"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
— Vladimir Nabokov
THIRTY SEVEN
IT WAS GRIEF that had sewn my mouth shut tight. Diana had looked at me, straight into my within, and told me she wished I had died. There was no greater sorrow than hearing those words leave the lips of the only person you loved in the entire world. I physically had to hold on to the chair to stop myself from falling apart in front of all three of my abusers.
Everything in the room began to move in slow motion.
"That's enough." Mirabel said sharply, frustrated that her moment was being taken away from her. "Frank is the least of my concerns at this moment, and your sister feud carries even lesser weight."
Slowly, because it was beginning to take effort to even breathe, I questioned. "What do you want from me?"
A little maniacally, she grinned.
Then she looked at Hank, and he smiled back in a way that told me that they had formed an unspoken narrative regarding what was going to happen to me. Hank moved from the door, certain that none of us were going to attempt an escape and stood beside Mirabel.
They looked oddly similar.
"You'll find out." Hank said.
"But first," Mirabel taunted. "I want you to know how it all began."
MIRABEL
MIRABEL FELT LIKE she were trapped between a rock and a hard place. She knew she had endured more than she could possibly handle, and she could tell that the weight of her actions were severely damaging her.
She had lost a significant amount of weight. She no longer laughed, and she seldom smiled. Yet, her heart was set on one thing alone. Her mind might have been unstoppable, but her heart was an immovable. Nothing could stop her. Not even the sheer amount of grief that her actions were causing the people she loved.
Her love, quite literally and pathetically, conquered all.
"You said you loved me, Damien." Mirabel repeated, her voice trembling from desperation. She hated feeling like this, but her love was sickening. "Where are you going?"
Damien was scowling. His fingers were frozen on the door knob of her house. She could tell from the paleness of his fingers that he was using it as a restraint. "Work. I'm going to work."
What he was holding himself back from, she would never know. "When are you going to tell Amelia?" She muttered, aware that the question would ignite a flame within him that she had tried and failed to sunder.
She hated when her words burnt him, but it was a Friday. Mirabel had come to hate Fridays so much that it made her distressed enough to physically ache.
As she had anticipated, Damiens face twisted. He spun around to face her in a kind of rage. "Tell her?" He hissed, poisonous like ivy. "Tell her what."
She almost scoffed. His aggression did nothing to intimidate her. She was insane enough to challenge him. "About my son, Damien."
Every time Mirabel remembered the heinous act that Damien had committed against her, she was overwhelmed with emotions that she could never comprehend. She had remembered feeling like a part of her had died. She remembered the grief. She remembered wanting to hate him, and crying at the thought that she couldn't.
Of course, she couldn't. He had taken everything away from her and left her to depend solely on him. She was like a man lost at sea, and Damien was the raft that she took refuge in. He was all she had left in this world. Damien had easily become the light of her life. He was her sin and her soul. He was her everything.
If he asked her to do anything, she would do it. It was why she agreed, after months of coaxing, to allow Amelia raise her child as her own. Her love for Hugh might have been immense, but her love for Damien trumped everything feasible.
A life for a life. Damien had whispered one night to her while she cried over the loss of her child. He had somehow convinced her hat Hugh was her price to pay for taking him away from Amelia. He kissed her eyelids, ridding them of tears, and made love to her so passionately that she could taste his 'love' for her.
The void in her heart had been so bleak that she had succumbed to his words, and accepted her fate. But every Friday, she was reminded of the fact that Hugh belonged to another.
"About my baby boy." She repeated, voice barely audible.
Damiens' facial expression changed as her words sank into his guilty mind. His eyes carried a bit of sadness when he looked at her. Before she knew it, he was holding her face in his hands. A soft caress and a kiss on the lips. "Baby, you know I can't do that. Not yet."
"Why?"
He shook his head, dismissing the possibility. Mirabel had yet to realise it, but Damien was a cowardly lion. He would do anything to avoid facing his truth, and would take everyone down with him if it came to that.
Damien ran a hand through his hair. His brows furrowed above his beautifully hollow hazel eyes. "I'll bring you more pictures of him."
Mirabel gasped.
"No!" She shoved his calloused hands from her face. "Pictures are not enough. I want to see my son, Damien. I've done everything you've asked me to." She hadn't realised she was on the brink of crying until the tears blurred her vision. "Please."
Damien recoiled at her words. He was suddenly filled with aggression. "Was it not enough that I left her for you?"
"I—" Mirabel couldn't believe he was dropping his personal guilt at her like stray bullets.
"I'm going to work." He repeated, slamming the door behind him with enough force to splinter the wood.
Mirabel sagged against the ceramic counter and felt ill. She wasn't sure if it were her naivety but she had assumed her life with Damien would become perfect once he left Amelia. However, it seemed that he had begun to carry a heavier cross of guilt on his back.
He used that cross like a shield for everything. Occasionally, like a sword.
Just as she began to think of ways to cheer herself up, the doorbell echoed around her terraced house and she stilled. Not again, she thought. Storming towards the front door like a hurricane, she swung the door open.
Not before she plastered a smile for the familiar face that stood before her.
"Another one from the same address, ma'am." Fred, the mailman, said cheerfully. He handed her a white envelope and as usual, it felt as though he had dropped lead in her palms. "An old friend?"
"Something like that." She said, forcing the smile on her face to remain until Fred had given her the rest of her mail. She closed the door to the sound of his bicycle riding away and dropped everything she was holding onto the floor.
It felt like fire. She watched as her greatest sin sat on the floor between her bills, utilities and magazine subscriptions. It came every Friday in the form of a thick white envelope addressed to Damien Black.
She had read one of the letters and had almost thrown up her breakfast. She hadn't expected it at all. The letter had come from Amelia. She had read, in her sister's handwriting, detailed accounts of the consequences of Damiens actions on her wellbeing.
Her sister had written it from an incredibly bleak part of her heart. Amelia had obviously wanted Damien to feel every ounce of the pain that his actions had caused her. She had, in explicitly cut-throat detail, explained how she had found an escape from him. An escape that she could open in herself, given a cutting edge.
Before her very eyes, Mirabel could see the consequences of her actions.
Mirabel knew that if Damien read it, he would have been compelled to go back to his family and she couldn't risk losing him too because then, it would kill her. So, she had thrown it away with a blind eye.
However, the next Friday and every Friday after that, she received letters from Diana. It came to her like the bubonic plague, spreading its disease around her home. Unlike Amelias letter, Mirabel never read these. She didn't want to know what was in them.
She didn't want to feel anything.
Whenever Fred handed the letter to her, she would walk into the kitchen, pick up a matchstick and set it ablaze.
"Not today, Satan." She hissed, as she watched the flame flicker against the white of the envelope. "Not today."
After sweeping up the ashes and dumping them into her garden, she smiled as though she had rid it from existence and walked into the living room, comfortable with herself and eager to finish her rerun of Family Feud.
Unbeknownst to her, when she had shut the door, Fred had found a second letter for Damien Black in his bag and turned his bicycle around. Whilst she watched Family Feud on the highest volume, Fred had knocked a couple of times to no avail, and decided to slip the envelope underneath the gap of their door.
Like a tear drop, the letter had snuck its way past Mirabels restraints and would embarrass her greatly. Ninety nine days for the thief, one day for the owner.
The TV blared as Steve Harvey asked the final question; "Where might you hide something you wanted to smuggle into prison?"
Mirabel chuckled at the TV, answering as though she were a contestant of the show.
"In a letter."
_________
AN: Before you yell at me, it's short I know!! I'm updating again tomorrow! I'm just trying something new and seeing what you guys think of this different route I'm taking to explain Mirabels' story. If you're okay with it, there will be only three chapters of this and yes, there will be Banshee moments inside :)
PS: tell me what you think!! Damien never saw the letters?Does it mean he didn't know Hugh was abusive?