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It’s strange how easily I’ve learned how to stop being here. How easy it is for your soul to leave your body to avoid the pain and the humiliation.

“It’s just a game,” he whispered softly.

If it’s just a game, why does it feel like I’m being torn apart? Why does every muscle scream for me to move, and I can’t? Why do my tears feel like acid in my cheeks?

“You grew up well, Mireya,” he said, satisfied.

I tried to find his face, I tried so hard. I thought, if I could just see him, if I could remember him, then maybe I would understand. Maybe then he would become human.

But every time I reached for the memory, it disappeared at the same time as his voice appeared again.

My sobs are loud, broken, humiliating, and he watches as if my collapse is a prize.

And somewhere behind the door, my father exists. Does he hear me begging and crying and choose to not care? Or does he think this is all my fault ?

Just like hers.

I wish he could open this door and kill him. I wish he would fight for me, even if just once. But no one is here: it’s just him and I.

I kick him desperately, trying to stop this, to stop him. For a moment, I think I’ve done it. But then his hand reaches behind him and in a movement something comes out of his pocket. A knife.

“You want to play without obeying the rules?” A burning line slices straight down my stomach, warm blood spreading sticky along the vertical line. “It’ll give you a scar,” he says softly. “So you can remember that you’re not in charge.”

And after that, everything collapses. Nothing fits together. I don’t remember him undressing. I don’t remember when he pressed against my wound. I don’t remember when he kissed me. I don’t remember the sound of his voice, the way he threw me on the bed like I was already dead. I don’t remember the touch, the pain, the things he did.

I don’t remember when he left.

All I remember is rising, shaking and crawling into the only long dress I found and walking out of that house.

I walked for what felt like hours, my legs moving on autopilot, my blood still warm against my stomach. My chest was shaking while my mind tried to make sense of what just happened. I ended up at the cliff near the campus. Hours of floating to finish my journey here. The wind tore at my dress and whipped my hair across my face, but I barely noticed.

I stayed there, letting the edge hold me while everything inside me felt hollow and far away.

One step.

Just one step.

I could let the water take me. I could disappear.

Is it my fault? Is it normal to feel like it’s my fault? Is it normal to feel empty, to feel small, to feel like a shadow of the girl I never was?

I stare at the drop, heart crying, blood on my stomach, the pain in my chest stretching down into every limb and then I close my eyes.

One step. Just one.

One breath.

Maybe the ocean could take me away from this, from the fear, from the exhaustion. Maybe the waves could cradle me and sing to me.

One step. And it could be over.

Then a voice cuts through everything.

“Mireya.”

49

Damien