He was never cruel, I fight, bitterly, but a part of me refuses to completely accept that. No, he was most certainly cruel. He watched people fall and he did nothing but stand idly by and laugh. He left me alone when I was at my lowest.
But none of these events... happened.
Todd gives me water every day, but sometimes, when he's not looking, I don't drink it. Because I'm not thirsty, and because I remember the fear and insistence in Screech's face when he asked me not to drink it anymore.
Like I was willingly giving myself over to poison.
But I wasn't. There is a difference between being poisoned for someone's uses and just drinking water.
… Isn't there?
If that's true, why doesn't he drink the water with me? Didn't he used to? Or did he never drink water? I can't tell. My memory is foggy, almost empty and distant, and I feel, at most times, like I can't breathe, like I can't think or live...
The days seem to go by achingly slowly, and then all at once. I woke up from one nap on my third week to find out we'd been together for months.
At least, that's what he said.
It isn't just my mind changing... it's the world around us, too. My stomach starts to grow into a comfortable hump. Around us, the plains begin to even out, straighten themselves into a plausible line. The mist that covers our vision and is thick and hot around our bodies nearly evaporates into the air. The sky begins to get lighter and lighter red until it turns a gorgeous, crystalline blue, and a white hot sun peaks out from behind welcoming white clouds. Green grass begins to sprout, and somehow, Todd's gotten his hands on a rusting, creaking swing set for our new daughter.
Somehow, he knows it's a daughter, and I do too. We never once question the sex after the few first days.
As we stand and look at the swing set, his arm rubbing my back gently, my mind goes to Screech.
“You sure he's okay?”
“Hmm?”
“Screech?” I prompt, quietly. “You sure he's okay?”
There's a heavy sigh from next to me, and a waterskin is shoved in my hand. Next I know it's night time and I'm waking from another dream I do not remember, though a name lingers on my lips for a moment before it fades beyond the realm of actuality.
I sit up, rub my head, look over at Todd. He's sitting by a cackling fire, shoving pieces of twigs that I have no idea even existed into it. I move closer to him, suddenly feeling cold on my sleeveless arms, and I want him to take his button down off to cover me.
He doesn't get my mental message and just pokes at the fire, however, before giving me an almost wary smile. “Heya, pumpkin.”
“Hey.” I scoot closer to the fire, then him, looking between my very enlarged belly and the bright flames. They fill up the usual black sky with color, brightness, which brings an odd sort of comfort to me.
“How're you feeling?”
“Good.” For some reason, my mind doesn't want to verify the answer my mouth gave.
“Good,” he returns, his grin brightening. “Sleep well?”
“Yeah.” I shrug, a bit, and suddenly I have a very weird, settling feeling coming over me... like I'm myself, something I haven't been for a very, very long time.
“You slept for a while, you know.”
“Did I?” I give him a speculative glance.
“Yeah. What's the last thing ya 'member?”
I shrug, unhelpfully. There isn't much I remember any more, honestly. The world is all a sort of blur of colors and thoughts with no real stability, no real existence anymore.
“I think I've been dreaming a lot.”
“Ya have, my dear. Ya have.”
I blink, a bit. “Some dreams... they feel so close, like the tip of my tongue, like I saw them and I vaguely remember them. But then other dreams...”
“Yeah?” I hear his voice offering, and for some reason, his interest makes me uncomfortable.
“Then some dreams it's like I've never had at all. Like, my mind wasn't ever really in them, wasn't ever experiencing them.”
“That's just how dreams work, Rasc,” he says, lightly, turning back to the fire. There's an odd relief about him, like his fears obviously have been extinguished.
“But they don't feel like dreams.” I'm not looking at him as I speak. “They feel... like another sort of reality.”
“What did you just say?” His voice tells me he knows exactly what I said, but needs to hear it again. I see his hand edge towards his waterskin, which makes me perturbed for the first time in our long relationship.
I crawl slightly away from him, my mind taking the easiest option – a change of subject. “Did you ever think... I did something with my life, before coming here?”
“Something like what?” His hand is resting just millimeters away from the water, and I feel like he knows that I'm watching him so closely, even though his eyes are fixed on red flames.
“I don't know,” I shy away.
“You said it. You obviously meant something.” His voice is harsh, almost commanding, and it makes my gaze fade away too, drawn into the flames in front of me. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, like... before I came here. Maybe... I was important. Maybe I did something with my life.”
“You think you had a life before here?” His voice is almost a whisper, a mask of muted anger that's boiling beneath his veins.
I swallow, continue. “Maybe I was... like... I dunno.” I shrug. “A scientist or something.” I don't know why I chose that specifically – that was the first career my mind could think of.
Now Todd is bristling against my words, like a cat rubbed the wrong way. His voice rises slightly, but still stays surprisingly soft for all the animosity it holds. “A scientist? You'd have to be smart to be one of those.”
I can feel my heart physically sink to my toes as I turn back to the fire.
“Why would you ever think that, Rascal?”
“I don't know,” is my quick answer, my neck burning red. “I just...” I shrug, pointlessly.
“Hmm.” He's watching me far too closely for my liking, paying attention to every word, every shrug, every stupid subject changing question. It's like he's been trained to watch for me, to watch for my slip ups.
“You should take another drink, Rascal.” He picks up the waterskin and passes it to me, his eyes never straying from the light, just as mine are no longer.
“I don't want to drink anymore.”
The silence that follows my statement is deafening. Only the crackle of the fire in front of us interrupts the seeming bombshell that I just dropped atop Todd's head.
“Why not?”
“I'm not thirsty. I don't want to drink anymore.”
“You've always drank the water. Since we first met, since we first fell in love.”
But for some reason, my mind is rejecting those words.
eighteen
“The baby will be here soon.”
It's my statement, not his. There's not much I'm sure of, but I am sure of the baby.
I feel her in my sleep. Kicking, dreaming, talking. I've thought up hundreds of names – Marie, Rosalind, Ada, Lise, Rita. One night, swinging on the broken swing set with Todd standing above me, his hard figure angled towards me, I went through the list aloud to him.
“Those names sound ancient,” he complains, darkly.
Ever since I've stopped drinking the water, I've noticed how cold he can be, occasionally. Sometimes I'll drink just to brighten his mood enough for the kindness I remember in our honeymoon days.
Mostly, I dream of my daughter, and Screech, and I think so much more that I forget.
“That's what I like about them. It sounds like they've stood the test of time, the end of the world. They'll be here forever, never go out of style.”
“I don't think they were ever in style.” He gives me a smile which is more condescending than jovial, then a sort of stunted surprise shakes his face. “Wait – did'ya say Marie?”
“Yes.”
/> “Like... Marie Curie?”
It takes a few seconds for the name to make an impact on my mind. The woman who pioneered radioactivity, discovered polonium and radium. Only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences.
“Um... I suppose,” I say, a bit blankly, blinking at the realization.
His eye roll is in no way kind. “When're ya ever gunna let go of this stupid science dream of yours, Rascal?”
I don't reply, because the words shake me to my core, make me dizzy and more nauseous than my pregnancy permits.
I don't ever really get cravings, or morning sickness, or any of that. Todd says it's not a regular world – so it's not a regular pregnancy, either. Can't be, of course. There were times when I believed words he said so quickly like that, but currently, I am more hesitant. Without the clarity the water affords me, it is hard to see. Or perhaps it's the very opposite.
“Well, what are your ideas for her name?” My voice is a little sharpened against the screech of his own rude tone.
“Brittany. Tiffany. Ashley.” His grin is wide and nostalgic, his voice soft and reverent. “I love those. Don't you?”
“No.” My eyes narrow, slightly, and I hesitate swinging for a minute to stare up at him, my bare toes twisting into the gray grass beneath me which is strangely cold. “Those are horrid names. Nobody actually likes those names, Todd.”
I don't quite remember exactly how it happens, but suddenly he's next to me and he's shoving at me with his hands, and next thing I know I'm laying on the ground underneath a swing, my back aching, my mind racing about my baby.
My baby. That's all that matters.
Her and Screech, of course.
Some nights, when Todd is asleep, I sit huddled in a corner, arms and legs wrapped around me, and I think. I think about the scrawny boy that I released into the big, wide staircase, and I wonder what's happened to him. If he's well, or sick, or if everything worked out for him. I wonder about his wolf dog, and how she is, and if they're happy. Maybe he's fallen. Maybe he's reached the top.
More than once, I've thought about going after him. But climbing the staircase alone is no way to climb at all. And if I leave Todd, he'll only follow me, for the baby.
Besides... the staircase is no place for a baby girl.
When I'm not obsessing over an eight year old, I'm obsessing over a fetus. I wonder what she'll look like. How she'll walk, and talk, and look at me. I wonder what the color of her eyes will be. I wonder whether I'll see my reflection for the first time in her face. I wonder how her little hands will feel against my long ones, and I wonder what her first word will be. If she'll love the swing, or hate it. If she'll run and jump and sing or be quiet. Maybe she'll be a scientist. Maybe one day, when she's older and stronger, I'll find the top of the staircase with her.
Maybe the world that blinks in and out of my dreams will be through the top of the staircase, and her and I can live in that world with pavement and cars and men with brown hair that smile. And maybe she'll love the world and be happy and brave and strong.
I don't care what she's like, or what she thinks, or how she acts or lives. The fact that she'll be part of me, family, actually, properly blood family, something that doesn't really exist in a world with no memory, is dizzying and exciting. It makes my stomach drop in a way that's comfortable and exhilarating.
Never once, not in any of my dreams or beliefs, have I seen Todd there. I tell myself things will be different when my little baby girl pops out, but perhaps it won't be.
If so, I can run away and still have her. I'd have something else to protect, something else to love.
I think maybe that's what I'm missing. Maybe it's not Screech specifically – maybe it's just the mothering part.
It's dark tonight, and it's not really a darkness I'm cozy with. It's one that presses in at every single angle on my slim body and my enlarged stomach, which is ready to pop at any moment.
I must've been here with Todd months, but I can hardly remember any of it. It's all just dreams with a few moments of waking.
I wait for the feeling I've grown accustomed to, and I smile when I feel it – my baby, moving around within me. It's not harsh kicking like I've been told, but soft, like butterflies tickling the inside of my belly with their wings. I grin but don't laugh and I shift, snugly, on the ground.
Todd's not here yet. I don't know where he is. I think he gave an excuse when he disappeared, but now, laying in the pitch black and staring at nothing, I feel very alone and disquieted.
“Todd?”
No reply. Just darkness and silence.
I focus on the feeling of my baby to keep myself from panicking. The loss of vision and the surrounding silence is just enough to put me on the edge of sanity, and the fact that I seem to be alone here is not helping my rather weak mental stability.
“Hey, Todd. You here?”
Nothing. Nothing.
“Todd – ”
I'm interrupted by a large, firm hand clasping over my mouth. I jump in surprise and then writhe beneath the hand the holds me down, fingers automatically clawing at the wrist that has me pinned. I cannot see, I don't know who it can be, and my heart is beginning to pound, the sound echoing loudly in my ears.
“Shut the hell up.”
It's Todd. The country drawl so comfortably grasps his cool tone, his vile words, as if it's used to speaking in this new language I've never heard him use.
I don't stop struggling, despite the fact that it's my husband holding me down. I cry out, but it's muffled by his large hand.
I feel all, see none. His body moves and settles above me, and I feel him pin my legs down with his.
“What's the matter, baby? Don't want to make love to your husband?”
I'm pregnant, yet something about even being near him suddenly repulses me. I squirm and cry out, as loudly as I can, though nothing's happening, nothing's coming to my aid. Of course, what can? There's nothing out there. The staircase is as the staircase always was – empty.
“Don't act like it's a surprise, like this is the first time it's happened.” I feel his weight off my legs for a second and I go to move him, to kick him, but a hand is already working quickly on keeping me down. Well, the arm's keeping me down, while the hand is pulling at my pants.
No! my mind shrieks in my head, and the sound I make from beneath his hand sounds so desperate it's inhuman. The drumbeat of my heart has taken over my hearing now, and though everything around me is black all I can see is white, fearful, angry white.
My body's shaking from terror, and I'm beginning to burn up as my legs grow cold from the loss of my rather thin pants. I feel him tugging my top down – it doesn't have straps, so it doesn't even need to go over my top – and I thrash against him, hitting him with my fists on his chest – which I feel is now bare, as well.
He's giggling as he does this, like an excited school girl on her first day in class. He leans in close and I can feel the softness of his lips, the warmth of his breath, yet none of it is appealing to me. My body rejects it abhorrently, and I swear that I'm going to lose my stomach right there, into his hand.
Please stop! I shout, mentally, and I attempt to cry it but it comes out from behind his hand distorted and incoherent. I realize, as he begins with relative ease, that there is absolutely nothing I can do. He's going to take me, nine months pregnant and all, on a floor made from human ash.
How long had I claimed this man as my husband mentally? How long had this all gone on? He was never mine, I was never his. I walked the staircase with him in a group and when he found me again, he poisoned me, just as Screech said. Screech and I were far closer than I and this man, and we always would be. These thoughts lend themselves to me at break neck speeds, everything becoming so clear in so much chaos. He had tricked me into believing everything and he had raped me before this. I was pregnant, wasn't I?
Oh, God. My daughter is the child of a rape, of a crime, a travesty. Why did I not remember her conception? Why did
my memories begin where he decided? How could he twist my history that much? And what was the point? Sick, twisted, humor?
I recall something he said once, long ago, when he had first found Screech and I again. “I'd do just about anything to not feel alone.”
Oh God. Oh GOD.
I close my eyes and wait for it all to end. For it all to be over. For everything to stop. He's not even really started yet, but I know what's coming and I know the pain that will be involved, and I pray to any God that exists that my daughter won't be injured, that I'll still be okay, and that somehow, my mind will be broken far enough to accept all the water he gives me, so that this event never happened in my mind, even if it happened in real life.
A conversation I should've remembered comes back to me, one water's made me forgotten. One with a sleeping Screech on my lap and Todd telling me impossible things, long before I ever took a sip of his magic water, long before I knew the lies he spoon fed me. Back when he was teaching me his own history, his own life.
“I runned into some trouble with the law – which isn't true, by the way, because I totally had permission...”
My eyes widen in horror, realization.
He meant permission for sex.
Oh... dear Lord...
He's a rapist!
I think I'm sobbing, but it's hard to tell. My mind is working very hard to keep me from seeing what's happening in front of me, from feeling what's on top of me. My eyes are squeezed shut though the darkness has the coverage I need, and I'm just awaiting for the worst of it, the brunt of the storm.
When suddenly, above me, there's a grunt and then I'm released.
I sit up, shivering from my nudity, and I hear a cry of surprise. I presume it's Todd, and I don't know where he is, what's going on.
“What is wrong with you? What are you doing to her?”
That's a voice I recognize, one that makes light come into my eyes. My voice is much shakier than I remember as I cry out, brokenly and needily, “S... S-S-Scree-e-ech?”
But Todd is cursing at him, loudly, using words I wouldn't repeat in front of any such child.
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