Kiki

“I cover my eyes. I'm crying with my whole body and all I want to do is disappear. I feel his hand hesitate, hovering over my back, then rubbing awkward circles, and then his fingers in my hair. If he's saying anything, I don't hear.

All can I hear is my blood rushing and my heart drumming in my ears. A pulsing in my throat, like there's a big jumbled ball of words stuck in there dying to get out. He puts both arms around me, but I feel suffocated.

Don't want to be held. Don't want to be touched. Not by anyone ever again in my entire life. I crunch my teeth together to keep myself from screaming.

Screaming in general, screaming at him to get his hands off me, screaming for help, screaming because I can't make sense out of anything that is happening, has happened, will happen.

Screaming because I still feel like I'm back there, always back there, in my heart I'm still that girl.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“I woke up to him climbing on top of me, jabbing his knees into my arms. I thought it was a joke, unfunny to be sure, but still, a joke.

I opened my mouth. I tried to speak, but only got out “wwwh,” the beginning of what. What, what, what is happening, what are you doing?

But he put his hand over my mouth right away so my mom and dad wouldn't hear. They wouldn't hear, because my alarm clock was blinking 2:48 at me from the nightstand next to my bed. We both knew they were fast asleep on the other side of the house.

No joke. Because now his mouth is on your mouth and his hand around your throat and he's whispering, “Shutupshutupshutup.”

You do. You shut up. You are stupid, stupid.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“It's 2:49: He had my days-of-the-week underwear on the floor and somehow you still don't understand what's happening. Then he yanked my nightgown up, €”my favorite nightgown with the stupid sleeping basset hounds on it €”and I feel the seam rip where the thread was already coming loose.

He pulls it up around my neck, exposing my whole body, my whole naked, awkward body. And he shoves a fistful of it into my mouth, choking me. I was gagging, but he just kept pushing it into my mouth, pushing, pushing, pushing, until it wouldn't go in any farther.

I didn't understand why, not until I tried to scream. I was screaming, I knew I was, but no sound. Just muffled underwater noise.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be

“By 2:53 it was over.

He let go of my arms. It was over, it was over, I told myself.

When he ripped the nightgown out of my mouth, I started coughing and gasping. I had almost suffocated to death, but he couldn't even let me have that simple bodily reaction.

He clamped his hand over my mouth. He was out of breath, his mouth almost touching mine, his words wet: “Shut up. Shut up. Listen to me. Listen.”

He held my face still so that I had to look directly into his eyes. His eyes were the eyes he always had, but they burned me now, burned right into me.

“Shhshhshh,” he whispered as he peeled away strands of tear-soaked hair from my face, tucking them behind my ears, €”like, gently €”over and over again, his hands on me like it's the most normal thing, like this was just supposed to be.”
― Amber Smith, The Way I Used to Be