“Hi everyone, I’m Jenna. I’m nineteen years old, and when I was little, I was abused by a wonderful prince who quickly turned into my bogeyman. That prince was my father,” she said, sounding disturbed already. “I was very shy as a little girl, and my father and I had this bond that was very close and pure. I can remember him reading me bedtime stories or letting me sleep in between him and my mom. Then, when I became an adolescent, everything changed. He started showing me the kind of attention a father should never give his daughter. I had no idea whether any of it was normal; I was just scared. My mother never realized. She didn’t see the cries for help in the twisted drawings I did at school or when I wrote that I was wrong on the walls of my bedroom. She still didn’t get it. She just kept leaving me there in the wolf’s lair. Then I started to have interpersonal problems. My mom thought that I barely talked because I was just shy. She thought that I was alone all the time because I was too introverted. She thought I did weird things to get her attention.”
She shook her head with a sad smile, breathing in deep before continuing her story. “Meanwhile, I was spending almost all day with my own personal monster, and he touched me every chance he got. He asked me to do all sorts of things to him or else to lie down on the bed and let him do things to me. He said I needed to be respectful, that I should be grateful to him because, over time, I would learn how to please him better…” She paused, her hand against her stomach like she was about to puke. “Theabuse stopped when I was sixteen. My mother started believing me after he raped another girl: the daughter of our neighbor.” Abruptly, her gaze dropped down to the stuffed animal she held. “The only witness to what I was going through was my teddy bear. His name is Fear. He is always with me, and he was the only one who believed me from the start.” She breathed raggedly, tormented by the memories, by the pain that would not ease.
That pain fluttered over the melancholy notes of the guitar, the same pain that I also felt. It was like a wound that never healed, carved into the soul.
I felt it—I would always feel it.
I felt that guilt, the filth flowing through me, the kind of filth that I’d never be free from, that I would never be able to wash away, not even with my innumerable showers.
Kimberly and every other child-eater like her would remain inside of us…forever.
“Bravo, Jenna. You’ve shared a small portion of your experience with us, and for that, we thank you.” Dr. Lively smiled at her and glanced around, waiting to see another brave soldier ready for battle. “Hmm…Nora?” He turned to a girl with a red bob, deep, dark eyes, and a tattoo along the curve of her throat. I looked at it until I could determine that it was a red-eyed snake that stood out starkly on her pale skin.
“This is the story of the snake girl…” The girl stroked the snake on her neck, staring into the middle distance, and then licked her lower lip where a small metal ring glistened before appearing to come back to herself. “I’m Nora, I’m twenty-two. I was raped by my uncle when I was nine years old. The man always looked at me like I was a grown woman instead of a child, like I was a whore instead of a niece who needed raising. One summer day, he decided he was going to destroy everything: my childhood, my dreams, but most of all, my smile.” She worried her piercing insistently and squirmed around in her chair. All signs of the obvious jitteriness shared by anyone who had experienced these particular atrocities. “That day, he asked me to come into his room with him. I found him in there naked on the bed. I…didn’t want to do it, but when I tried to say no, he started yelling at me for being stupid. Every time after that, he told me that there was a snake in my stomach, and if I ever told anyone our secret, it would eat me up from theinside. I believed him; I truly believed him. I kept that secret for months. He raped me twenty-one times, and now I’ve tattooed twenty-one snakes on my body…” She looked to Dr. Lively, wringing her hands. I felt a chill move through me.
No one in the room made a sound; the guitar’s melody turned melancholy.
There was nothing there but dead souls, darkened souls, shadows without smiles.
This was hell.
A hell that stole all strength, stopped all breath, and sat in your chest like an ache.
The truth was, even in this room full of other people, each one of us felt alone, trapped in our own world, far away from reality.
We occupied a parallel universe in our minds, still living in our abusive pasts. Our abusers were the monsters who came to visit us every night. But instead of lurking in the closet or under our bed, they were inside us.
That was their favorite place to hide.
It was no use closing our eyes to the obscene things they did or covering our ears against the cruel things they said. The child-eaters were always there, ready to hurt us, to rape us, not just physically but mentally as well.
Behind every act of abuse you would find an unrelenting psychological violation. Our bodies inevitably remembered the disgusting things that had been done to us. Every time, your chest was shattered into a million pieces; the pain would clog your throat, and anything you did would be useless: weeping, fighting…even living.
Only the body survived.
The soul died every time.
“Thank you, Nora, for sharing your story.” Dr. Lively was as calm as ever. He was used to listening to this sort of thing. Yes…he was used to sticking his nose all in our business and analyzing us like lab rats, but he could not truly feel what was going on inside of us.
In our heads. Under our skin. Inside our souls.
It was the kind of evil that no one could comprehend unless they themselves had experienced it. That was why I’d only been able to tell Seleneabout some of what Kimberly did and nothing about the havoc that was left in her wake. I hadn’t been able to tell her about what had happened in that basement with Megan nor explain to her my current conditions.
Was this the future I wanted for Babygirl? A life lived alongside someone like me?
No, I never wanted to dirty her, to contaminate her.
She was the only one who could listen not only to my words but also to my silences, to my fears, and to the often conflicting emotions I felt.
She was a rare pearl.
All at once, the walls felt like they were closing in around me, I became short of breath, and the urge to flee—to get away from that room—became overwhelming. I snapped into action like I was spring-loaded and began striding toward the door. I blew past Megan, and she simply watched me go.
It had been a bad idea, coming to this group session.
It was obvious to me why Dr. Lively had been so insistent on my coming—it was his sneaky way of trying to bring me back into therapy.
But that wasn’t happening; I wouldn’t have made it.
