The Good Girl (13 page)

“You’ve done this to yourself, Eleni.”

“NO ASSHOLE! You’ve done this to me! Why can you NOT FUCKING SEE THAT?!”

Her voice grew louder with each word she said until she was to a point where her vocal chords strained to spit out the words bellowed at me from where she lay curled on the floor. I was surprised at the strength she found despite all the factors against her. Her body was ravaged by the withdrawals from lack of alcohol and her mind was jostled and shut down by the reality that she’d been taken captive.

“Answer me something, Eleni. If you’d not been drunk last night – if you’d not attracted the attention of scumbags that wanted nothing more than to violate your body and walk away just like every other man who’s touched you in your life – would you be where you are today?”

She began to cry again; except this time, her tears were from frustration and rage rather than pain, sadness or fear. I watched as she turned her face away from me, gripping her head between her hands and bending over herself, attempting to hide from me in the only way she knew how. She was shutting down. Mentally exhausted and physically sick, she couldn’t process the situation fully.

“Talk to me, Eleni. I won’t remind you again that when I ask a question, you are to give me an answer. There’s nothing you can do to avoid this, we’re going to review your life, bit by bit, piece by piece, until you see the same thing that I see – until you realize that you are destroying the thing inside you that not many people are lucky enough to possess.”

“And what’s that, asshole?” Her eyes shot to mine and her body straightened as she pushed herself up from the floor. I’d hit a nerve and I was encroaching on truths that she knew, yet would not willingly admit. She’d spent so much time hiding from the reality of her life, that to be forced to review it now – to be made to dissect it and examine it in exhaustive detail – she was finally starting to open her eyes to the ugly facts that made up her existence. She was a beautiful girl, with the potential to live a beautiful life – but she was tossing it away because of anger and pain that she was too weak to admit she carried.

And that’s the thing about false egos. The people who are nothing more than fuck ups and wastes – the ones who can’t function outside the confines and effects of drugs and alcohol – they develop this inflated belief that they should be valued by society; that they are, somehow, entitled to the same rights and benefits as those who work their asses off to make something of themselves. They believe they are entitled to the air they breathe and to the same comforts and benefits that the honest and good fight desperately to find.

I realized then, that in order to force Eleni’s eyes open – to make her not only understand but acknowledge what her choices had done to her – I needed to walk her through her life and show her, in horrifying detail, every wrong thought, every wrong step – and every bad decision she had ever made.

Chapter Twenty-One

~ Eleni ~

I wished I knew why touching him set him off the way it had. One minute we were committing some of the most intimate acts two people could, and in the next, I was kneeling on the bedroom floor with an aching body and a bruised and battered ego. In my own disgusting desperation to get off, I’d lost track of his rules and I was the only one to blame.

“What is your earliest memory, Eleni?” his voice interrupted my internal misery and his question proved that this guy had truly lost his fucking mind. How the fuck do you go from fucking someone, to beating them – only to top it off with asking them about their fucked up childhood? I was at a fucking loss as to what to do or what direction he would go in next.

I didn’t want to think about my childhood. All my life, I’d done my best to block it out. I didn’t want to tell him the reason I was fucked up was because of all the shit I went through as a young girl.

“Will you be upset with me if I don’t want to talk about my childhood?” I cowered when I ask, because I was waiting for another blow - waiting for some kind of physical reaction to my slight defiance. I didn’t want to defy him; but, I just knew the conversation would not end pretty.

He breathed out a frustrated sigh – his voice suddenly soft again. He was Jekyll and fucking Hyde and I wondered if there were two people trapped inside his muscular body.

“I don’t want to have to force you, but I want you to talk about this with me.” I couldn’t understand why he was suddenly being nice. I figured he would fuckin’ push me, force me to tell him the nightmarish tales. The memories that continued to haunt me for decades after my parents brutalized and neglected me.

“I don’t even want to think about it,” I admit with honesty. I was being genuine with him and I wasn’t sure why. He didn’t mean anything to me and I was still searching for a reason that would explain why I meant so much to him. We were strangers. Nothing more and nothing less, but he acted like there was a connection between us – something that guided us together and refused to let us split apart.

The thoughts ate away at my mind and like usual, my body began to shake. But, it wasn’t the lack of alcohol in my system this time; it was the fear that coursed through my veins even though both of those bastards were six feet under.

Rising to my feet, I covered my naked body with my hands the best I could until I was able pull back the sheets of the bed and tuck myself safely in their comfort. I didn’t feel safe, but the plush blankets helped to take the edge off. I continued to fight myself mentally. I didn’t want to talk to him about what happened to me, but the curiosity ate at me. Would I feel better if I opened up and finally told someone – anyone - about the past? Isn’t that what people do every day? Isn’t that what normal people do to get over shit? I didn’t know, but I had no choice – so I spoke, revealing to him the details of the first fucked up memory that came to mind.

“When I was four, I dropped a gallon of milk on the kitchen floor making myself a bowl of cereal.” I paused and let out a deep breath before I continued. “I was so hungry. My stomach hurt because my parents forgot to feed me. It was almost two days and it hurt so bad that I was crying. But, despite my tears, no one came to help me.” I could feel the sting of tears beginning to well in my eyes as my breathing picked up pace.

“I poured the bowl without incident. I was actually proud of myself because I thought that pouring it without making a mess meant that I was growing up – that I could take care of myself – that I would no longer be a burden on two people that obviously didn’t have the time to take care of me. However, when I tried to pour the milk, it was so heavy that it fell onto the floor and splashed all over the tile.” I could remember vividly what the black and white checkered tile looked like covered in the ocean of white mess. It was like a scene out of a movie, reminding me a lot of that scene in Home Alone.

“When the milk fell, I screamed because it startled me. I knew if I woke them up, I was in deep shit, so I tried to clean it up as quickly as I could. But, before I could take care of my fuck up, he caught me.”

My sobs rattled my body, but I forced myself to keep talking.

“My dad came in the room and when I looked up, I noticed that his eyes were dangerous and I knew I was in so much fucking trouble. Instead of looking at my father when he berated me, I stared at the tile flooring. Wishing it would end, but it didn’t. He kept screaming at me, the same way he would scream at my mother when she did something he didn’t like.”

The memories were always so violent - shit I would never wish upon another person. Shit nightmares are made of. Shit I’d tried to forget with any type of alcohol that would provide me a moment of peace.

The bed dipped, and I knew Gabriel was behind me. I didn’t move, continuing to lay with my back to him; my exposed skin probably taunting him in his currently aroused condition. I tugged the blankets up, covering more of my back and hoping he couldn’t see the deep scar that was barely covered by a back piece of the Virgin Mary.

“Keep going.” I could feel his breath close to my neck. I should have been scared of this. But in my current state, I knew there was nothing worse that could happen to me than the shit I’d already gone through.

“I’d woken my father up. When he came into the kitchen he was only in his nasty ass tighty-whities. He was mad, and I had no idea why. Yeah, I fucked up and spilled the milk but it never would have happened if I wasn’t so fucking hungry! Did they not understand you actually have to feed a child? He yelled at me for a while and tossed a towel on the floor trying to clean up the mess. When it didn’t work he picked up the milk soaked towel and started beating me with it. He didn’t stop with the towel, next came his hand, then a wooden spoon, and he finished the job by breaking the glass bowel full of cereal over my head. That is the last thing I remember, because I’m pretty sure I blacked out.”

My body began shaking again and little black dots clouded my vision. My chest tightened and I found it instantly hard to fucking breath. I knew these symptoms oh so well because it happened far more than I would ever like to admit. The anxiety attacks were more than I could stand, but the alcohol would always make them easier to deal with.

The voices screamed – taunting me, calling me names and re-affirming my lack of importance in the world. The tears washed down my cheeks, and I knew it wouldn’t be long until the darkness took me like it always did.

“Eleni, he was in the wrong. He should have never laid a finger on you. It’s the past now, he can’t hurt you anymore.”

His hand pressed against my shoulder, rubbing back and forth in an attempt to sooth my hysterics. But, he only made me worse. Before my world went black again, I was able to reply to him.

“He can’t. But you will.” 

Chapter Twenty-Two

~ Gabriel ~

I would hurt her. Over and over again, I would hurt her. But my reasons were different than the man who donated his genetic link – his love of numbness – his addiction to anything but that which helped him. I wanted the poison of her addiction and the weight of her pain to seep out of the wounds that cut her deepest of all – the scars she carried from a lifetime of unfortunate events and blissful ignorance. I wanted her clean – shined up and polished to a point where the life that she still carried inside her blinded those that came near her. I could live vicariously through that. It would be a satisfying ending to the struggles of two people that began on a single fateful day.

“And your mother? She did nothing, I assume?” I kept my voice calm, refusing to acknowledge the stabbing words she’d just spoken.

A humorless laugh escaped her. “Yeah, she did something alright. She took another swig from the bottle before hitting me with it when I woke up. I’m sure while I was passed out, she stood over me and prayed I would die just so she could be rid of another mouth to feed. She didn’t like it when I upset daddy. She worshiped the fucking ground he walked on because he kept her fucked up – just the way she liked to be. He could get the best drugs, he could play the streets well enough to keep the bills paid in the shitastic home they lived in. The fucking roach infested box where they shared a bedroom and set me up a nice little dog bed in the corner.”

She turned her head to look at me from over her shoulder. “So, to answer your question, yes. She did everything a mother should. Thanks for asking.”

My hand was gripped at the back of her neck, my thumb and forefinger digging sharply into the muscles and tendons. She yelped in pain and I brought my lips down to whisper in her ear.

“This works better if you hold back the biting sarcasm. Do you understand?”

Her silent nod was all the acknowledgment I needed to loosen my grip.

“Keep telling me about your parents, Eleni.”

She cleared her throat and sniffled. From where I sat, I could see how her tears had wet the pillow. I leaned over her, brushing my finger over the wet skin of her cheek, relishing in the fact that not only was she being made to relive the devastation that rendered her a pathetic waste – the opposite of everything she could be – but that I was the person forcing her hand. I won’t lie and say it didn’t feel good to manipulate and force my way upon her. I enjoyed power. I enjoyed inflicting pain. I’d suffered so much of it in my life, that to see it extracted from the people around me, to remove their masks to show the weak-minded and frightened souls that truly existed inside – it made me feel, for those few moments, that I wasn’t as alone as I knew myself to be.

“I don’t remember much. Most of my childhood I spent on my own. They were always passed out in bed or out with their friends until the sun rose the following mornings. I was afraid of the dark, but yet, I was left alone in it to rot. I often dreamed about running away and telling somebody – anybody – what was being done.” She laughed, the pain bubbling out with each inflection of her voice. “I wasn’t old enough to realize they couldn’t treat me that way – that there were option for kids like me – places where I would be taken in and fed, bathed and sent off to school …” Her hand gripped the sheets around her, the tension of her hold so tight, her skin turned white over her knuckles.

“…I wanted to run away even if it meant I had to live on the streets. Even at a young age, I figured it was safer taking my chances out there. I never knew when one of my parents would fall asleep with a cigarette in their hand and burn the place down around us.” She sniffled again. “I knew they didn’t love me. I was just some accident that happened when they were too fucked up to use protection.”

I considered her words carefully. How could a child at that age know anything about how they were conceived? A sick feeling crawled along my spine, but I felt a need to delve deeper – to discover if maybe the lack of value she held for herself developed from the touch of a man at far too young an age.

“Did your father…?”

“FUCK no. Thank God.” She rolled over onto her back, her hands relaxing around the sheet as she began to idly play with a frayed string at the hem.