Page 4 of Ripple Effect: Ep. 1

With my bottom lip caught between my teeth, I succumb to the visuals toying with my mind and the soft moan that escapes me has me stealing a furtive glance back at Layla to make sure she’s still asleep.

He takes his usual seat, filling the booth with his bulky frame. Some nights I picture sliding into his lap, his body crushing me against that table, as I straddle his thighs. I imagine his massive arms enveloping me. His tongue across my skin and in my mouth. Sweat dripping down my back, along my spine where the palm of his hand holds me in place. How he’d feel without the pills denying me the sensation of his cock filling me. The edge of the table beating into my back with every punishing drive of his hips, and the tight clench of his jaw in that reckless moment when he finishes inside of me.

My lips part at the vivid imagery, and my belly tightens while I circle my nipple with the pad of my finger.

If anyone were after him, he’d be hard to miss in those bright lights, the way he stands out like a splotch of black paint on a stark white canvas. He hasn’t looked this way once tonight, which allows me to study him intently, admiring his virile features.

He’s beautiful. A sad, but beautiful man.

The click of the doorknob sends a knot straight to my throat and my stomach sinks like bricks in a murky river. The sound alerts my dog, who I can hear rustling in her bed, and a low growl rumbles in her chest.

I slip my hand out of my shirt, straightening myself beneath the afghan.

A beam of new light invades the soft glow of the Christmas lights I’ve strung around the room for Layla, and as my nightmare enters, Charlie’s growl dies to a whimper.

The thud of his boots across the floor sound like the hooves of the devil coming to claim my soul. A scuffling tells me he’s stumbled, but not even that prompts me to turn around.

Drunk again.

The moment I caught him hunkered down in front of the television with a six-pack, I knew he’d come for me. I don’t want to look at him. I hate him. The smell of him makes me sick, like a walking deep fryer.

If not for Charlie, I’d climb over the railing of the balcony, spread my arms, and fly. The police would find a broken shell of me. They’d study me, the same way I studied the baby bird, while the world dissects pieces of my story to suit their curiosities, leaving nothing but a picked over carcass.

All because my mother abandoned her nest.

They’ll never know it was he who gave the final push, and it won’t even matter. Once he injects the drugs, I’ll fall into dissociative bliss, tucked away in the same fog that kept my mother oblivious of the world around her, on rose-colored clouds, and a never-ending dream.

The darkness behind my eyelids is my only refuge from the hell around me, and I’ll willingly climb inside, burrowing myself in that place where no one can touch me. While my body’s propped on the cold metal of the washing machine, I’ll be miles away, fallen deep into the rabbit hole. No one can find me there. Not Randy, nor the men who see the photographs of me that he takes in the dingy laundry room of this apartment complex.

Although he never violates me himself, for whatever reason, he likes objects. The more common they are, the more he gets off. He once had me masturbate the end of a vibrating toothbrush and used it for months after—smiling at me every time he brushed his teeth.

I’ve been defiled in every sense short of rape, stripped and purged of innocence, feeding his disgusting obsession with me.

I often wonder what Chanel’s like when she’s not hopped up on pain pills. If she’d be jealous and accuse me of fucking her man, or if she’d take pleasure in watching him do it. I once tried to tell her about him taking me down there and snapping pictures of me. She offered me one of her pills and asked if I liked the boots her friend had handed down to me.

I can’t blame her too much, though. Randy likes to use her as his personal punching bag, and most days, she’s sporting a bruise somewhere. Even if it’s not always visible. He’s hit me a few times, but unlike Chanel, I hit him back, even at the risk of more pain, because I believe once you show weakness, it’s easier to fall prey to it.

A tug at my elbow and I glance to the side, swatting at his arm. “Don’t touch me.”

Sometimes Randy offers gifts—small tokens that come with his usual pep talk about how it’s not abuse because he never actually penetrates me and the photos don’t show my face. That’s a lie. I once swiped his phone when he passed out on the couch and deleted a good few dozen pictures of me—his little mementos. I couldn’t stand to look at my own face—droopy eyes singed with the apathy toward whatever he forced me to do. I’d hoped to see shame in those photos, but it seemed buried too far beneath the effects of the drugs.

He’s threatened to circulate them throughout the school if I say a word about any of this. Send them to all my classmates on Facebook, as if they’d come from me. Like he’d ever let me have my own account. As far as the world is concerned, I don’t exist.

“C’mon,” is all he says, before walking out of the bedroom.

I give one more glance toward the man in the diner, as he stares off, waiting for his food. Maybe one day he’ll look up and see me.

Maybe he’d want to kill Randy Westprick, if he knew that somewhere close by, a girl was forced to do bad things. Very bad things.

For now, the drugs will put up a barrier, separating my mind from the horrors of my reality, much like the pane of glass that separates me from the insect-ravaged bird outside my window.

Maybe it won’t hurt as much this time, knowing that I do this to keep Randy from slaughtering my dog or taking away the pills that have become as necessary as the air I breathe. A vicious cycle of escaping to survive and surviving to escape.

Because sex is power.

And even the hardest shells are made to be cracked.

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