I growled, baring my teeth at them. “He’s on his way home, you know. He’ll fucking get you.”Please come home.
“Oh, fuck off, Elio. You knew this was coming. Stop whining and just fucking deal with it,” Jude snapped as they carried my body down the hallway, his hand almost slipping off my wrists.
I took advantage of that, twisting and pulling, using the sweatthat’d built up there to slide my way out of his grip. My upper body fell to the ground, the back of my head bouncing against the floor. I cried out in pain, gasping for air as my lungs started to constrict, desperate for oxygen. The blow had taken my breath away, and my heart was hammering in my chest.
It barely took a second for Jude to straddle my waist, yelling out demands and angry threats. Sarah let go of my ankles, stepping back as I watched his fists get closer and closer to my face.
“Please,” I rasped, holding a hand up toward Sarah. “Please, help me.”Why?“Help.”Why wasn’t she helping me?
His knuckles rammed into my cheeks, damn near connecting with the bone. I tried to hold my hands up to protect myself, but I couldn’t see anymore. My eyes had squeezed themselves shut. Was it to protect me from seeing what was happening? Or was it to protect themselves from being hit? I wasn’t sure, but I felt grateful for it.
“If you can’t fucking stop, Elio, I’ll make you stop. Remember? You can’t run from me. You never have, and you never fucking will.” He grabbed each side of my face, holding me tight. I could feel his fingers digging into me, trying to rip me apart. “Sarah, get the rope.”
His hold was nothing like Crescent’s. It leaked anger and evil, joining the despair that flooded my veins. I’d gone so long without feeling it, I’d almost forgotten how suffocating it was. So suffocating that I’d pick daisies and pretend the world was okay. I’d pretend I had wings so I could stand the idea of living in violence. I’d pretend I didn’t want to die so I could force myself to survive.
I’d pretend I didn’t matter, so it would hurt less.
I wasn’t sure what was running down my face anymore—if it was blood or tears. Nothing made sense when Jude washurting me. My head tilted to the side, or was pushed into the floor—I couldn’t tell.
All I could hear was him yelling. Yelling and panting as he poured all of his effort and energy into trying to destroy me again. I didn’t want him to succeed, but I was so tired. So fucking tired. I didn’t have it in me to try to escape anymore. I couldn’t think clearly. I was close to passing out.I’m sorry, my crescent moon.
What sounded like the front door swung open, its hinges squeaking as a new voice entered the room. Jude’s fist smacked against the side of my head, knocking me to the side.
“Get your fucking hands off my little brother!”Moon.
Jude screamed just before a loudthumpechoed through the room, the pressure that was holding me down vanishing completely. I opened my eyes, blinking through blurry vision. Moon was on top of him, landing punch after punch, straight into Jude’s face, over and over and over.
Sarah stood, shocked for a moment. I thought she was going to come to me, to help me up like she had before. My heart fluttered with hope, the butterflies there rising to my throat, only to plummet back down into my gut. Dread sank deep, churning into something far more hopeless. “Oh my god, baby! Get away from him!”
“Watch out!” My throat was raw and hoarse, but it was enough to make Moon turn around.
“No, the fuck you don’t!” Sarah’s fingers had just gripped the back of his shirt when he rose to his feet and pushed her.
I tried to sit up. I tried to scoot backward, even, but I couldn’t. I was frozen, watching as Sarah fell. She fell hard, hitting her head on the bookshelf. The sharp, pointed part where all of its wooden pieces came together.
Her body slumped against it, contorting unnaturally.She looked almost upside down from my point of view. Her eyes fell shut, and they didn’t open back up. I couldn’t look. Couldn’t see what was happening to her. I didn’t think I could stomach it, knowing that not only was our friend’s body slumped and seemingly lifeless against our bookshelf, but also that she hadn’t come to help me.
“Fuck you, you fucking asshole!” Jude’s voice boomed and echoed through the room. “Sarah, baby! Can you hear me? Sarah!”
“Oh, shut up!”
I gently lifted my throbbing head to see better, using my palms to push myself out of the way.Baby. He called Sarah “baby.”I pushed myself to the nearest wall, dragging my back up against it. He’d rarely ever called me that, so why the fuck would he call her that?
Jude rushed Moon, wrapping his hands around his neck. Gasping hurt. It rattled all of my bones and made my wings ache to flutter open. If only I could take him away—take both of us away and fly us into the sky where none of this was happening. Where everything was okay.
The floor shook beneath me, the walls vibrating with the force of Moon throwing Jude to the floor. Everything happened so fast. They both had their hands around each other’s necks, Moon kneeling over a beaten and bloody Jude. They were both making awful, horrible sounds. Choking sounds. I wanted to cover my ears and hide, like I used to do when Jude went on rampages around the house and broke shit.
A coward in hiding. A coward in the open. I didn’t want to be a coward anymore. I didn’t want to hide anymore.
Despite never thinking I’d have to again, I fought through the pounding pressure in my head to get onto my stomach and started to crawl. It fucking hurt. My body wasn’t used to hurting like this anymore. I dug my nails intothe floor, listening to the whispers of the kind ghosts around me.
“You are strong.”
“You are capable.”
“You are worthy of a life with happiness.”
Some of them were repeating what Christina had been saying to me in our sessions. Some of them were pushing images into my brain of the life Crescent and I had lived when we were kids, and the life we were going to live when we got to our new home. That life didn’t have Jude in it, but ithadto have Moon.
