Finding Beauty in the Darkness
I’m due for a fix, but instead of Derek coming downstairs, he’s arguing with Weston. My body is freezing. I’m shivering and I need some damn pills or powder. My head is pounding and my thoughts are running wild and loud. I need something to dim them, to shut them up. I can feel an anxiety attack coming on. Grabbing the thin blanket that doubles as a fitted sheet, I wrap it around me, trying to warm myself up, trying to find comfort.
It’s not working.
More shouting.
Can’t they argue later? Like after Derek brings me the damn drugs? I mean, seriously, it would take two minutes to come down here, hand me the pills, and walk back upstairs.
The shouting stops.
The door to the basement swings open and I sit up like Pavlov’s dog with my hands out, mouth dry, waiting for the drugs to numb me once again.
It’s not Derek. It’s Weston. Just great.
“Get on your fucking knees!” He barks out orders before he even makes it all the way down the steps. I want to argue and beg for my fix, but it’ll do no good. If anything, he’ll just withhold the drugs to torture me. I drop to my knees, close my eyes, and wait for whatever he has in store for me this time. Since I’ve been here, it seems Weston comes down once every few weeks, but recently he’s been coming down more often.
I can’t see him with my eyes closed, but I know when he’s in front of me because his hands fist my hair. I try to think about something else—finding my escape, grasping at every fond memory that still lingers.
My mom, our visits to the Hoover Dam, our hiking trips in Red Rock Canyon. I focus on my good memories instead of what’s happening to me in this moment, what he’s forcing me to do. The pictures I used to take of the scenery during our hikes. How my mom used to stop at various locations and insist I take selfies of us. I swear she did it just to drive me nuts.
“People ruin the photos,” I used to tell her. She would laugh and tell me I was wrong, it’s the people who make them. I try to hold on to the memories, cling to them like they’re my lifeline, but they’re getting harder to recall.
Those happy memories melt away like a skillet full of bright crayons all mixing together to make something black and ugly. It matches my heart. I’m decaying and lost.
He grunts, and I shudder away the last of the color in my world.
“Up.” He’s finished with me and forces me to stand. I open my eyes to see Weston tucking himself back in his pants. “I have company tonight and you’re going to entertain them. You understand?” He asks like I really have a choice. It’s not often he forces me to have sex with other, but when he does, he usually drugs me up first with the good stuff. While I hate that I’ve become dependent on drugs, I prefer it that way.
“I…” I close my mouth quickly. I almost slipped.
“You what?” Weston glares at me. “You what?” Smack! His palm strikes me across my cheek.
“I need drugs… please,” I beg.
“You need drugs?” He looks at me incredulously. “You need drugs?” Now he’s laughing humorlessly. “You don’t need shit. I tell you when you need something. And if you ask again, I’ll make you wait even longer. Tonight, you’ll be sober. You’ll entertain these men, and every time you feel them inside of you, you’ll remember what a whore you are.” He grabs my face with his hand and squeezes my cheeks. “And if you speak one single word, I will tear you apart after they leave.”
Leaning down, he gives me a soft kiss on my lips that has me wanting to throw up all over him. “Let’s go.”
“Upstairs?” Entertaining someone always means them coming down here. I haven’t been upstairs since I was forced down here.
“Shut the fuck up. What part of not speaking a single word are you not understanding?”
I follow him upstairs and I’m met with bright lights. My head pounds and I immediately feel dizzy. I haven’t eaten in hours, and I’m in desperate need of the drugs to calm me down.
I follow Weston to the living room of the home I have lived in since I was a little girl, and when I look around, I’m shocked at what I see. All the family portraits have been removed, and in their place are cheap looking paintings. I glance at the shelves and see all my mom’s knickknacks are gone. It’s like he wiped everything of my mom and me from this home.
A myriad of emotions hit me all at once. Anger. Grief. Sadness. Confusion. This was my mother’s home. My home. It was our home before it was his, yet he has taken it over and has eliminated any proof that we ever existed. A man who supposedly at one time loved my mother has destroyed any evidence she was ever alive. Who is this man? How did he manage to fool everyone around him?