Текст книги "Tank"
Автор книги: Carmen Jenner
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 16 страниц)
Jesus Christ. I’ve seen some fucked up shit in my time, I’ve done some fucked up shit, but nothing has nor will ever stay with me like witnessing what was on those tapes. I wish I’d fought harder when Kick tried to save his new bitch from my gun. I wish I’d ignored him and riddled her brain with bullets, because anyone who has been through that much torture shouldn’t be left alive to remember it. I know I sure as hell wouldn’t wanna be.
I’d taken the videos, pictures, the collection of teeth and everything else we found in that little shrine of fucked up goodness back to the clubhouse for Prez to deal with, and I’d doused every square centimetre of that room of horrors in petrol and thrown the match, torching the place. But I hadn’t left it there, because I couldn’t get the vision of those sick fucks sliding a knife between the ribs of a girl no older than thirteen. Her hair hung limp in front of her face. Her body was covered in shit and blood, but I still saw the nothingness in her gaze when she’d lifted her head to the camera. She hadn’t begged, she hadn’t cried—she wasn’t even fucking there anymore, even though she’d been very much alive. They wanted her to beg, and she wouldn’t. She didn’t say or do anything at all, she just hung there from the Saint Andrew’s cross.
I watched the life slip out of her eyes as the fucking cop jacked off and rubbed his cum into her body, and I thought about Ivy’s past, and wondered whether her father had been this kind of monster, or whether he’d played nice. The concerned parent, the man who only wanted her to feel good. Had he pretended that he loved her? Pretend being the operative fuckin’ word, because you didn’t love anyone you could hurt that badly. You didn’t destroy what you loved.
I’d been overwhelmed with fucking feelings as I watched that tape, because I knew that though he might not have stuck a knife between the junkie bitch’s ribs, Ivy’s father was every bit as evil as these sick fucks, and no one had been there to save her. When I first met her, I’d thought it was a fuckin’ miracle that she’d survived even one night on the streets all alone. I remember thinkin’ it was mighty fuckin’ stupid of her to be turnin’ tricks out there on her own, but after witnessing the work of yet another sadist bastard it makes sense to me now. She’d rather take her chances being raped or even fucking offed on the streets than stay with the man who fathered her. I knew one thing—I had to find that motherfucker and put a bullet through his skull. And I would. If I couldn’t do anything else for her, I’d at least do that. When I got back to the house, I’d make her tell me his name, and I’d find him.
I slow as I crest the hill and my headlights bounce off of something in the middle of the road. It’s black and white, some kind of animal, maybe a dead calf. I rev the throttle, prepared to just drive right past, only it moves and I wind up slowing because animal or not, I can’t let it suffer when it could be put out of its misery.
The closer I get, the more I have trouble comprehending just what the fuck I’m seeing. It isn’t that it’s moving that’s the problem. It’s that it’s a woman lying on the middle of the road. And not just that, but a familiar woman, if the raven hair, the pale white skin and the strung-out expression on her face is anything to go by.
“Motherfucker,” I shout into the darkness around us. It seems to mock me with its silence. I don’t know who I expect to answer. There’s nothing here but a stupid fuckin’ junkie and the arsehole who keeps trying to save her when the bitch won’t save her fuckin’ self.
I pull the bike to a stop and toe the kickstand down. I swing my leg over and crouch down beside her. Tapping her face, I say, “Wake up, you stupid fucking bitch.”
She rolls over, lazily swatting at my hands as I grasp her jaw and punctuate each sentence by tightening my hold on her just a little more. Anger burns through me like acid. “How the fuck did you get out here all alone? Where is Killer? I’m gonna rip that fucker’s head off.”
She moans. Her hair falls away from her face, revealing several scratches over her cheeks and forehead. I slap her, perhaps a little bit harder than I need to. “Ow.”
“Jesus Christ.” I’m half tempted to leave her here in the middle of the road. I must be some sorry-arsed pussy-whipped bastard, because all I want to do is walk away and leave her here—the dumb bitch might finally get what she deserves—but I can’t. “What did you take?”
“Kick?”
“No, it’s not fuckin’ Kick. That bastard helped get you into this, and surprise, sur-fucking-prise, here I am cleaning up more of his fuckin’ mess.”
“You’re not Kick,” she says, as she opens her eyes and tries to focus her gaze. She frowns when she finally sees whose ugly mug she’s starin’ up at. “You’re the fun police.”
“Yep, that’s me. Sergeant Fucking-No-Fun. Now get the fuck up. I gotta get you home so I can kill that dumb-arsed motherfucker who was supposed to be watchin’ you.”
“He wouldn’t have sex with me.” She complains. The muscles in my jaw twitch and my fists ball at my sides. At least I don’t have to cut off his dick for touchin’ my woman, though I may just do it anyway for givin’ her drugs. “He told me what you did. You can’t claim me. I’m not your fuckin’ old lady.”
“Shut the fuck up and sit on the bike.”
“I don’t love you,” she whispers. “You make it hurt in ways it doesn’t have to. You make me remember when all I want is to forget. I could never love you.”
“I know.” I clench my teeth so tight my jaw aches. “And I don’t give a shit. Someone has to save you from yourself ’cause you’re too fuckin’ stupid to do it.”
“He’s looking for me. He’s always looking for me, and he’ll find me, and he’ll kill you because you were in the way.”
I still. At first I think she’s still spoutin’ off some shit about my club brother Kick, but he wouldn’t kill me; he doesn’t care enough about her to kill for her. And then the truth of her words dawns on me. She’s talkin’ about her father. For the first time since I became a man, I feel the icy cold fingers of dread creeping down my spine. I’m afraid. Not for my safety, but for hers.
“Not if I get to him first,” I promise
She laughs hysterically, and something in that stupid, senseless humour strengthens my fear. I’m afraid of losing her. I love her, regardless of whether or not she loves me. I think on some level I’ve loved her since she first sucked my cock under that bridge. I saw her broken pieces scattered there all over the dirty ground, and I just wanted to put them back together. She may not love me, she may never be able to love me because she’s a selfish, spoilt little shit, but I can’t be without her. I won’t be without her. Which means I need to find that motherfucker, and soon.
I manage to get her on the bike and I slip on behind her, sandwiching her skinny shoulders between my arms as my hands grip the handlebars. I have a hell of a time trying to get her to stay upright, and I wind up running off the road because Ivy’s a fucking mess and can’t keep her shit together. The second time this happens we both come off the bike, and she’s crushed beneath me and a half tonne of black metal and engine parts.
Fuck. That’s gonna hurt in the morning.
I pick her up and prop her back on the bike and drive slowly and very carefully to the cabin. Killer’s bike’s still in the drive, but the front door is wide open. I draw Ivy into my arms and carry her inside the house, shouting for that little bastard.
“He’s not here,” Ivy whines, attempting to cover her ears, but failing.
“Where is he, Ivy?”
“I shot him.”
“What?”
“He wouldn’t give me the drugs. I took his gun and I ran. He chased me. So I shot him.”
“Where?” I shout.
“In the woods.”
“Jesus fuck!” I lay her out on the couch and grab a bucket, setting it down beside her. Not that the rug hasn’t seen her vomit before. Detoxing is a bitch. But I got enough shit to clean up without her chuckin’ up all over my lounge room floor.
“You stay fucking put this time,” I order.
Ivy just mumbles and rolls away from me. Bitch is fuckin’ done for one night, and in the mornin’ when her head is aching like a motherfucker and her body’s goin’ through withdrawal all over again, her and me are gonna have ourselves a little talk.
I grab Killer’s hoodie and head outside. At lease the dumb fuck wasn’t wearing his cut after Prez has ordered us patch-free until we find that cop Kick’s lookin’ for. One more thing I don’t have to kick his arse for. Butch tears around the corner of the house and barrels into my legs. Fuckin’ idiot jumps all around like a spaz, even after I yell at him to knock it off.
“Find Killer,” I command, and shove the hoodie under his nose. He barks and runs off towards the house, but a whistle and a harsh command has him obeying. He sniffs the ground and then he darts around the side of the house and into the woods. I follow, armed with nothing but my gun. It’s close enough to a full moon that I can see my way in the dark anyway, until I enter the woods, and then all I can see are the branches in front of me, and all I can hear are the sounds of the dog running through the underbrush.
He barks, and I follow the noise I cock the gun and aim blindly ahead of me.
“Tank,” Killer whispers. Butch barks again and growls. “Call off your fucking dog.”
“You had one job, motherfucker,” I say, and I’m not shouting. I’m far too angry for that. I pull back my foot and kick him in the ribs, hard enough to bruise, not break.
“Ah fuck.” He gasps and rolls on the forest floor, still clutching a blood-soaked shoulder. He’s fuckin’ lucky I was the one to find her. If it’d been someone else, he’d be strung up by his intestines from a tree.
“Do you know where I found her, arsehole?” I ask, finally raising my voice. He shakes his head. “Coked out in the middle of the fuckin’ road.”
“She pulled my gun on me. She shot me, man.” He whimpers. “I know I fucked up, but I didn’t think she’d actually shoot me.”
“She’s a fucking junkie!” I roar, and then I bend over and knock his hand away from his shoulder. Finding the bullet hole, I sink my fingers inside until his screams fill the night around us. “What the fuck else did you expect?”
“I’m sorry, man.” He groans. Jesus fuck. The kid sounds like he’s fuckin’ dying.
“I found her arse lying face-down in the middle of the road.” I slide my finger free and wipe it on the hem of his shirt. Fucker’s lost a hell of a lot of blood. He must have been making his way back to the house and just given up halfway there. Stupid, spoiled little fuck.
Killer’s face contorts again with pain or fear, I don’t know which, and I don’t much care either. “Is she dead?”
“No, she’s not fucking dead,” I snap. “No thanks to you.”
I grasp his chin in my blood-stained hand, glaring down into his eyes. “You fucked up, kid.”
“Are you gonna kill me?”
“I fuckin’ oughta.”
“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t think she’d pull on me. I’m fucking bleeding out all over the place anyway, I’ve been out here for hours.”
“You’re fuckin’ lucky Prez likes you, ya little shit. Otherwise I’d be driving a bullet through your skull. Now get your punk arse up.” I tuck my gun away and pull him to his feet. He stumbles, and I know he ain’t going anywhere else tonight after he bled out all over my yard, so I help him walk back to the house. Before I take him in though, I grab his T-shirt in my fists and lift him off the ground. He hisses with pain. The shirt’s cuttin’ into the fresh little bullet hole Ivy put in his shoulder. I gotta teach her how to aim better.
“You listen to me. You ever bring drugs around her again, you try fucking her again and I will cut off your dick and feed it to Butch here, you got me?”
He raises a hand in surrender. “I didn’t fuckin’ touch her. I swear.”
“Oh I know, I’m just reminding you,” I say and slam my head forward into his. He drops to the porch like a sack of shit, doesn’t even make a fuckin’ sound, but he’s unconscious, and that’s all I fuckin’ care about. I throw him over my shoulder. Screwing my nose up at the trail of blood marking my front porch, I carry the worthless son-of-a-bitch into the spare room, Ivy’s room, and throw him on the bed. Then I pull out my phone and dial the Butcher. Three hours, he gives me, so I head into the lounge room and find Ivy throwing up all over my couch and floor. I walk over to the fridge for a beer—’cause I feel like I’ve fuckin’ earned one after the day I’ve had—but then I realise that I don’t have any because of that little junkie bitch who’s decorating my sofa with the contents of her stomach.
Some days are fuckin’ diamonds, and others you just want to put a gun to your head.
I jolt awake. The pain is immediate, penetrating every inch of my body. I ache from head to toe. The trembling starts as soon as I lift my head from the pillow.
“Morning, sunshine.” Tank’s booming voice fills all the space in my head, and what little room that’s left for pain is smothered with blinding light as he throws back the curtains.
I groan and bury my head under the covers. I’m in his bed. The sheets smell like his cologne. They’re warm and familiar, though I’ve only slept in here once. It feels safe.
That safety is quickly stripped away when Tank pulls the sheet off of me, and just as I’m about to hide under the pillow, that last little vestige of peace is taken from me too. Tank rips it out from under my head and tosses it across the room.
“Am I in hell?” I mutter through a husky throat and a mouth that feels as though it’s been filled with wet cotton wool.
He laughs, humourless and throaty, and there’s a definite edge of anger in it¸ too. “Not yet, but if I hadn’t found you coked-up in the middle of the road last night, you might have been.”
“Oh God,” I say, and curl into a foetal position. Not because of what he said, but because my stomach begins cramping and my head pounds. Comedowns have never been particularly fun for me, but after being clean for so many days it’s so much worse now.
“Course, Prez is more than a little pissed off because you shot one of his men while you were running away with his coke like a fuckin’ crazy drug-addicted bitch!” he shouts, and I cover my ears, but my hands are wrenched painfully away from my body and I’m pulled to a standing position. I scream and try to struggle free, but I may as well be fighting a mountain with arms for all the good it does me. “And who the fuck do you think had to pay to call the Butcher in to clean that shit up?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to shield myself from his anger. He’s never been violent towards me, not in any real way that hurt, or that I didn’t beg him for, but his anger is a palpable thing now. It fills the room, and it’s so much worse than having him ignore me for days, so much worse than having him wait and watch in silence.
Tank grabs my shoulder with one hand. His other finds my chin and yanks it up toward him. “I’m getting a little fuckin’ sick and tired of cleanin’ up your God damn mess, bitch.”
“I know.” I close my eyes because I don’t want to see the rage, the disappointment in his gaze. My whole body trembles, fingers longing to scratch and claw, to tear open my skin.
I itch. I throb. I ache.
I wish that Tank had just finished me off when he’d found me in the middle of the road. A part of me even craves that now, to have him wrap this thick fingers around my neck and squeeze the life out of me until there’s nothing left. Until the metaphysical strings that tie me to this form break free and float off someplace else. Some place where there is no drugs, no pain, and no memory. Some place where there is only death and nothing else.
“Do you know how fuckin’ crazy you make me? Do you have any idea what it’s like to try and try with you and still get fuckin’ nowhere? Do you know what it’s like to find you in the middle of the God damned road, where any arsehole can come along and pick you up and take you fuck knows where?”
He walks me backward to the en suite and releases me so that I stumble back and fall on my arse, landing on the hard tile. I cry out, but I don’t bother to get to my feet because my body is trembling so hard I doubt my legs could support me.
Tank runs one of his huge hands over his face, raking it up through his hair. “I’m fuckin’ done, bitch. I am done with this bullshit. I thought I could help, but I doubt anyone can save your junkie arse,” he says, and his voice is not so angry now. It’s calm, which is far, far worse. “Get in the shower and clean yourself up, and then I want you out of my fuckin’ house and out of my life for good.”
No. He can’t do that. Not now. Not while my brain is still reeling from the comedown. Not while my nerves are shot, and my body longs to succumb to the heavy weight of exhaustion. I need him. I need this place. At least until I get together enough money to flee the city. If he throws me out on my arse now I’ll have no hope of escaping. My father will come for me and drag me back to that place of nightmares.
“Tank, please. You can’t kick me out. I have nowhere else to go. I can’t be on my own. Please?” I beg. Everything hurts too much. My stomach revolts and my body gives a jarring twang of pain as I scramble across the bathroom tiles on my knees and clutch at his pants leg. “Tank, don’t make me go. I’ll get clean. I’ll play by the rules. No more sneaking out, no more drugs. Please, please?”
My pleading becomes frantic sobs that wrench from my gut, and before I know it I’m clinging to his legs like a child not wanting to be separated from their mother. Tank doesn’t show me any tenderness, though—he’s done with that. He just grabs my shoulder and lifts me, one-armed, to my feet, so that his eyes bore down into mine, and I feel the weight of all his fury directed at me.
“You listen to me, bitch. I haven’t spent the last five days straightening out your arse to have you come and fuck it all up. I can’t watch you kill yourself, Ivy. So if that’s what you want, if sinkin’ a needle in your vein is more important to you than makin’ sure you see your fuckin’ twenty-second birthday, then you go right ahead, darlin’, but you do it somewhere far away from me. ’Cause I seen a lot of fucked up shit in my time, but I can’t see that.”
“I … I need it … to forget,” I whisper, and close my eyes against the fresh onslaught of tears. “I can’t breathe otherwise. I can’t—”
“Find another way,” he says, and his hand tilts my chin up towards him. Gently, he wipes my tears away with his thumb. “Talk to me. Use me as your fuckin’ punchin’ bag. Let me be your drug. Let me help you forget. I don’t care how you do it, but find another way because I can’t watch you die, Ivy. I seen too much of you nearly checkin’ out, and I can’t do it anymore.”
I nod, because even now with him begging, I can’t promise that I’ll never touch it again. I’ll try, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve tried to get clean—and if it doesn’t kill me first it won’t be the last. It’s not that I have a death wish, or that I even like what it does to me, it’s that I can’t be without it. I’m dependant. An addict. And no amount of detoxing can take that away. Maybe for someone else, but not for me. Because without it I’m just some poor little broken girl with daddy issues. With the coke, I’m powerful in ways I never have been before.
I’m invincible.
I’m the girl who can’t be hurt.
Because I don’t feel a thing.
The sounds of the party filter down through the floorboards to my room. As much as my father tried to soundproof this space, it didn’t really work. I still hear him treading the boards above my head, and the dreaded thud of his boots on the stairs like a warning, not that it does me much good. These days I don’t even bother to put up a fight. It’s just easier now and done with much quicker if I let him finish and wait until he’s left the room before I break down.
This isn’t a regular party. It’s just him and a handful of “friends”, likely other sick fucks he met online. I can’t imagine he’d let anyone else in. This isn’t the first time he’s had other men over. Once there was even a woman here, but she just watched and took pictures while the others raped and hurt and touched me as though they had a right to. Some nights, my father doesn’t come home until early morning. And when he stumbles in, reeking of gin and sex, I think that maybe these people do the vile things that he does, offering up their children to monsters who abuse and punish and revel in their sickness as if it were something to be revelled in. I hate those nights—not because I’m left alone, but because I think of others—girls and boys my age and younger—having to live through the things that I do, and I want to die. Or I want to die more than usual.
I long for death. I fantasise about it the way other girls my age dream of kissing boys and magical first times, and what they’ll be when they grow up, and who they’ll be married to. I don’t dream of those things.
I don’t have nightmares, or terrors so vivid and real that I wake drenched in sweat and cry out for the comfort of some parental figure who isn’t there. My life is the nightmare, and when I sleep, I escape. I’m free. I dream soundly of Lochie, the boy who used to live across the road. I dream of the days we used to play in his tree house. I dream of big, faceless men who kill my father and dance with me in the ashes of his bones. Or I dream of nothing at all.
Waking is when the horror sets in. When my body aches and my insides crawl with the sharp stab of knowledge at being invaded yet again, of being taken and made the plaything for a sick dog who spreads his vitriol and leaves behind the stench of his particular kind of death on everything his mangy muzzle touches. That’s when the hate sets in. It floods through me until I’m consumed with it, until it settles inside my belly like a cold and heavy stone. That’s when I long to peel the skin from my body, to slough it like a snake, to be nothing more than rotting meat and flesh and bone, so putrid that no one would ever want to touch me. No one would want to hurt.
When he leaves for work, I scream. Sometimes for hours, but no one ever comes.
Where are the faceless men of my dreams? The ones who slay beasts and dance in the ashes of the fallen? They’re not here. They’ll never come because they don’t exist. Maybe that’s the real nightmare—that I’ll always be down here in this room, alone, save for visits by monsters offering meals, and schoolwork, and wicked touches that punish and bruise.
Maybe this is all there is. Hell on earth. Suffering and pain, and sick twisted guilt that turns my stomach like a rotting carcass left in the sun. And if that’s the case, I have to wonder where God and the angels went. Because surely this makes my father the devil.
Even though those men have been here for close to an hour and my hands have been trembling the entire time, it’s not until I hear the footsteps on the stairs that I start to shake from head to toe. My door is open; it’s rare, but I wasn’t fool enough to question it. He came down two hours earlier and collected me for bath time, as if I were seven years old still and not seventeen, as if I needed him to preside over my washing.
He’d washed my hair and carefully combed through the tangles, and then he’d begun dressing me in a pale pink baby-doll style dress, and all the while he’d peppered my skin here and there with kisses that felt like the burn of a brand.
I knew what that meant. I’d ridden his sick merry-go-round enough times before to know that the snacks and the bottles of booze I saw on the scarred wooden coffee table weren’t for him or me—they were for them. And so was I. A warm, compliant—for the most part—little girl, all wrapped up in pink bows.
Now, I steel my courage, and open my eyes as I hear that last footfall on the bottom step. My father fills the doorway, his large silhouette so commanding. “You comin’, or are you gonna hide down here all night?”
I don’t answer, because I’d really rather hide here waiting for the rest of my life than walk those stairs, with my leaden feet falling, like a traitor walking to the gallows. If I thought there was any hope of escaping, I’d follow him up the stairs and I’d just keep walking right out the door. But as my steps land heavy on the last stair, all daydreams of running flee when my father turns to me and snakes his arm around my waist, leading me over to the couch.
All the usual faces are here. I don’t know their names; they never use any, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t remember them even if they did tell me, by the time they’re done with me. And who would I tell? I never have a chance to leave, and outside of the man who raised me, these animals are the only other beings I see.
The one with the greasy shoulder-length hair licks the edge of the cigarette paper he’s holding. There’s a creepy smile on his face as he does this, as though he’s imagining licking my skin. The other man, the one with the horn-rimmed glasses, heavy pant pleats and the just as carefully pressed shirt, scares me more than Greasy-Hair-Guy, though. His touch is so much worse, so much more reverent than the others, and more frightening still is that he never says a word.
My father’s voice, chilling and devoid of feeling, breaks the silence. “We have a present for you, Ivy.”
I don’t want it. Take it back and let me go to my room.
Of course he doesn’t. He just tilts his head to the other man. The one I try not to look at, because if the other three men in this room are animals then this guy is the very worst of them. Built like a bear, with tanned pockmarked skin—as if he works outside and suffers adult acne—shorn hair, and the most horrifying soulless black eyes I’ve ever seen.
He grins, a gap-filled crocodile grin, as though he’s both proud to be the bearer of whatever horrible gift they have in mind for me and covetous of it. He produces a tiny clear packet. Inside, gathered at the bottom is an off-white granulated powder. He flicks the bag back and forth with his finger, shaking all the loose dust back down and then he opens it and tips a little out onto a spoon that rests on the coffee table. There’s a lit candle nearby, adding to the dimness and the morbid intimacy of the room, as if they were trying to soften the things they do to me by not using the overhead florescent lighting.
I watch on with dread as he mixes the powder with a liquid and holds the spoon over a flame, and for a brief moment I think he’s going to brand me with the metal, but then my blood turns cold in my veins as I see him lift a needle and suction up all of the cloudy fluid.
He stands, and my whole body screams at me to run, but I’m too late. My father is there holding me down while the other man, the one who never speaks, ties his belt tight around my skinny arm until my flesh is pinched between the leather, and I can feel the terrible strength in his hands. I kick and fight, and I glare up at the silent one, because somehow this betrayal is made that much worse by his cold stoic face looming over me. I wonder how many girls he’s done this too, how many children he’s strangled the life out of while his face remained unmoved. There’s not even the barest hint of pleasure or pride in what he’s doing, just a nothingness and a void of humanity reflected back at me from his ice blue eyes. That’s what I stare at—the nothingness in his gaze as the needle pricks my skin. The jab is hard, and I feel the smallest trickle of blood escape and run down my arm, and then the room spins. The pain is gone. I itch, but I don’t scratch. I’m buzzing. I’m weightless. I’m free.
When I wake, I’m no longer weightless. My limbs are leaden and every muscle in my body aches. There’s a tightness in my chest, as though a great weight has been placed upon it.
I open and shut my eyes several times before I’m able to focus, and I find myself not in my room like I first expected, but in the lounge room. Alone. My legs tremble as I stand. The ache in my lower abdomen throbs, and when I glance down I see not just a little blood smeared between my legs, but I’m covered in it, ankle to upper thigh.
My head spins and a myriad of images slam into me from the previous night, but only one resounds in my skull like the clanging of church bells. The one with black eyes had a knife. Not a big hunting knife; he was more careful than that. A black-handled Swiss Army knife, and he knew how to use it well. He’d waited until last, until the others had had their fill. He told them he was “ensuring that I didn’t run out of juice”, but I doubt any of them cared enough to pay either of us much attention.
My father had shot up in front of me before hitting me again with the same needle. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours after the first. And just like the first time, all my worries had faded, ripped away by the pull of the drug as it flowed through my veins once more.
Each step I take now is heavy. The ache becomes an all-out throbbing pain, and there is fresh blood between my legs. When I reach the front door, I’m barely standing. It’s not locked, which surprises me, and I’m blinded by light as I pull it back and step naked out onto the front porch. Everything is gleaming and shiny: green grass and shrubs shot through with blue sky, and a bright yellow sun lighting the world on fire before me. At the house across the street, a neighbour waters his hedges. His back is to me, and I lift my arm to get his attention as I step off the ledge. My legs give out. The last thing I see before I fall is my father’s face as he blocks my body from view of the neighbour. I throw up my hands to ward him away. They’re covered in blood. He bundles me up in his arms and I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. And then my brief glimpse of the outside world is ripped away with the slamming of our front door. The pain finally becomes too much for my tired body to bear.
I slip away, and when I wake again, fevered and writhing in agony, screaming and calling out for death, the jab of the needle in my arm and the liquid injected into my veins is the only solace I find.
