HIS SALVATION

Chapter 18

And for a while, they succeeded.

Salem walked through life, an empty shell of the girl she once was.

Hurt, bruised, lonely... so lonely...and powerless.

          Power.

Maybe it was also what it really came down to in the end.

Her father liked holding all the power over her, but above all, he loved stripping her of hers.

He tried to cage her, to drain her of her worth and beat her down to nothing with relentless fists of words and hands of steel that broke her bones and bruised her skin.

He tried to drown her in the storm of his own anger, pain, and depravity fueled by liters of cheap whiskey and stale beer.

He wanted to bend her until she broke, until she laid at his feet in a pile of shallow ruins, surrounded by his darkness and finally missing the light she held inside - the one he hated so much.

He liked her tears.

He liked her pain.

And he prided himself on the fact that he was the one that caused them.

He stripped her of everything she was, and in the end, there wasn't a part of herself that she owned.

He had everything.... her body, her pain, her emotions...

Coincidentally, the first choice she made over her life stripped him of his pleasure. It wasn't even entirely conscious at first, and she certainly didn't realize it would tip the balance off.

She just refused to cry.

At least, not in front of him.

She refused to let him see her tears, to let him see her pain. She stopped begging for an end to the living nightmares he created every day. She caged everything inside and carved out that little chest in the back of her heart, storing her emotions safely away until she was just... blank.

And boy, did it piss him off.

And fuck did it hurt even worse! Because hiding it didn't mean she didn't feel anymore, and keeping it inside gave her no outlet for her pain. No tears to wash away her sorrows, no screams to throw her anger, frustration, and helplessness away...

The second time she won back another part of herself against him was when she realized that it wasn't her fault.

It was also that day she understood that power and control didn't have to mean winning over him, but winning for her.

Any dreams she had of his apologies, his fallout, his pleading, his tears were nothing in the end because they didn't involve her feelings, and they still included him.

That day, she learned that sometimes power and control over your life didn't always mean winning the fight, but knowing when to walk away.

So, she did.

She waited. She ran. She drove. And then, she was finally out. Not entirely free of pain, or hurt, because that is not what life is about... and Salem desperately wanted to live, but free to mess up on her own and free to get hurt as a result of her own actions or mistakes and not at the will of a monster who took out his anger and regrets on her.

And she did it. She built a life for herself, and she made choices, and she made mistakes, and she fell, and she got hurt, but it was oh so worth it because she finally had a choice over her life.