After a while, I stopped worrying about being recognized. The distance between me and that house of horrors was growing,and with every step I was closer to freedom. My fingers slowly uncurled, giving my palms a break from the pressure of my nails. Almost to wake myself up—or to remind myself I could still feel—I slapped my open hands against my thighs a few times to ground myself.
My life didn’t feel real. The events of the night kept pushing through the fragile barrier of sanity I had built to contain them. What I should have done was grab a bottle of bleach and pour it into the bath with me.
The people I passed paid me no attention, and I returned the favor. In my dazed state, I felt like I could walk straight through them, like a ghost. Maybe I already had. Maybe that’s what I was now.
I stopped in a quiet alley on an unfamiliar street. A loud bar occupied one corner, a silent, empty Italian restaurant the other. A server inside wiped the same spot on a table over and over again for an unsettling amount of time. I would never have come to a place like this before—maybe that was why I ended up there. No one I knew would be there either.
I leaned back against the dirty brick wall of the bar and slid down until I was sitting on the cold cement. My company consisted of a discarded cigarette butt, a few brown shards of glass from a broken beer bottle, and a lone dandelion growing through a crack in the pavement.
The bass from the bar made my toes curl, the vibration traveling through the ground and into my body. As the shock of the night began to settle, the thought of someone stopping to talk to me slowly became my biggest fear. I hoped no one would find me and ask questions—or worse, take advantage of me.
But who was I kidding? If anyone were to rape me twice in one night, I might as well jump off a bridge and end whatever miserable existence I’d been given. Or buy a lottery ticket and open an ostrich farm in Australia.
Was I safe anywhere? The one place I thought I was safe had become the place I experienced true danger.
I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice someone approaching me.
“Is everything alright? Are you hurt?”
The calm voice cut through all the thoughts in my head and startled me. A man’s voice. My nerves immediately sounded the alarm, and my fists clenched, preparing for a fight—though I’d probably hurt myself more than him.
I tilted my face toward the stranger. Sitting on the ground didn’t leave me with many options. My feet instinctively pushed me backward, even though I had nowhere to go but further into the brick wall behind me.
He kept his distance. I couldn’t make out his face, the upper half of his body hidden in shadow. He seemed to realize he’d startled me and took a step back. His hands lifted slightly, open, showing he wasn’t holding anything.
“Easy,” he said. “Whoever hurt you, I’m not them.”
A bitter response rose in my throat, but I didn’t have the energy to say it. Of course he wasn’t the one who hurt me.
I pictured my brother celebrating—laughing, bragging, describing what he’d done to me while my parents and their friends listened, hanging on every word. My father and his friends leaning forward, waiting for details.
I glared up at the man in front of me, trying to look like I could fight him if I had to.
“I’m going to come a little closer so you can see me,” he said gently, taking slow, careful steps forward. “If I get too close, you can hit me. I won’t touch you.”
My shoulders locked as I stayed pressed against the wall, fists raised in front of my chest. I held my ground, doing my best to look hostile, even as my heart pounded.
I imagined I looked like a stray house cat—fur puffed up, a few scratches, enough attitude to make someone hesitate before getting too close.
Even a pampered house cat has claws.
He was a fit, attractive young man. My first guess was that he was a few years older than me, but not by much. He had to be at least six feet tall. His brownish-blond hair was kept in a trimmed fade, with enough volume in the front for his fingers to brush through and leave a few locks framing his forehead. His eyes were light blue, but in the dim moonlight they appeared steel gray. He wore a well-loved brown jacket with light-washed jeans and brown boots. I could imagine him standing at this same corner with a cigarette, looking dreamily at the stars and moon before deciding whether to call it a night or go back inside the bar for a glass of whiskey, neat. Someone could have made an outlaw cowboy movie about him.
The naïve, impressionable, childlike part of me—the part that used to determine everything I said and did—wanted to trust him and run into my savior’s arms as I cried my heart out. The newly hurt, mature, traumatized side of me wanted to throw a shoe at his face and run away before he could see which direction I was going. But I couldn’t do that—not because I had omitted shoes from my escape wardrobe, but because he seemed genuine in his attempt to make sure I was okay. Friendly. Harmless, even. I had to remind myself I couldn’t trust my perception of friendly and harmless anymore.
He slowly got down on his knees, taking in the horrifying sight of me. We were face to face, and he seemed gentler up close. He had a beautiful face—not a girly, teenage heartthrob face from those magazines my parents wouldn’t let me buy. No, this was closer to the cowboy image I’d built from the westerns I used to pause on while searching for a good romcom to watch with my friends before they groaned and told me to keep going.He had a chiseled jawline, gorgeous cheekbones, and I imagined a crooked smile. The only thing missing was a cowboy hat and a horse to take me off into the sunset.
Still attempting to keep a safe distance, I debated looking at the ground, but a faint outdoorsy scent mixed with the lingering smell of snuffed-out tobacco reached me. Instead, I got a better look at his blue-gray eyes.
There was a lack of urgency in them. No terror to match my own. Calm—serene as a late August sky reminding you summer was coming to an end. There was no shock or horror in his expression as he took in the broken girl in front of him, as if he’d found many freshly wounded women on street corners and it was just another Sunday night. He was examining me, much like I was examining him.
His voice was no longer soothing as it snapped me out of my analysis.
“What the hell happened to you?”
I could only imagine how I appeared in his eyes. Still, hearing it from someone else bruised my self-esteem enough to sting. His hand twitched at his side.
“You don’t look like you came from inside that place.”
