Fighting For Life

by Kylie Alyssa Forte

  I felt like throwing up, that was how the man always made me feel.

  “I must say, I was beginning to lose hope of ever seeing you again. Life has a funny way about it, though. Usually, as soon as you lose hope, it comes through. And here you are, looking pretty as ever, just like your mother.”

  I was having a mini-heart attack as he stood there in front of me with my hair in his hands. I really had hoped that I’d never have to see him ever again.

  He started everything. If he had just left us alone, everything would have been different. Everything might have been okay.

  “Sunny, get your filthy hands off of me!” I said furiously at him, at my life, but mostly at myself for getting into the situation.

  “Ahh, there’s that fire coming from within that I like so much. It was always exciting to see if I could squelch it. I’d say I did a pretty good job until you went and got yourself involved with Demetri. Tell me little girl, where’s your savior now?”

  I swallowed hard as I stared at the man who ruined anything good in my life. I was so angry at him—angry at him for stealing my family away from me, hurting me and my sister all of our lives, and stealing things from me that I could never get back. He was mostly the reason I went and struck up a deal with Demetri anyway, I needed protection from his sociopathic tendencies.

  “You know where he is. You are the reason they’re no longer helping me,” I said through gritted teeth as I remembered that him and my father stole my loaned drugs.

  “No, I can’t take full responsibility for that. I mean, your daddy dearest helped as well,” he said with a sly smirk on his face.

  The mention of my father sped up my heart. Screw that man! He was the one who was supposed to take care of us, instead, he let unspeakable things happen to his daughters while he ran off and got high.

  I had enough of this conversation.

  “Sunny,” I spat out venomously. “Let go of my hair right this second.”

  “Okay,” he said with a shrug.

  He let the bottom half of my hair go, but he quickly put his hands on my waist as he shoved me harshly into the brick building behind me. I let out a cry of pain as my back collided with the brick, making my ribs feel like lava was overtaking them.

  He laughed as the cry left my lips. He leaned against me as he got into my face.

  “Is that better, bitch?” he asked calmly.

  I was anything but calm. There was no way that the man in front of me was going to do this to me. There was no way! I was either getting out of there, or I was going to die trying. I tried to push him off of me, but he didn’t budge at all.

  He quickly sent a hard punch to my cheek, making my head jerk to the side. “Ah, now I remember why I was craving you so much in the first place! You have a special place with me, little girl.”

  That thought made my stomach burn with anger as it was churning with disgust. I could feel the burning bile rising up my throat. I needed to fight my way out of that mess. I needed to get away!

  He slapped me with force as I clawed at his hands. “Ha! You think that you can fight against me?! Little girl, you’re nothing. I spent most of your life reminding you of how little you really meant to the world. You’re nothing, and you will always be nothing. No one cares about you. No one will save you!” he spat his words at me tauntingly.

  His hands slid under my shirt, touching the same place on my waist that he touched through my clothes. My skin burned in reaction to him. I mustered up every bit of strength I had as I forcefully pushed him off of me. He moved, it wasn’t much, but it was enough to peel my back off of the wall and to raise my fists.

  Without thinking of my actions, I began to punch in front of me. I felt my fists come into contact with him over and over again. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Even as he fell to the ground, I kicked, stomped, punched, and tried to destroy him. Everything in me screamed to have him pay for all the crap that he had put me through. However, I knew that nothing I could do to him would ever compare to the amount of pain he inflicted upon me.

  Finally, I tired myself out and stopped with my assaults. He was on the ground in a bloody mess. I knew that I shouldn’t have felt so much satisfaction at his pain, but it felt so good.

  “Sunny,” I spat out. “If I come across you ever again, I won’t hesitate. I will kill you. I don’t care about going to jail, it would be worth it to see you dead, and dying by my hands!” I said in a tone that I had never heard myself use before.

  He was on the ground, trying to crawl away. It looked extremely painful as he tried. More blood fell from his injuries, making the sadistic part of me happy.

  I got in front of him and stomped on his hands that were trying to carry him away. He screamed out in pain, as I felt his bones crunch beneath my shoes.

  It gave me great satisfaction . . . his pain. It was the least he deserved. I gave him one final kick in face, and he fell back unconscious.

  “Doesn’t feel so good to be on the receiving end, does it?” I spat out with so much anger I couldn’t even believe it was my voice.

  I just left him there.

  ***

  I took a pause when I finally made it to the other side of town. It had to take at least two hours to get a good enough distance between myself and the bad part of town because of how slow I had to go for my ribs.

  My old neighborhood, my old home where I grew up . . . It all haunted me. I couldn’t go over there anymore. There was no telling what old monsters lurked in the shadows there.

  I finally made it to a gas station and slid inside the single person restroom. I studied myself in the mirror. I had a dark bruise on my cheek from his punch, a busted lip from his slap, and my hair was disheveled from his yanking and my running away. I hated it.

  I closed my eyes, trying to forget about him. I tried to forget about his evil eyes that zeroed in on me so disgustingly, about his touches on my body throughout my whole life, and about my life that he ruined. I hated him!

  I opened my eyes and studied the places where he touched my hair. It looked normal, but I hated it. He touched it, and I hated it!

  Without realizing what I was doing, I pulled out the scissors that I took from school—the ones I had being making cuts with on my body and lifted them up to my hair. I didn’t think about anything except how much I hated him when I cut my hair just below my collar bone. I hated him.

  Suddenly, I felt a little better. It washed away his touch from my hair. So, I unskillfully and unevenly cut the rest. It looked like crap, but I wasn’t worried about how it looked. I was just worried about the man that felt he had the right to touch it.

  Screw him! I had to rid myself of his touches. They were all burned into my skin.

  I lifted my shirt, and my eyes focused on the bruises that were left at the small of my waist. The bruises that he left on me from holding me too tightly. I took the scissors and carved at my skin. I felt the pointed end of the blade go into my skin as I dragged it across several times until I couldn’t see the bruises anymore due to the blood that cascaded down from my cuts. It felt renewing and satisfying to see his marks disappear and be replaced with my own.

  I hated him and everything he’s ever done to me, to my sister, to my family. Screw him!

  I let the scissor blade drag across various parts of my skin several more times. Soon enough, though, it stopped working. All I could think about was the pain in my chest—pain that Sunny caused, pain that my father caused, and more prominently, pain that I caused.

  Pain. I hated it, and I wanted it to go away. The pain that I caused Aiden and his family, the pain that I brought upon myself, and the pain that I probably costed several other nameless faces ate me alive and made me so guilty that I couldn’t even breathe.

  I hated myself. I hated what I did. I hated what I had become. I hated who I was. I hated the past that brought me down every single time that I was haunted by it. I hated my present with the pain that I caused so many people. I hated the future that that I wasn�
��t even sure that I was going to get . . .

  The future that I wasn’t even sure I wanted.

  I hated my life, and there was nothing to numb that. There was nothing to lessen that pain. There was nothing to make it better because I was nothing. I was nothing.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Let Me Help You

  Aiden

  As soon as she walked in, everything in me seemed to cease working. I could feel her presence within me, calling out for me to go to her. Some parts of me screamed for her while other parts just wanted to scream at her.

  I couldn’t do that though. I couldn’t handle myself yelling hatefully at Aubry. However, I also couldn’t handle embracing her lovingly. I was caught in the middle of a sick and confusing mindgame, brought on by myself.

  Everything about the situation was messed-up.

  I had been avoiding her since the day at my grandpa’s grave. The day I screwed everything up and realized how truly messed up my mind was. The day she ran away from me, and I didn’t even chase her. I wanted to, but a part of me didn’t want to. I needed her, but she made everything worse at the same time. My mind was in a game of push-and-pull, and eventually, it was going to push me over the edge.

  I tried everything to get away from her. I showed up late at school and the Underground. I even left school late and left the Underground early.

  However, nothing worked. She was always there in my mind. It was like I couldn’t do anything without Aubry. No one else could ever replace her. She was always on my mind.

  I still made sure to give her sandwiches and other food and drinks each and everyday. It wasn’t much, but the half of me still loved her, tried to help. It was how I tried to stay connected with her.

  The other half me, there was no describing the burning anger and sadness that radiated there. The second that she told me that she had been even slightly involved, it felt like that half of me died. It felt like there was only resentment, anger, and despair left in that half of me.

  It was such a messed-up situation.

  I tried not to look at her most of the time. Looking at her caused a desperate war to rage on in my head. Half of me wanted her while the other half just wanted to hate her. I wanted to love her, but I wanted to hate her. It was a sick and vicious cycle. It got old real fast.

  That day, when I looked up at her as she came shuffling into the cafeteria slowly, my blood went cold. Everything in me was frozen as I stared at her. Her face was bruised, not too badly, but I knew it wasn’t from her previous fight. She had come out unscathed. I could tell her body was in sheer pain by the way she was walking and by the look on her beautiful face.

  The most unsettling thing about it though, was her hair. Her long, beautiful hair was gone as it was cut off below her shoulders messily. One side was longer than the other, and the ends were cut off bluntly in every direction. You could tell she just picked up sections of her hair and cut it off blindly.

  What happened to her?! Was she okay?

  Our eyes met for a moment before she broke the eye contact and pulled up her hood. I could hear everyone around us talking about her messed-up hair. They were talking shit and saying how ridiculous she looked. They all had no idea what they were talking about, even with her hair messed up, she looked way better than any other person I’d ever seen. She was still absolutely stunning.

  I hated that I still had thoughts like that.

  Brandon stared at her as she slowly sat down with an almost terrified look on his face. Did he know something?

  “What the fuck happened to her?” he asked bitterly as his expression morphed into an angry one.

  Bri said nothing as she rubbed circles into Brandon’s arm while staring at Aubry worriedly as well.

  “She’s obviously not okay,” he said under his breath.

  I stayed silent as I tried to put pieces together. However, I had no information to go off of, so it was pointless.

  “Maybe she just got tired of her hair?” I asked hopefully. I knew that it was a pipe dream, but I wanted it to be true. We all knew, though . . . Something was wrong.

  “Maybe, but . . . that’s seriously doubtful. You don’t just cut off your hair like that because you don’t like your look anymore,” Bri whispered as more people looked between Aubry and us.

  They were all talking about Aubry, saying she went crazy. If only they knew that I was the crazy one. It was when I caught the words of someone saying that she should do everyone favor and kill herself, that I lost it.

  “Shut up!” I growled loudly at everyone at the other end of the table.

  No one said a word as they looked at me scared. I was breathing hard, trying to get a grip on myself. I felt like I was going to lose it very soon.

  “She’s not okay,” Brandon said grimly as he got up and walked out of the lunchroom with a worried glance towards Aubry.

  He was right, nothing was okay.

  ***

  Aubry

  I hated the feeling—the pain. It resonated through me as it suffocated me completely. I saw him everywhere I went, in every person that I looked at, and every time I even closed my eyes. I was constantly reminded of the love that I lost.

  Aiden’s love—the love that I craved so much from the person that I hurt the most. I was constantly reminded of the pain that I inflicted upon everyone, myself included.

  I made myself sick. I made another cut on my side since had I run out of room on my arm; it still didn’t work. I could still feel the intense pain in my chest. It was the pain that I had being running from. Everything seemed to be catching up to me. No matter how deeply I cut, it didn’t distract me anymore. I could just feel pain, pure excruciating pain.

  I honestly didn’t want to live like that anymore. If that was how it was going to be, then I just wanted to die. I wanted to never feel the pain ever again. I never wanted to see that broken look on Aiden’s face ever again.

  I’d be doing everyone a favor. I’d be doing myself a favor. The pain would be gone.

  I got up from my hidden place in an alleyway behind a restaurant. I had sat there for hours after I left school early. Everything was making me feel suffocated, and I couldn’t stand being at that place any longer. I needed to get out.

  That was what I was good at—running away from my pain and problems. However, they always caught up to me. Always. I knew that it was time for it to finally catch up to me.

  I exited the alleyway and walked through town square. I briskly walked away from the middle of town and headed down the path that I had memorized so easily. I walked as quickly as I could, trying to get there fast. I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I knew exactly where I wanted to be. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

  After a while and the uphill climb, I finally arrived at my destination.

  The cliff, Aiden’s cliff. It was beautiful place, and it reminded me that what Aiden and I had was real.

  He was real. Unfortunately, it was I who had been fake. What I had let him believe was me, was really just a pretty lie. He was real, but the version of me that I let him believe in wasn’t all of me. It was a lie. I was a lie.

  I walked forward as I stared down the high cliff. It was so high up that someone would instantly die if they hit the river below. It was so high up that living wouldn’t be an option if someone fell.

  I could have just done it at that very moment, nobody would have even known. Nobody would have cared. No one would ever have to worry about me ruining their lives ever again. No one would have to look over their shoulders to see me with the ghost of their past, lurking around. I could have don’t it right then, and I would have been free.

  I wanted to jump. I wanted to die.

  I took another step forward. I was so close that the tips of my shoes were hanging off the edge. Just an inch or two more, and I would have lost my balance. I would have fallen for sure.

  I backed up abruptly from the edge just a bit as I took a breath.

  No, I didn’t want to lose my balance
. I wanted to jump. I wanted to fling myself off the edge in freedom. I didn’t want to just lose my balance to fall in a kind of purposeful accident.

  It wasn’t any sort of accident. I was choosing it. I wanted to die.

  I lifted my arms out beside me as I closed my eyes tightly. I thought about everything. Everything that had led me to that moment. Everything that I had brought upon myself. It had been one screwed up ride.

  It was actually kind of funny. Well, maybe not funny. Ironic is a better word. I started this journey in hopes of living. However, at that moment, all I wanted to do was die.

  I could feel the hurt rush through my veins as the guilt boomed loudly in my head. It was all my fault. There was no one else to blame. Dying was the only thing that could save me from my mind, screaming at me for screwing it all of up. I screwed everything and everyone up! I ruined everything.

  Death to most was a cruel word with sadness and pain. To me though, it seemed to be the only way. It was the only way to be at peace. It was the only way to feel anything but hurt. It was the only way to be rid of all of my wrongs. It was the only way.

  Cutting was no longer helping. No matter how deeply I cut or how much the cut hurt, it still didn’t compare to the hole in my chest. It didn’t compare to looking at him and knowing how badly I hurt him. It didn’t compare to not being able to love him. Nothing compared to the hurt of knowing that I broke him. Nothing compared to the hurt I brought upon everyone.

  I was a plague. I ruined everything that I’ve ever come into contact with. I destroy everything.

  I took another step forward.

  This was it. I had no last words. I had nothing to tell anyone. I was just going to die, and that was that. It was my most selfless act. It was my way to help everyone that I hurt.

  I took one last deep breath as I took another step forward. I was staring at the long drop ahead of me. I wasn’t really scared, I was just ready.