"We are all just a draft . . . awaiting our final edit," -Macx Eopes
Enjoy the first chapter and first flashback of my novel, A Cactus In the Valley. Available now in person from yours truly or on Amazon.
Check out this link for the plot synopsis.
Without further ado . . .
~
CHAPTER ONE: Shattered Glass
Day 1 - Terra; August 5th, 2015
I breathe. For an entire second of reality, I am not able to exhale. Just the swollen, toxic air eating at my lungs.
When I finally am able to breathe out, it's like fire, ravishing every inch of my insides. My stinging eyes finally come into focus, but still, the world's colors swirl in front of me.
I breathe, the soupy air getting caught in my throat again. My voice echoes, the throaty heaves piercing the metal walls of the plane.
Sensations flow through my body as I become aware of myself for what seems like the first time. Smoke collects in my lungs, tearing fissures in the delicate tissue. My heart squeezes in my chest, vibrating as the panic rises within me.
Something warm and wet dribbles from my hairline onto the soft part of my eyelid. Still, my eyes are clouded over as my head swirls in my skull, like a spoon chasing the last bits of cereal in the milk. My knees jam against the cushioned chair in front of me, so hard that I can feel the metal skeleton deep within.
Ringing. High pitched and whirring. Close and emanating from inside of my skull. As I struggle to push myself up against the airplane seat, the tendons in my neck scream at me and oppose my movement. The hissing of fire crackles in my ears. I frantically search for an armrest, still half-blind.
My hand claws on the leather beside me, grasping for something concrete in a world of senses. I can feel the smoke infiltrating my bloodstream, making a buzzing in my lungs.
I grasp onto strands of hope as my vision finally returns. Heaving, my estranged cries still crowding out the cabin of the plane, I see. The broken front seat, coated in worn, beige leather. The shattered windshield of the plane, the edges piercing like diamonds in the white hot sun. The smoke rising from the nose of the plane. And the way that the lonely desert wind blows the heat right into the cabin of the Cessna 310.
Suddenly, my throat thrashes in my neck, releasing a cough into the still, silent air. The sudden, almost painful movements jar the fuzzy edges off of my consciousness, and I become strikingly aware.
I breathe. Shuddering, I push my bangs out of my eyes and run my hands over my face, my wavy hair caught in my simple stud earrings. My hands come back coated in blood and dirt.
My abdomen contracting with boiling panic, I assess myself, making sure to move every joint and squeeze every muscle. Something active and hot buzzes through my body, and I can't stop shaking.
I find myself thinking one pulsating thought.
I have to get out of this plane.
My mind launches into its default position. While the electricity does not cease to flow in my veins, I can focus. And this gives me a lens in which to create order.
And I can work with order.
Grasping onto the front seat, I gaze into the open windshield. Almost no shards of glass remain, other than some stragglers on the edge. The hood of the plane still smokes profusely, warping the air coming from it.
No luck there.
Yet again, I can feel the pulsing of emotion inside of me, threatening to break through. But I breathe, taking in the familiar scent of the plane, the heavy smoke, and the arid desert.
I just breathe. And in the stillness, noise floods my mind. I'm alone . . . I'm alone I'm alone I'm alone I'm alone.
The door.
Hell, why didn't I think of that first? My head whips around to face it, but my head wobbles in the fluid of my skull and my neck tightens, threatening to choke me. Note to self: don't do that again.
My eyes rapidly scan the door to find that it's badly dented - inward. The leather-covered wall juts toward me, where the door should slide smoothly out and then open. But the handle is jammed, silver and stuck in the wall like a sore thumb.
I run my hands over the perimeter of the door. Sunlight peeks in through the warped edges. Straining, I push against the outer rim, and nothing but a low, hollow creak ripples through the plane.
I breathe, sucking in air through my nose and out my mouth. The voice in my head screams at me to get out. Encroaching claustrophobia floods around me, licking at my neck and rising up inside of me. I am an empty aluminum can, and the world is a garbage crusher.
In one panic-fueled second, I lurch out of my seat - only to be jerked back by a strange force around my torso. I look down to see the seatbelt tangled around me and I reach down to unbuckle. Easy enough.
But when I try to move again, another force to my side holds me down. Frustration now buzzing within me, I look down to see the edge of my cardigan lodged in between my seat and the indented door, pressing into my side.
With trembling hands, I grab onto my jacket nearest to the door and tug, but nothing moves. My heartbeat pounds under my fingernails, and a haunting, fluttery feeling rises in the hollow of my stomach.
I give the stupid thing fast and ferocious tugs, but there's nothing. Nothing. My arms burn and my throat screams at me.
Suddenly, like lightning, I am thrust from the tug of war I play and shoot back onto the seat next to me. And onto something warm and supple.
And human.
Shivers striking up my back like spiders, I leap off of the seat next to me and onto my own, my body electric with terror.
A boy about my age sits in the seat next to me, unconscious. However, he is slumped to the side of the plane. I reach out to touch him, but don't. Something inside me pulls back.
Stretched out in the small crevice of the plane, I stand on the seat, petrified because something even more caustic swells inside of me. Confusion.
I stare at this boy for a while, sifting through blurry memories as I try and remember this boy's name - who he is, why he is here, sitting next to me.
But when I come up empty handed, I sit back in my seat, relaxing and still heaving from the shock.
I stare at him again, and suddenly, as if thrown in my face, there it is. His name is Wyatt.
About the same age as me, 16. No last name appears to tack onto the end of his first name, and I assume he's just above the rank of a stranger to me. I gather that he and his family (whom I have no memory of) were customers at my family's lodge and touring business: "Lombardi Lodge and Desert Tours."
During the renovation, I was against keeping the name.
And then it all comes to a slamming halt. My memory goes blank of every reason why I am on the plane, why he is here, what happened before . . . Maybe my brain is eluding me, hiding this from my consciousness for the better.
Sighing in the lull of events, I look back over to the unconscious Wyatt. Swallowing hard, I reach out and nudge his shoulder. Stiff and supple - he's not responsive.
But then my eye catches on something stark and red - the thick plane window is utterly smashed. He slumps awkwardly to the side, towards the window, and a good portion of his head actually juts out of the window, his skull resting on the sill. Pieces of shattered glass linger in his curly dishwater-blonde hair.
Reeling, I turn away from this most likely dead boy - only to bang the top of my head on the low ceiling of the plane. Shit.
Curling up to stifle the impending scream boiling inside of me, I bite my bottom lip until it bleeds. My eyes flick to the ceiling, ready to get mad at this stupid plane for holding me in here like a prison cell.
But I stop. I see something that might be my last hope - the sunroof.
About two and a half feet in width, and maybe two feet in length, and covered in a thick layer of glass. I remember that the glass is single pane and an inch thick - no easy way out. How much do you want to bet that I can fit through the hole?
Crouching in the cabin, I stand on the floor, suddenly struck with terror that the floor itself will give out from under me. Steadying myself on the seat, I inspect the sunroof. Black rubber surrounds the edge, and I pick at it with my fingernail.
Maybe if I could get that off, I could somehow disconnect the mechanism from the body of the plane . . . like with something sharp, because my fingernail is not going to cut it.
Inspiration bubbling inside of me, I take my bag off of my back and take out my keys - this should work.
The keys make for lighter work than my fingernails would have, but once I get a good enough chunk off, I can take the rubber and peel it off from the perimeter of the sunroof.
I run my fingers through my hair and get it caught in the tangles around my back. Dissatisfied, I push it out of the way.
There's nothing useful for me under the rubber - it only covers the frayed fabric stapled to the metal crevice that holds the sunroof.
Since that didn't work, I have to break through it - something hard, something resilient.
Sighing, I take out my metal water bottle. The belt hook and porcelain charm of a cat jangle against the coated metal.
Blunt force works like shit - all I get is a dented water bottle and scratches in the paint job. But the sunroof remains resistant to any and all effort.
Sweating, I lay back down in my chair, stretching out. White-hot frustration makes my fingers tremble. Swallowing hard, the malleable tissue of my throat gets stuck together and I pat my dry tongue on the top of my mouth. Trembling with a new ferocity, I twist off the cap and throw the top to the side.
Gulping down the still cool water, I lick off the condensation. But then my eye catches on something - something broken, at the boy's unmoving feet. The painted cat charm, given to me by my brother, Nick, lays on the floor in shambles.
But I have no time to be sentimental - my hands fumble over the shards of ceramic, testing my finger on each one. When a particularly large and sharp one draws blood, I prepare to throw.
I lay on my back, in between the seats. I tuck my knees up to my chin. My head rests on my seat, my bottom and legs on Wyatt's seat, and my back on the plastic divider.
I suck in one last breath of air before closing my eyes and throwing the piece of ceramic straight up onto the sunroof.
For a brief second, all I hear is a plink and I fear that I have done nothing to the glass at all. But then a high-pitched, intense crash rings out and shattered glass rains down, tearing holes in my pants and opening gashes on my arms that now cover my face and head.
Elation and glee burst within me, but I refuse to move. Fragile tinkling noises continue around me as the glass settles. And the breath of fresh air that leaks into my nose tells me that I've broken through.
I ignore the pain and warm blood that seeps from various places of my body because I stare up at the brilliantly blue sky with delight.
"Woo hoo!" I shout, springing up and brushing the glass shards off of me. Standing up now, I use the edge of my bottle to break off the larger chunks that still remain on the outer rim of the sunroof. This works surprisingly well.
Taking a deep breath, I put one foot on the seat of my chair and the other on the seat of the unconscious boy's chair, being careful not to touch him.
Licking my textured lips, I pause, staring down at Wyatt's unconscious figure.
I should check and see if he’s got a pulse, if he’s still alive. My hands itch - I don’t really want to touch him. If he’s alive, he’ll come around eventually.
Sighing, I poke my head up, unsure of what will meet my eyes.
Immediately, the wind blows my brownish-auburn hair into my face. Nearly gagging, I take the hair tie from my wrist and pull it back into a ponytail.
But this is one of those rare times when I wished my hair was still in my face, and I still couldn't see because what meets my eyes and the terror that follows is something I will never forget.
I am truly in the middle of nowhere.
~
The Sonoran Desert takes up a good portion of Arizona; the rest is the Colorado Plateau in the north, also known as the Grand Canyon. But I'd rather be there than here, because there, I wouldn't be stranded.
I swallow hard. The great scale of everything makes my insides collapse in on themselves. In the Grand Canyon, the land shifts and bleeds and moves. Here, it can be flat for dozens of miles. Stagnant and littered with rocks, pebbles, and boulders like pimples on a freckly kid's face.
The wind dances across the sand, and into my eyes. It varies from a copper to a deep rusty red to a rich tan. Hard packed and not moving much, the Sonoran varies from the deserts of Africa in its percentage of life, weather, and sand.
Tough brambles and bushes spring up, trying not to lose themselves in the chaos of the desert. Dull and hardy, the green plants here always seem to be weathered with time, no matter how young they are. Every twenty feet or so, a Saguaro cactus will jut up into the air, making its regal presence known as the king of the desert.
The diversity of cactuses is interesting, actually. I've read about all of the cactuses in the Sonoran and seen most, but seeing the sparse chorus of them popping up and down all over the horizon, trying not to be overtaken by the hard, sedimentary rock, a terrible encroaching feeling rises up within me. This is nothing like looking out my bedroom window and seeing the tame yet skittish wildlife and the nearly rolling hills of sand. This is the wilderness, and it is unforgiving and unrelenting and utterly wild, and it won't change its ancient ways for me.
Hot tears running down my face, I squint into the distance and see small peaks rising from the hard packed sand. The foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
My heart beats inside my chest with rising intensity, under my fingernails, in the hollows of my temples - I can feel it in there, buzzing and whirring around like it has no place to go.
Like me.
The immense and simple beauty of nature cannot be overwhelmed by my swelling anxiety. Flying in a plane over it is different than being dropped down into the wilderness, capsized by the uniformity of it, where I can't spot the Phoenix afterglow at night or even the resort in the distance.
Where I can't spot the resort. The phrase rings cold and true in my head, and I whip my head around, no matter how much my neck protests. My heartbeat permeates my ears and my breathing clips short without my consent.
I squint into the bright distance, looking behind me, hoping that my eyes will make out the Phoenix skyline or even a cluster of black dots that indicate buildings.
But there's nothing.
I breathe, my palms boiling against the white metal of the plane. The only thing the sun barely silhouettes is the Rocky Mountain range off to the west. West . . . yeah, that's west. I look toward the mountains and scan the sky, looking for the sun. I know I've met it when the blue fades and my eyes sting. It's about three-fourths high in the sky, meaning it will set by the mountains, right? Then that means east is directly opposite of that. But how can I know where Phoenix or even my house is? I don't know how far off track the plane flew, so there's no way to know. Hell, I don’t even remember what route we took.
Heaving, I close my eyes and try to imagine the events leading up to the plane crash. But all I can remember is the emotion that bitterly lingers: fear. Intense, rapid fear. Then, the impact.
Then, nothing.
My eyes fly open, and as soon as they do, a painful breed of disorientation sweeps over me, where I lose myself entirely. A hard, succulent panic that flutters in my chest and blossoms like a poisonous black rose. Tears sting my eyes, but my skin is a shell, containing the nuclear amounts of emotions I have within me. Sinister thoughts download and run on a treadmill, burning energy and causing friction, but gaining nothing.
I'm lost. I'm alone. I'm hurt. And I'm going to die.
I halt my mulling thoughts because I have stopped breathing. Swallowing panic washes over me. Pressure builds around my lungs, collects around my chest. Suddenly, I'm terrified that the perimeter of the sunroof is shutting around my ribs like a vise because that's what it sure damn feels like.
A scream vibrates in my throat, and I push off the seats, springing myself upward. I lean forward, so my chest presses against the hot metal of the plane. Clawing at the metal with my almost non-existent fingernails, I frantically grasp for purchase. Unwilling to fall back into that god-forsaken plane, I kick at the air for momentum.
"Damn it," I hiss, still swinging like a pendulum, balancing half of my body on the plane and my legs jutting into the cabin.
Grunting, I push up with my arms. I pull up my leg onto the top of the plane, breaking open the fabric and skin as a shard of glass grazes my calf.
But I've made it. For a split second, like atoms slamming together, I grasp onto the boiling metal roof of the plane and tell myself that I'm going to be okay.
I tuck my leg up and plant my feet on the solidity of the roof of the plane, which now I realize is tilted at an awkward angle.
Adjusting my bag on my shoulders, I jump about seven feet or so to the ground. Reddish dust clouds around me, and I brush myself off before turning around to look at the plane.
Half of the nose of the plane is embedded into the soil, as is much of the underbelly, at about a thirty-degree angle. One of the propeller spokes is bent and pressed up against the nose of the plane, sticking out of the dirt. My eyes travel to my door. Now I realize why I couldn't open it - a huge boulder lays embedded in the mangled metal, pressing into the cabin, right where I was sitting. I swallow hard. Another few inches and I would have been crushed.
The plane also seems to be tilted to its side, with my side down. The wing next to me is still smoldering and split in half from being jammed into the ground.
Questions rise to the surface like boiling water: But how did we crash? Why did we crash like this?
I shut my eyes and open my mind's eye, but I am met with nothing of value. Fragments, flashes, sounds, and images all come back to me, but none of them make any sense.
But then, I hear a deafening hum - one that drills into my bones and vibrates in the hollow cavities of my skull. It comes distinctively from my left. Then - a scream.
After that, I'm looking out a window. The wing of the plane with its happy little propeller drifts by.
Then it explodes.
I flinch, dropping to my knees. I remember shouting something up to the pilot. For a moment, my mind draws a blank on who that could be. But then common sense kicks in and says: Come on, Terra. There are only two people who could be piloting that plane. My father or my grandfather are the only people who are pilots for our business. But grandfather retired to the Californian border seven years ago . . .
My eyes shoot open. "Dad."
And in that single moment, that split second of realization, I get it. I connect the dots. It all comes flooding back like a hurricane carrying me away. Nothing physical is stopping me from breathing, but I can't release my constricted throat to breathe in, for fear a horrible, painful sound will tear into space.
I slowly turn around to face the plane. Terrible images fill my head, knowing vaguely what's coming, and my mind races, filling in the blanks. I don't know how I didn't notice it before, but I know that I will never be able to forget the next few minutes of my minuscule life.
~
I see the pilot's side door, smushed into the ground like the wet stain of a bug under a shoe, buried in the sand.
And I see the shattered side window, cracked beyond repair.
And as I move closer and closer to the smoldering plane and its wretched remains, the more and more that I see.
And the more I wish I could unsee.
With each breath, each heartbeat, I recount the way that every Friday, we would ride our bikes into Phoenix just to get large chocolate brownie shakes and then, end up complaining about our stomach aches as we rode back.
With cold hands, I grab the latch and pull.
But as the door flies open, a gummy, wooden arm flops down, it's purple fingernails grazing the sand.
And with it, I am thrust back onto the hard-packed earth. Rocks poke into the soft flesh of my back. My eyes open to the bright sky, pain blossoming in my chest.
But I stand, regardless.
The first thing my eyes meet is a dull, silvery glint. Less than a millisecond passes before I know it in my soul: these are my father's cold, dead eyes.
Heavy with lead but buzzing with electricity, my chest pulls apart and slams back together, heaving. Without my consciousness having any say in the matter, a shrill scream erupts from deep within me and expels out of my throat, like a volcano made entirely out of sound waves.
Even in the midst of horror, a release of terror comes spilling out, like throwing water on a fire and the sizzling that follows. And when my knees give out and I fall back onto the ground, I can breathe again.
Groveling and pushing up on my knobby elbows, I flip my head up. My father's eyes still shine with that bluey-silver that they always had, but now they have deteriorated to slushy gray, and I cling to the pleasant memory of those vital eyes, for their life is being sucked out before my eyes. They turn a bit downcast, just grazing at my feet.
It takes me a moment to absorb the scene fully. I keep myself propped up, my hands pressing into the rocky sand, my body undulating with heaving breaths, in a crab-like position, ready to skitter away if anything moves that shouldn't. Since the plane crashed on our side, nose down, the engine was pushed back into the cabin of the plane when it crashed, crushing my father's legs. Other than the zentangle of cuts and scrapes that tear into my father's waxy skin and boiling burns from the fire, he should have been fine.
He should have been fine.
He should have been fine, but he's not. My father, half of myself, is crushed between his own seat and his own vehicle, the yoke pressing into the supple and unmoving flesh of his stomach.
And here I am, living and breathing and crying and living.
Why?
~
I wonder if he died instantly. I wonder how long my father had to suffer as he slowly bled out, turning the vibrant hues of the sand the color of death, trapped under his own airplane. How did he feel in those last, fleeting moments before death? Was he angry, feeling unjustified as he knew this was how he was going to go? Was he at peace, knowing that the powers in the sky were greeting him with open arms? Was he ashamed, felt that all of this was his fault?
I find myself standing, slowly walking over to the airplane, the pilot's door still wide open, my father's hand still in the swollen, clutched position that fell off of the door handle. Tears have suddenly been sucked from my eyes, and a pinprick of fear whistles inside of me, but I keep walking, this disconnect keeping me breathing.
As I approach the plane and my father's body, squished like a bug under the footsteps of life, I find myself at a shameful loss of words. Everything I've ever wanted to say to my father, my dad, every 'I'm sorry,' every 'I love you' burns on the tip of my tongue, but no matter how hard I try and push the air from my swollen vocal chords, nothing comes out. A pressure squeezes inside of my chest, growing from the inside out, but I have no external emotional reaction as I crouch by my father.
I feel the panic swirling inside of me because I want to feel; I desire the pain and the suffering to come and then to leave. The heaviness of survival mode hasn't set in yet, but it seems that while I have closed my eyes, my humanity has seemingly already been taken away from me.
That's when I get it. That's when the light bulb shatters in a crack of electrons. My subconscious is forcefully shutting down my emotions so the 'left side' of my brain can function, can let me live on.
Even when I don't want to.
As I begin to step back, I realize that I'm not sure which side I want to believe. It might be less painful and conflicting if I was being ripped apart limb from limb, medieval-style.
I find my hand drawing back from my father's face. His facial expression strikes me with unsettling confusion. My father's death tears away at the dust cloths of my soul, arousing something ages forgotten. Sometimes, people are found, no matter their circumstance, having a peaceful look on their face. Satisfaction, almost. Everyone accounts this to the saying of 'They're in a better place,' but I have always despised that. How do you know that they're in a better place? Bullshit, there is no way to know.
But what truly disturbs me is the expression plastered onto my father's face. It's not calm or peaceful, stripped of any human pride. It looks defeated, conquered, overcome, and even while deceased, in pain. How can someone who's been dead for an indefinite amount of time have the slightest hint of pain scarring his face?
Every time I blink, I see my father's gray eyes gleaming of silver, branded into the back of my mind. They fade in brilliance each second they stare at the ground. So, without words, I reach forward with a trembling hand and press two of my fingers up against my father's eyelids, shivering at the coolness of his skin in this sweltering environment.
And the moment that they close is the second a loud bang comes from inside of the plane, then a crash explodes from the opposite side.
Fear jerks through me, sending the blood in my veins to solid concrete for a full second. Something clatters to the ground, and I send cracks through my back as I duck down to see.
The side door.
Everything inside me screams DANGER, and another, terror-filled scream erupts from me against before I can clap a hand over my mouth.
Scampering back silently, I regret it with every cell of my being, my hot and shaky breath passing between my fingers. Relief drowns me because I can hear the echo of my terror shooting out into the vast desert. I keep my breathing steady until I can no longer feel my heartbeat against my fingernails.
Something moves slowly behind the plane - I can see only a flash of it as it bends down to pick up something. Even though I can no longer feel my heartbeat in the tips of my fingers, it still thuds in my ears and pumps through painfully constricted blood vessels in my head. Someone might as well be pounding on my sternum with a drumstick.
I slowly back away, making sure not to crunch the gravel and sand beneath my boots - until I trip backward over another damn rock and fall back onto my ass again. No matter how hard I bite my lip, a pained squeak still escapes.
My mind has no time to worry or ponder about what is around the body of the plane because the tall, lanky figure treks around the smoldering nose of the plane and rests his hand on the metal. It clanks with a hollow wince.
Wyatt. He's . . . alive.
I feel my jaw go slack, but it is now that I can fully take in the wholeness of this strange boy. Athletically built, but looks the opposite of a jock. Gangly, almost. His clothes hang limply over his still maturing teenage frame. A crisp, yet slightly ill-fitting, henley shirt, with the stripes in navy blue, canary yellow, and white adorns his top.
Under first impression, the formality surprises me and not at all something that a boy of his demeanor would wear, but when my eyes travel down to see the loose-fitting, light-wash jeans with shreds and holes and Converse sneakers, the picture looks more complete. With that light dusting of freckles and pimples on his face, he could pass as your average teenage boy.
But getting lost in his appearance also makes something else stand out: his eyes. They are a light brown, almost amber. And they're afraid. I wouldn't need to see the frozen, deer-in-the-headlights look on his face to know that something deep within him has been disturbed. Just like me.
And suddenly, seeing the blood still pouring from the goose egg bump on his head, and seeing the way he grips the plane, leaning away from my own terrified body like I have three heads, suddenly, this strange boy is no longer all that strange. His fear is no different than mine. His memory: just as muddled. I can identify with the small, fluttery minnow of uncertainty that poisons his gut. I can see it splashed all over his face - all over his dusty, bloody face - because he knows it. I know it.
An unspoken pact - however weak and hostile it may be - is made in this moment, when we recognize our dire similarity. Whether we like it or not, we're in this together, because nature doesn't give a shit. Life doesn't give a shit.
Me and this strange, awkward boy have to . . . have to what? Survive? Walk until we drop dead, what? I guess that doesn't matter. We both realize - and I can see it on his face that he knows this - that we have no choice but to bear this cross.
After Wyatt breaks his gaze with me, he slowly walks over to my crumpled figure, still propped up on the hot ground after my fall. With a nearly expressionless face, he extends a hand. His eyes are soft, like the color of vanilla extract. Or brown sugar.
Dumbfounded for a second, I reach up, grunting, and shake his hand awkwardly. He just peers at me, and, with a strong grip, he pulls me up.
~
My name is Terra Lombardi, and I am a shooting star falling from the heavens.
December 18, 2007 - Terra
I'm not really sure about what approach I should take about telling this story, so I suppose I'll just start off simple. As terribly simple as I can.
~
I was nine. I wasn't yet old enough to work the desk/secretary job that I currently hold, but I still helped out around the lodge as much as I could. It was also pretty late at night, maybe nine or ten p.m., and the hallway lights had been turned low for the sleeping patrons. Nothing seemed unusually eerie about all of the locked doors and humming silence. I did this almost every night, and everyone was in their rooms by this hour.
But apparently, not everyone.
I was coming back from delivering fresh sheets to each unoccupied room. I remember I had just dropped off sheets to room 117 and was heading back for another basketful from Mom in the basement laundry room. Everything seemed normal; it always does right before these kinds of things happen. The vending machines buzzed and glowed colorfully at the end of the hall, right next to the exit sign going down to the basement. The basket I held was full of used sheets, and I carried it in my little nine-year-old arms.
I walked down the hall and turned right, down to the basement. I slid my all-access card through the slot with one hand and pushed the door open. The steps were concrete and usually cold, although the air down in the basement was very temperate. The laundry room was just to the left when I came down the stairs, and the fluorescent lights cast unflattering shadows on my mother's face.
"This is the last round. I'll be up after I turn off all of the lights," my mother said, placing a stack of crisp white sheets into the basket.
My mother's voice always reminded me of a mug of hot, herbal tea: deep, warm, and sweet, with a kick of natural power. Her lips curled up in a smile at me as I 'oomph'ed when she put the towels in the basket. Her eyes always melted when she smiled, and they were soft, a light brown, nearly hazel. And they were the color of vanilla extract, or brown sugar.
~
I lugged the last batch of towels up the stairs and the door shut behind me with a loud clack. The vending machines still rattled, trying to keep their contents cool, but I looked up at another noise, far down the hall.
A man was standing there. He looked about forty and had a slight potbelly, but was muscular in a way that some old guys are. Beefy, almost. He was pulling out a diet Coke out of the glowing vending machine. Peculiar, but nothing out of the ordinary. Yet still, something fluttered inside of little nine-year-old me. But also that innate sense inside of me that knew something was wrong, knew something was happening outside of my five senses.
~
He raped me. I didn't know that's what he was doing at the time, but that's what he did. He charmed me, even offered me the Coke he just bought, but I knew better. I knew something was wrong, but I was only four foot three and sixty pounds, and unable to fight against a five foot eleven, two hundred pound man. The only way to fight was with my voice, but after a short while, even that was silenced by a gag around my mouth. He kept me tied in his room overnight, which is unparalleled as the worst night of my life.
When he was sleeping, I snuck out and immediately told my parents, bare and beaten and trembling, even though he made me promise that it would be “our secret”. What else could I have done? I didn't know what to do. I had to explain it quite thoroughly to them, since I didn't really know the word for it. So, yeah.
My parents called the police, but the man had escaped our hotel, leaving behind most of his stuff. When the police asked for the name and records given to them when he set up his reservation, they discovered he had given them false information. And paid with cash. My description of him matched a registered sex offender with pedophile charges hanging over his head, so the officials recognized his faulty information almost immediately. The police did their job, and the chase was on. For a few years, my rapist, and apparently 7 other children's rapists, popped up here and there all over the US, and even escaping into Mexico a few times.
~
By that point, it was almost the morning. The sun hadn't yet hauled itself over the ledge of night.
But while my parents were busy setting up STD testing appointments and quieting the public outcry, they shoved me back into the house.
I remember showering. The water cold, scaling up and down my body like his calloused hands. I remember showering with my clothes on. I remember not knowing why I needed to shower.
I remember being alone.
I felt worthless. Cut open and filleted from the most sacred part of me. I felt like an object, used and thrown away when the job was done. Like being taken advantage of was somehow my fault. I felt incomplete. Like him violating me stole a deep, special part of me that could never be replaced.
I felt like shit.
And, at times, I still do.
To this day, I feel incomplete. Broken. A wine stain on the white sheets that I had taken down to my mother. I never could pull myself out of the hole I had been thrown in.
And I could only just dig myself deeper.
~
I don't do the laundry anymore.
~
Copyright © 2017, Olivia J. Bennett
Duh.
<3
~The WordShaker
