IT'S ME, MYSELF and a man.
I stand in a room with my nine year old self and the man my father left me with for the first time.
My father has just left us alone when the stranger begins to approach me- younger me. She stares up at the tall man in confusion. Her big, innocent doe eyes, look at him for any explanation. Instead of explaining, he puts his hand on her head, then drags it down her hair to eventually get to her cheek and cup it. "So pretty." He whispers with a hint of a smile.
She smiles at the compliment. I can hear what she's thinking, I like him. He's nice.
"You're a really beautiful girl, you know that?" He asks, this time louder. As if before he was speaking to himself, and now he's speaking to her.
"Thank you." She says, her voice so high pitched and young. Her smile only grows as she lifts her chin to examine him. "I like your hair. I wish my hair was blonde like that."
"I think your hair is perfect." The stranger observes. He releases her cheek, stepping back to look at her in full. She takes the opportunity to push some hair behind her ear.
"What's your name, sweetheart?" He doesn't look in her eyes, something little Maya is oblivious too. His eyes stay trained on her body.
"Mayella! What's your name sir?" She should've been scared. Or at least concerned. She was in an apartment alone, with someone she didn't know, who was asking her questions. We'd been taught stranger danger by our mother. But daddy brought her here. And if daddy thought it was safe, then it must have been.
"You can call me Stefan." She nods, watching as he walks towards her with a look she can't decipher. Only now can I describe it as lust.
"Do you like colours?" He asks, eyeing her unicorn, tie dye shirt.
"Of course!" She nods furiously. Nine year old me used to draw rainbows everywhere. "My favourite is pink...Or blue...Or yellow." The little girl furrows her eyebrows, trying to decide on a colour.
The man chuckles. "Well I have a painting in my room with all three of those colours. Would you like to see it?" She nods excitedly.
The next thing I know, I'm paralyzed in my spot as I watch her scream, cry and fight with everything inside her. She cries out for help, kicks as hard as she can, fights against the hand that bounds both of her wrists together and above her head, all while Stefan takes her innocence away.
With a flash of light, it's me, myself and Stefan. Only this time younger me is fourteen.
Dad had given her pain killers before she got here, he said it was to show her that he cared about her. That he needed the money but this would make it hurt less.
I watch my dad tell teenage me to go sit on the couch and wait for he and Stefan to be done there conversation by the elevator door.
What he doesn't know is that she can still hear them from the couch. You see, the man lived in a pent house, the elevator doors opened into his living room, where his couch stood only a few feet away"She won't scream this time?" The blond man asks.
"No. I gave her painkillers so she should be numb." My dad says, in a hushed tone, still loud enough for her to hear.
Stefan takes out some cash and hands it to our dad, who begins to count it. I eye the way her thigh bounces nervously. "Stop that." I tell her. She doesn't listen. She doesn't even acknowledge me. No one does. "Stop it!" I yell, but to no avail. They can't hear me.
Eventually, dad leaves and Stefan makes his way over. Eyes trained on her bouncing thigh. The action that the teenager is unaware shes doing, causes the sundress she's wearing to ride up.
I watch, unable to move, as he trails his hand up her exposed, bouncing thigh. I watch as he uses that hand to forcefully push her leg down to stop the bouncing. I watch him lean into her ear tells her not to be nervous.
I watch as he trails his hand higher, lifting the skirt with his fingers. I watch as he harshly grips her neck with the other hand to stop her squirming and I watch as I trails her underwear down her legs.
I jolt up in bed, clutching my heaving chest as I gasp for air. I look around the room. My dresser, my mirror, my bed.
My room. Not his.
҉
It's 11:07. Stefan just finished up with my dad and he's now staring down at me, as I sit on the couch and he stands between my parted legs.
I don't even bother to put on a show. Over the years I've tried any different things to help myself. Sometimes I would be really nice to get him to go easy on me, sometimes I would be a total bitch to turn him off... it never worked. So I've given up on trying. I stare at his lower chest, which is at face level, with a neutral expression. Exactly how I feel. Numb.
I took six painkillers before I left, triple what someone of my height and weight is supposed to take. But at least I'm numb. Mentally and physically. I can't feel my hands.
I'm in a sundress, no pants because those are always hard to get back on after. There also easier to ruin. I wore the bra, even though I didn't want to.
"Hey, sweetheart." He finally speaks, cupping my cheek like he's done every single time since I was nine.
He uses his hand to lift my face, forcing eye contact. I can't be bothered to look away, or plaster any emotion on my face. I blink lazily at him. "You want to tell me why you were there last night?" His soft tone and light touch is such a contrast to what I know will happen in only a couple of minutes.
If I lie, he'll know, If I deny, he's ask questions and I'm not interested in entertaining an argument of any kind so I tell him the truth. "You know dad doesn't work. It was extra money."
"Hm" he hums, his thumb absentmindedly rubbing my cheek bone back and fourth. If I could muster up any concern with the situation that's now second nature to me, I would recoil. "With what I'm paying him for you, rent should be good for a month."
"Dad doesn't pay rent. I do." I deadpan.
"Yes well, that's too bad isn't it?" But it's not a question. And it's not sympathetic either. "You don't tell Ian, or anyone for that matter anything about this arrangement, understand?" I nod. "Alright, now get to it."
I reach down, with heavy arms, to the hem of my dress, and just when I'm about to lift it over my hips, he stops me, "eyes on me, sweetheart." I do as I'm told.
I watch him with a bored face as I lift the yellow dress over my hips, then over my navel and I finally break eye contact when I pull it over my head. He blatantly stares at my chest. "You wore it."
"Mhm." I hum.
"Good, good." He whispers with a nod. His fingers moved to touch the material and toy with it. He wets his lips with his tongue, only then does he look back up to my face. "You know what to do." And I do. I get up and make my way to his room, where I'm going to be spending the next eleven hours and forty three minutes.
My body lies limply on the bed when he walks in. I don't look at him, I don't fight back, and I don't feel. Not as he undresses what's left of me, not as he violates me over and over again and not as he exits the room and hour later.
I don't make a move to get up, nor switch the position I'm in, on my back, watching the ceiling spin.
It's not until he comes back with a glass of water for me and himself do I space back into this world. I watch him set the glass down on the nightstand next to me and motion to it. I follow him with my eyes when he chugs his glass and leaves again.
He returns with two plates of food. I use food as very loose term. He has toast, reheated pancakes and bacon. While I have a mini slim Jim and a single cube of orange cheese.
Not that I'm complaining anyway, because I couldn't eat it even if I want to. I'd throw up if I did. "Eat." He says, his mouth stuffed with more bacon than it should be. I simply turn my head the other way. He sighs, "stop being a brat and eat."
"I'm not hungry." I mumble, not caring enough to raise my voice any higher.
"I don't care. If you don't eat you'll pass out and it'll cut into my time."
I don't sit up, instead I turn my head back around to meet his eye. "Will me throwing up cut into your time? Because that's what's going to happen if I eat that."
The next thing I know he's struck me with the back of his hand, his wedding ring cutting my cheek in the process. He's not even married anymore. Dad said the whole reason I needed to go in the first place was because his wife left him and he needed to be "satisfied."
I don't feel the stinging or the pins and needles that come with a slap, the only way I know it's been done is by the sound it creates, radiating off of my numb body.
I take a look at the food but the mere sight of it makes me gag. "I can't."
Stefan bends down and grips my chin so much force I can faintly feel it. "When did you become a disobedient whore?" All I can do is shrug, knowing I was going to be punished, but also knowing I won't feel it.
҉
It's 10:56 and Stefan has just finished with me. We took breaks but I don't remember much of the day if I'm honest. I spaced out for most of it. When I was on my back, I watched the ceiling spin. When I was on my stomach, I watched the wall spin.
The only thing I feel is dizzy. Not hunger, not pain, just dizziness. And even though I can't feel the pain, my body's automatic reaction when I finally get up from the bed and make my way to the bathroom, is to limp.
The first thing I do when I get to the bathroom is wipe all the fresh blood that's coming out of me and dripping down my thighs with some dry toilet paper. I take a new handful and wet it to wipe away the dried blood from earlier in the day.
Then I pee. Actually, I force any liquid in my bladder to come out. Only a few drops fall into the toilet but it's better than nothing.
I get up to wash my hands and watch my beat up body spin in the mirror. Todays punishment focused on my body, so my face only has a cut on its right side and a bruise on its left. My abdomen is a different story but I try not to look at it.
It's riddled with green and yellow bruises that I know will turn purple and black by tomorrow. I think I have a broken rib, so I'll have to wrap it again when I get home.
I don't take the time to fuss over it because I need to be outside the building and ready in three minutes.
Stefan doesn't like to look to me after and my dad doesn't see the point of coming in if he's not going to speak to him, so ever since I was eleven, they came up with this system.
Stefan would stop early and I had five minutes to fix myself up in anyway I wished to, before I had to be downstairs by the back door for my dad to pick me up.
I'm still not in immense pain but the second dose of pain killers I took is starting to wear off. I cant bend down to pull my underwear up, so I leave them there.
When I'm done, I limp out of the bathroom, towards the elevator. I hear tsks from behind me. "Take the stairs." I turn my head to Stefan, who has his back to me, looking out the window.
"Wha- but-" i stutter, "we're on the twenty fifth floor." Yeah Stefan was a bad guy, but surely he wouldn't make me walk down twenty five flights of stairs after he'd spent the last twelve hours torturing me.
"When you don't listen you get punished." He says as if it's the simplest thing in the world. As if he hadn't just raped and beaten me. As if I hadn't already been punished for not being hungry.
Anger bubbles in my chest. The first emotion I've felt since I took the painkillers. I try to suppress it, to bite my tongue, but i can't help it. "You don't think you've punished me enough?" I ask, motioning to myself.
He visibly tenses before turning around and walking towards me. He looks at me with so much rage in his eyes that I have to take a step back. "Clearly not if you're going to speak to me like that. When I say something you do it. That's how this works. You're obedient and I pay your father for whatever fucking drugs he's hooked on that particular day. Got it?"
I nod because if I don't, he'd probably throw me down the stairs.
As I slowly limp down the stairs, something in my now almost sober head clicks.
"You don't tell Ian, or anyone for that matter anything about this arrangement, understand?"
"Killian." He finally replies.
"People call you Ian though, right? That's what Micah calls you."
"That's what my friends call me." He looks up at me in a way that tells me I'm not his friend and that I'm not to call him that.
Friends.
☄︎⋆ ༘
This chapter was so hard to write. I'm so exited because we're finally almost done building the plot.
Thoughts on what you think will happen?