My voice shatters against the trees as I struggle, fighting with every ounce of strength I have against his hold. I attempt to rip my jacket off, my backpack sliding off with it in an effort to escape his grasp. He grips my ankle, dragging me back towards him, my jeans catching on a jagged rock, shredding them as he pulls.
Clawing at the ground, I fight with every ounce of strength I have, desperately trying to get his heavy body off me. My hand grazes something rough, and I grip the same rock that tore my jeans, swinging hard and aiming for his head.
The rock strikes his head, blood splattering across my face as I continue to deliver blow after blow. I don’t stop until I see the light drain from his amber eyes—my eyes—and I know with absolute certainty that he’s dead.
His body falls limp to the cold wooded ground, and it takes several seconds for me to catch my breath.
There’s no need to check for a pulse this time.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my eighteen years, but I never make the same one twice.
1.Madelyn
I jolt awake,the nightmare I had still replaying like a broken record in my mind. My body is shivering, a cold sweat covering me from head to toe. I somehow manage to gulp down enough air to steady my breathing as I glance around the room, taking in all of my unfamiliar surroundings and trying to pinpoint where I am.
My new dorm room is still something I haven’t gotten used to, having only moved in a week ago. I still wake up every morning, half expecting to see old photographs of my best friend and I pinned on my vanity mirror, and the ugly curtains my mom found at a market hanging in my window.
It’s been three months since I ran. The reminder of what I’ve done is always in the back of my mind, weighing heavy on my chest. No matter how hard I try to get away from it, I can never truly escape.
I don't regret it, but I sometimes wish the outcome was a little less depressing.
My father wasn’t always an abusive man. I still remember all our happy moments together when I was a child. Him pushing me on the swings at the park, laughing together while we playedgames, and driving around in his nineteen-seventies Chevy Camaro that he loved more than anything.
I’ll never forget that car. It was a Mulsanne blue with black pinstripes that went across the top. An absolute beauty. He cherished that Camaro more than anything else, treating it as if it was the very reason he breathed.
I wanted nothing more than to be inside of it—to bask in the combined smell of its leather seats and my father's musky cologne. The thought of it all comes wafting through my mind as I reminisce about my childhood, when things were simple and happy. Before everything changed and became so cruel and devastatingly grim.
Before my mom decided to leave this Earth.
I try to keep my mind busy and not to think of all the shitty experiences I had with my father. But some days, the memories can’t be kept at bay and they invade my thoughts.
Every time his face assaults my memories, I try to focus on an image of my mother instead. Her long, curly brown hair—the way she flipped it over her shoulder as she danced in the kitchen while making supper. Her beautiful smile while we were baking cupcakes together. She would always grab a dollop of frosting and dab it on my nose, laughing as if it was the funniest thing in the world.
I can still picture the way she used to look at me, like nothing else mattered. It was just her and I in those moments together, two girls making the best out of the shitty cards we were dealt.
My mother was the prime example of what a real parent should be. I miss her every single day, and while the memories of her bad days with my father linger, they serve to remind me that I did everything right the night I ran. If not for me, then certainly for her.
Blinking back tears, I roll over in bed, trying to shake the chill those haunting memories leave behind. The positiverecollections of my father will always be overshadowed by the disgusting things he’s done to us. He was rotten to his core, a fucking despicable man, and everyone back home knew it. They all turned a blind eye, never willing to do anything about it.
I don’t know how people were able to just sit back and watch the horrible things that happened to my mother, to me, and not intervene. The only person who ever tried to help, to be there for me, was Austin.
He was the only solace in my life after my mom died. Austin lived down the dirt road, just a stone's throw away from my broken down home. Our houses were the only ones around for miles, so naturally, we spent almost every waking moment together. When we were young, we used to ride our bikes until the sun went down, or sit on his porch talking about everything and nothing at all.
Austin was one of those kids who was bullied a lot in elementary and junior high school. His size seemed to be the butt of every joke—short and stocky, smaller than most of the boys in our grade, with a mountain of acne, and thick-rimmed glasses to correct his nearsightedness. I never cared about the way he looked. He was my best friend, and I thought he was perfect the way he was.
The year we started high school, Austin had changed into someone I didn’t fully recognize. The summer before freshman year, he left for football camp in another state. Before that summer, he had never played football, but his father was tired of him being bullied for notbeing man enough.
Whatever that meant.
When Austin finally came home, he had grown an entire foot taller, lost all the extra weight, his skin had cleared up, and the thick glasses were replaced with contacts. He was a completely different person and I had a hard time believing this was the person I grew up with.
Soon after that, Austin became the new quarterback of the J.V. team, and everybody who used to treat him terribly, was now a part of his new friend group. He started running with the popular crowd, constantly trying to include me, but I couldn’t forget about all the things people had said about us. I couldn’t just forgive because everyone else chose to forget. All of these things eventually put a wedge between us.
Eventually, everything became harder for me. Assholes who knew nothing about anything started talking, whispers constantly following me around like a shadow through the halls. There were endless rumors being circulated about my father. They were saying he killed my mother and how I would end up just like her, murdered by the hands of a man who was always supposed to love me.
The worst part wasn’t even hearing the awful rumors. It was the blatant lack of remorse for the young girl whose mother was taken too soon. No matter how hard I forced myself to try and ignore it, their words and behavior clung to me like a dark cloud. Those kids never knew the full story. They weren’t even fucking close.
Finally getting out of bed, I slide on my slippers and tiptoe to my dresser. I pull out a fresh set of clothes, careful not to wake my roommate, Gabby, and quietly slip out of our dorm room. I don’t know much about her, but I’ve learned from the last few nights that she’s a heavy sleeper, and I’m thankful for it, because I’m the clumsiest person to ever exist.
