I fell. Knees first, then hands. Then the rest followed.
The floor came up faster than I expected, hard beneath me, knocking everything else into place. I tried to push myself up, but his foot connected with my side before I could. Air left my body in a sound I didn’t recognize as mine, and suddenly breathing became… optional. Something my body forgot how to do. You learn very quickly what you’re capable of at fourteen.
And more importantly, what you’re not.
There is no version of this where I could have fought him.
No hidden strength waiting to reveal itself. That’s something stories lie about. They tell you that under enough pressure, something rises, something powerful. Maybe sometimes they do, but that wasn’t the case for me; nothing rose.
I folded.
The kicks came slower, because force was no longer necessary. Each one landed with just enough force that another would’ve been excessive, but he delivered it anyway.
Again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
My body reacted at first, flinching, turning, trying to protect something, anything. But there are only so many times you can react before reaction becomes pointless.
I ended up on my back. Then my side. Then somewhere in between.
Position stopped mattering; nothing I did changed the outcome, so eventually I stopped doing anything. I just lay there and let it happen.
Pain turned into something else after that. It wasn’t sudden anymore. Stopped being something I could locate. It spread, everywhere at once. A dull, overwhelming presence that blurred the edges of everything, and inside that, I remember thinking,this is it. This is how it ends.
It’s strange what the mind does when it believes it’s about to die. It doesn’t always reach for life; sometimes it simply lets go of it.
I remember noticing how still it felt inside my head all of a sudden.
No racing thoughts, no panic, just a single and almost peaceful realization unfolding in the background.
If it ends here, then it stops.
Everything.
The nights, the constant presence of something I could never escape. It would all just… end. And for a moment, that didn’t feel like loss.
You understand that, don’t you, little Ghost?
That dangerous little shift where the idea of disappearing doesn’t feel like fear but relief. You’ve brushed against that thought before. I can tell. People like you don’t stay this long without understanding something at a deeper level.
The blows slowed down, then stopped. Like a storm running out of force rather than choosing to end. The room returned in small broken pieces. Sound first. My own breathing, uneven and shallow. Then the heaviness of my body against the floor, then the space around me.
Krystyna was still somewhere in the room, still crying.
He stood there for a moment. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. I think some part of me understood that eye contact would mean something, and I had nothing left to give. Time passed. I don’t know how long, but it was long enough for the room to settle as well as it could manage.
Healing came later, if you can call it that. Bruises fading, skin repairing itself, movement returning slowly and reluctantly. But healing is a misleading word. Because nothing returned to what it had been. Something new had been introduced. Not just pain, but another routine.
He never stopped punishing me. That’s the simplest truth.
Bartosz didn’t forget, and he didn’t move on. He responded to it.
Again.
