“What?”
“Please, Cal. Not forever. I'm not asking you to do this forever, but I—” Her breath stutters, and she steps away like she can't get enough air into her lungs. “I need you to do this for me.”
“To do what?” I ask dumbly, not sure what exactly she's after. She’s gonna have to say it.
“Make me your doll, Cal.” She begs, her breath coming out ragged as she finds it again. “Dolls don't hurt. Take the pain away.”
I'm not entirely sure what she's asking of me, but I take slow steps toward her, my hand out, and scoop the snake off of her delicate neck. Abby coils in the air as I lift her back to her terrarium and fix the lid in place.
I swallow when I look back at Amber. “What, exactly, are you asking me for?”
I can play pretend. I can dress her up and peel her clothes off. I can bathe her and worship her. I can worship her in the dark or love her in the light. But if she's asking for what I think she's asking for...
“Sedate me.” It's just a whisper, like she knows it's an impossible request and she's too afraid to ask it. “The pain…” She sobs, but it turns into a laugh. “I want it to go away. I want to forget again. I want to be yours.”
“I... can't do that.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, as if I've just hurt her more with my denial. “Why?”
“Because…” I laugh, unable to understand her confusion, how she could ask this of me. Does she not realize how ridiculous it sounds to ask me to drug her and keep her that way? I’ve spent more time with her asleep, I'll admit, but I've fallen harder for her every day since she's been awake. Losing her is incomprehensible, unfathomable. “I love you.”
“You don't know me.” She shakes her head. “I don't even know myself. It's why I want to go back to being your doll. When I was, everything was easy. It didn’t feel like this.”
“I know you. I know that you're addicted to online shopping. I know that you are a survivor, that you don't just lay down and take whatever shit life gives you.”
“That'sexactlywhat I do, Cal!” She laughs so loud that it's near maniacal. “What don't you get? I don't know who that was the other night in the warehouse, but it wasn't me. I'm not strong. I'm not brave. I'm not a fucking killer.”
She definitely is. A brutal one, at that.
I watched her eviscerate them so fully that my father's cleaners made mention that it was the grisliest thing they've ever seen. He told me as much when he called me this morning to ask if I was okay or if there was something I needed to tell him. I think he'd expected my anger had simply gotten the best of me, that the mess I spoke of when I asked him for help was just a body or two with bullets between the eyes. I guess they were in for a grisly surprise.
“Idon'tfight. I quit fighting when it became obvious that fighting was only going to zap all of my energy. I just laid there and took it. From my foster father, from Jenko in the back of that truck, from you! And I hate that I did that. I hate that I didn't die trying to fight them off, that I didn't do everything I could to make them suffer, to make them think twice about what they were doing.”
“You couldn't have.” I tell her calmly, despite the sting of her words, her wishing for death. “It wouldn't have changed anything. You'd just have ended up more hurt in the process. You know that.”
“What hurts is the fucking betrayal!” She snaps. “What hurts is that Iletit happen. What hurts is that I thought I was protecting myself, but now I feel like I was compliant... like I invited it.”
Jesus.
I'm not equipped to deal with this... the survivor's guilt, the blame, the self-hatred.
Her pain feels like barbed wire around my throat, threatening to strangle the both of us. She’s drowning in it.
This isn’t just a sudden, off-the-cuff remark. This is the product of refusing to acknowledge her pain, bottling up her emotions, and not sharing those dark thoughts so someone can shape them to show her why she’s wrong.
My wife needs help… more than I am qualified to give.
“You didn'tinviteany of it. You fucking know that, right?”
She glares at me, obviously not knowing that. If she did, she wouldn't have said it out loud. Part of her, no matter how large or small, believes that to be the truth.
I exhale, holding tight to the pain that's rolling in waves off of her.
“Just because it wasn't violent doesn't mean it wasn't rape.”
I knew I was a monster for most of my life. But the realization that I'm a fucking rapist? That's new, and it's hard to swallow. As hard as it is for her to swallow the fact that she didn't 'let' any of it happen. She had no say in what would happen in any of those situations.
She sobs, but I don't think it's broken through to her yet.
