Falling for the Villain

Nothing.

He yelled, and hit, and threw me in the closet. Sometimes it felt like I lived in here, with my sadness and my tears that never stopped. Mama started playing Clair de Lune, my favorite song.

I don’t know how many times she repeated it until all of a sudden, I heard his hateful roar, “Did you think I wouldn’t have found out?”

She stopped playing, her finger sitting on a key for a second too long.

I gasped, thinking he was talking to me, but he wasn’t. I could see through one of the holes in the door that he made one night with a knife. He stabbed it so many times, screaming that I was a bad boy who never listened to him.

I did.

I tried to.

It wasn’t enough.

It never was.

“I asked you a question, pet. Don’t make me ask you again.”

I jumped, hating every second of what was happening, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

I was stuck.

I couldn’t move, trying to breathe through the terror I was feeling. Exactly how Mama taught me to.

“Master, I don’t know what you mean.”

“You fucking liar!”

The sound of his whip was the next thing I heard, instantly hitting Mama’s skin. I didn’t make a sound. Even though I wanted to scream, shout, beg him to stop beating her. Usually, he’d strike her a few times and then stop; this time, he wasn’t stopping himself.

“Master, please…”

“Donovan, do you see?! Do you hear your lying whore of a mother?!”

Slap.

Slap.

Slap.

He struck her so many times I lost count. She fell to the floor by the bench of the piano.

Surrendering in mercy.

Usually he would stop. This time he didn’t hold back on his assault.

“Donovan…” he sang in that voice I hated more than anything. “Tell him the truth, pet. Where did my boy come from?”

“Master, please… I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“You’re a horrible fucking mother, lying to him for this long. I can’t trust you with anything, you stupid bitch!”

Over and over, he hit her.

I looked right at the whip with wide eyes, terrified of if he would stop.

Would he?

It didn’t feel like it.

“You like that, son?” he asked like he could see me. “Maybe you will turn out to be something and someone after all.”

He was in front of the closet in four hard steps, and I instinctively shot back into the wall behind me.

There was nowhere I could go, but that didn’t stop my mind from thinking I could hide from him. He unlocked the closet and opened the doors.

Was this a trick?

What do I do?

“Come here.”

I looked at my mama from across the room; her face was sad and afraid. She always had the same face when he was around. She wasn’t the same mom with him in the house.

“I. Said. Come. Here.”

I didn’t like the sound of his voice as I moved toward him.

“Crawl to me, Donovan.”

“Sir—”

“Did I say you could talk?”

I shook my head, getting down on my hands and knees. Slowly, I did what he ordered.

“This cat o’ nine tails, son,” he said, moving his head toward it, “carries so much power. You have no idea how much control and power you have with this simple weapon. Now, this is your chance to prove to me that you aren’t fucking worthless. I want you to take it and hit your mother. Do you understand?”

I halted dead in my tracks.

“Master…”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he seethed, yelling at Mama. “I’m sick of hearing your voice! I’m having a man-to-man conversation with my son, and if you know what’s good for you, you will shut the fuck up before I lose my patience with you!”

I shook my head again, but he cocked his head to the side with a vindictive look on his face.

“Are you saying no to me?”

“Sir, I don’t want to,” I swallowed, trying to hold back the tears. Knowing it would only get me in further trouble with him.

“Grab the fucking cat o’ nine tails, Donovan, NOW!”

Trembling, I did as I was told and grabbed the cat o’ nine tails by the handle. It was heavy and felt cold. I wanted to place it back into his hand, but he must have sensed my hesitation because he moved closer to me and wrapped my hand around it, the way it’s supposed to be held, he said. Stepping behind me, he gripped onto the handle as hard as he could. His powerful grasp was killing my hand under his.

I tried to focus on that pain instead of what my heart was feeling when he kept ordering me to hit my mom.

Louder and louder his voice became.

I hated the feeling and wanted to scream and run, but I knew it would be worse for my mom if I did. I didn’t want him to hurt her anymore. I was tired of seeing him hurt her. She never did anything to deserve it. He had no mercy, and he would laugh and only hit us harder. He said we deserved it, and he would call us all sorts of names. Some I understood, others I didn’t.