine for the first three months. I slept on my side of the bed and he slept on his side. I had my blanket and so did he. Til the day of the fire.

We were sleeping soundly when a blast woke us up. I ran to the window with him and looked outside. A group of men dressed in black were throwing hand-made fire bombs at the house. The bombs would break through windows and blow up once inside a room. From the sounds of it, EVERY room was being very well taken care of.

We were lucky to have neighbours to call the police and come to our help inside the house. The firefighters arrived quickly and we were sent to the hospital. By the time the fire had been contained the house was a total loss. Jerry may have had enough cash to support medical bills but he didn’t have enough to support those remaining bills along with a brand new house of that luxury.

He managed to get a small wooden cabin a little outside of town with the basic furnishings. That was when the blanket sharing started. When the nights started getting colder, the cuddling started. On my eighth birthday Jerry announced that he had been promoted that same day. That with his new salary he’d be able to buy us a new place to live. Finally out of the mourning of my mother and into the joy a promotion he went out and partied. That night he came back with some girl and sent me to sleep on the couch. I couldn’t sleep that night from the sounds from the bedroom even if I had plugged my ears with a music player.

However, this girl started coming on a regular basis and she even started to move in. I now had the couch as a bed. Two months later we moved into an appartment where I got my own room. Money was coming back slowly, Sophie was kind to me and didn’t mind my silence and preference to books than shopping.

One night after we had barely finished unpacking, Sophie announced to us that she was pregnant. That night, Jerry came to sleep with me in my bed. His man’s self in my small body forced us close. He placed himself comfortably and held my back against his chest with my head on his arm. Once asleep his fingers started twitching and it caused my shirt to lift enough for his finger tips to touch my skin. His fingers froze for a moment and I closed my eyes, forcing my breath slow: he was not going to start stroking my skin, please, god, no.

His fingers started to trail my side, gently, almost unconsciously lifting my shirt more but he fell asleep again quickly. I somehow managed to calm myself down enough to sleep the rest of the night.

Sophie was surprised to find him sleeping with me in his arms in the morning. She claimed that at my age it wasn’t right for a man who wasn’t even my father to be sleeping in my bed. I pointed out that he was my father since he had signed the adoption papers when he married my mother. She asked about my father and I shrugged– no one knew who he was.