by Scott Savino
“Goddammit,” he howled, trying unsuccessfully to pull himself free.
Without another thought, I grabbed the gun from the dresser, leveled it at his head, and fired. I shot him again and again until the magazine was empty. I kept pulling the trigger in shock, but all I got were empty, rhythmic clicks.
Ken laughed.
I was so close I’d hit him with every shot, but they hadn’t done a thing.
I looked up to Daniel and we both knew we had no other choice but to run.
So we did. Out of the house and into the car.
Within a few blocks we were at the on-ramp to the freeway and I pulled over, throwing the car in park as morning commuters flew by. I wasn’t sure where we were headed: we’d never decided.
“Let’s just drive until we run out of gas,” Daniel said.
“What? And never go back?”
“Why not?” He was shaking with fear and so was I. We were both in our pajamas with nothing else to our names but our wallets and the car around us. He made a point to pick his words, to say things that would calm me. “It’s not like we can’t start over somewhere else.”
“What will we do for money? What about our jobs?”
“Fuck ‘em,” he said after a moment. “We can make a life wherever. I’m with you wherever you go. I’m everywhere you are.”
I felt a smile spread across my face and a little of the darkness Ken had brought back lifted from my heart. After a moment I nodded. Daniel was right. We could start over anywhere as long as we were together.
I put my foot on the brake and the car back into drive, waiting for the right moment to merge into the early morning traffic.
The road was so busy with all the sunrise commuters, so I almost didn’t see Ken until it was too late.
He was running behind us, and close. So close he’d nearly reached us by the time I hit the gas. His face was awash in the red of my taillights as I swerved into the nearest lane and surged onto the freeway.
Tires screeched behind us, followed by the heavy crunch of metal on metal as the echoes of cars and trucks being torn apart behind us shattered the morning peace. Daniel looked back at the vehicles that had piled up. He assures me Ken was left in so many pieces splattered across the asphalt he wouldn’t be climbing out of his grave a second time.
As we put distance between us and the second wreck to take my ex-husband’s life, I was hyperventilating. Tears had filled my eyes and I cried uncontrollably, doing my best to stay on the road so we didn’t end up following Ken’s footsteps. I’m not sure why was crying. I was dealing with so many things I’d buried deep inside me. Emotions that were finally clawing their way to the surface. When I swerved accidentally, Daniel reached over and steadied the wheel.
“Calm down,” he said gently. “Watch the road.” His voice was soothing and level. His breathing was controlled now and he was no longer shaking. There was a finality to what he’d seen back there, something I would need to work through all over again, but I knew I wouldn’t have to work through it alone this time.
My hand rested on the shifter as I struggled to control my breathing. Daniel placed his own hand over it.
“Glad we didn’t die,” he said.
“You don’t want to leave me?”
“No,” he said. “I’m right here. Always.”
Daddy’s Girl
WYNNE F. WINTERS
I’VE BEEN BLESSED WITH A happy childhood. I know this and I’m not ungrateful. I know others have endured suffering I myself cannot imagine. Hunger. Pain. Grief. Others have worked far harder for far less and found contentment. I know this. I know all of it. I’m not ungrateful.
I’ve always been my father’s daughter. Daddy’s little girl. Of my mother I remember little, only an impression of warmth and a dash of perfume. When I was too young to understand, she ran away with her accountant and moved across the country to start a new life, one without my father and me. At first she sent me cards—birthday, Christmas, even a get well card when I had my tonsils out—but gradually they became fewer and farther between, until by the time I was in middle school they’d stopped completely. By then, I didn’t mind. My mother was more a figment, a fever dream. My father was everything to me.
My father is a hard-working man. He works with his hands, building houses. He built this house, my childhood home. When I was younger he was often gone, out working. We didn’t have much money, though I didn’t recognize it as poverty until later: buying other people’s clothes at garage sales with their smell still woven into the fabric, shopping with a grocery list limited to the items covered by EBT, getting school supplies as birthday presents.
I was happy enough, as children are in their ignorant bliss. I didn’t know yet what I was missing, but my father wanted more for me. He wanted to give me everything. So he studied in night classes to earn his contractor’s license and he took out a loan against the house he’d built with his own two hands, and he carved out a piece of prosperity for us. He’s had his own business for nearly ten years now and he’s known by his peers to be fair and honest.
Things were tough those first few years as the fledgling business struggled along, but then things changed. My clothes were new and only smelled like the lavender fabric softener our new housekeeper used. We bought groceries without looking at the prices and trips to restaurants, once reserved for special occasions, became a weekend ritual. I moved to a prestigious academy across town with knee-length, skirted uniforms and Ivy League acceptance letters in every graduating class.
Despite all this, my father did his best to keep me from turning out spoiled. There were rules in his house, not many, but they were iron-clad. My father provided for and loved me, and in many ways allowed me to explore and grow independently. All he asked was that I follow his rules, and he never set a rule he didn’t explain. My father was a fair man, after all.
The earliest rule I remember was not to go in the basement. This was easily enforced as the basement was locked and I didn’t know where he kept the key. Besides, the basement was dangerous he told me when I demanded to know why out of childish curiosity. There were black widows down there, spinning their webs in wait for me. And rats, he added. Terrible nests of rats, which is why he went down so often, to set traps.
Rats were also the source of the sounds I sometimes heard coming from beyond the locked door: sometimes a faint scratching and, more rarely, a soft squeak.
As I grew up, the rules became less about personal harm (Don’t touch the stove. Don’t run with scissors.) and more about personal responsibility (No phone until you finish your homework. No borrowing the car until you’ve done your chores.). I rebelled against these, as all teenagers do, sometimes with scathing judgments only a child can deliver to a parent. My father was patient during these scenes and waited until I’d worn myself out before explaining.
“Cecilia,” he said. “The world is a hard place. It doesn’t give handouts. I need to know that when I’m gone you can take care of yourself. And the only way to do that is to develop self-discipline. You’re a smart girl, and you can do anything you could possibly dream of, but you gotta work to get there.”
Of course he was right. I knew he was right, however much I resented his pronouncements, but it placed me in good stead. That self-discipline he instilled in me lead to a spot on the varsity lacrosse team where I helped take us to state. It helped me as student body vice president when the president was sidelined by mono the week before homecoming, and it all seemed to culminate the day an official-looking envelope arrived in the mail bearing my acceptance letter to the University of Chicago.
My dad was there for all of it, in ways large and small, and I’d never seen him so proud as the day I’d opened that letter.
And, like the stalwart father he is, he was there for the bad things, too.
There was only one other rule I was expected to abide by while I was in his house: no boys. Ever. My father was suspicious of friends and male acquaintances and even disliked my
male teachers.
“Boys have one thing on their mind, Cissy,” he’d told me more than once. “You can’t let them distract you. You’ve got a future, girl, and you can’t let it get away from you.”
This was partially why he sent me to an all-girls school, to keep me focused on my education. Luckily enough, this “no boys” rule turned out to be pretty easy to follow, though I’ve never gotten up the courage to tell my father my “best friend” Lynn and I were actually a lot more. I can’t think what he’d say if he knew what we’d gotten up to during our “study” sleepovers.
I think about Lynn a lot, though it’s been nearly a year since I last saw her. They say she ran away from home and no one’s heard from her since. It’s my fault, really. We hit a rough patch the summer after junior year. She’d wanted to come out, I hadn’t. I didn’t know what it would do to my dad and I wasn’t willing to risk it. I was scared. She called me a coward, and she’d been right, so I called her something worse. Then she’d insisted on getting out of the car and walking home and I’d driven off. That was the last I’d seen of her.
It wasn’t the last I heard of her, though. A few hours later she’d tried to call me, but I turned off my phone instead of answering. I’d gone out with some friends after that and stayed out past curfew. I thought my dad would be livid when I got home, but he’d been out too, likely on one of the emergencies he got called on sometimes. I’d passed out on my bed and it wasn’t until the next morning I’d heard she was missing. No one knew where she’d gone.
The police had questioned everyone, including her “best friend.” I’d lied to them, said nothing was wrong, that I didn’t know why she would want to run away: her family loved her, her teachers loved her, everybody loved her. I hadn’t told them about the dozens of texts she’d sent begging me to answer, or the voicemail she’d left, her voice broken from crying.
“Cece, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed you. I get that you’re scared, okay? I’m scared, too. I just want us to be able to live like normal people, you know? I don’t want to hide anymore. I love you and I’m tired of acting like it’s something to be ashamed of! Goddamn it, Cece, why won’t you answer? I’m coming over and I’m not leaving until you talk to me!”
That was a rough time. Back then, I thought I was the reason she left.
Now I know I am.
My dad went out again tonight, drinking with buddies from work. I have the house to myself. I printed a paper for school earlier and went into my dad’s study to get it. I rarely go in there, it’s his “man cave” and I know he values his privacy, but that’s where the printer is. There’s also a fax machine, and his laptop, and this big cherry wood desk he salvaged.
It’s a beautiful thing.
When I was younger, I used to sit in the big office chair with my feet swinging and trace the grain in the desktop wood. I liked the smell of wax and wood and the way the handles were set with decorative curls. I used to go through all the drawers just for the sake of opening them, you know, like kids do, but there was always one drawer he kept locked. When I was little this bothered me—I didn’t like any secrets except my own—but as I got older I figured it contained something he was embarrassed about (porno mags were my best guess) and then I forgot about it completely.
Tonight, as I took my pages describing the role of light in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, I noticed the drawer was ever so slightly open.
Maybe he forgot to lock it. Maybe, trusting me to be the loyal daughter, he’d stopped bothering. Maybe he wanted me to find it, though this last option I highly doubt given what I found.
Before tonight I wouldn’t have thought of myself as the snooping type, but there was still a bit of that little girl inside me who wanted to know why. And, selfishly, I thought if I had access to my father’s secrets maybe it’d be easier to share my own.
So I opened the drawer.
Inside was a camera. An old thing, not even a touch screen. No streaming, no bells and whistles to speak of. I was a little unnerved. A camera? I’d never seen this camera before. And why one so old?
I thought again of pornography and wondered if I really wanted to look. What if I’d found my father’s amateur porno tape? I’d have to blind myself. But, I thought, the weight of my own secrets pressing on me. But if it was … if it was, there’d be no way he could judge me. So I bit the bullet and I turned it on.
There were, indeed, pictures of women.
No, I take that back. Girls.
There were pictures of girls my age, some even younger.
So many girls. So many crying, frightened, screaming girls.
I was horrified, but I kept going through the camera, photo after photo, every image making my stomach churn. I’m not going to tell you what was being done to them. You already know. You’ve read this story before.
You’ll wonder why I did it, why I didn’t just drop the damn thing and call the police. I admit it was a foolish reason, and selfish, but I needed to give it a chance—I needed to know if there was an exception—just one, single photo that showed me something different.
Because the thing that horrified me the most wasn’t the blood. It wasn’t the contorted figures, or the bodies hanging limply with blank, empty eyes. It was how familiar they all looked. Even though I’d never seen them before.
A pattern played over and over through each picture: straight dark hair cut at the collarbone with blunt bangs above—in some cases obviously a wig; a splash of freckles across the nose, sometimes smudged as though drawn on; and a small cut just under the chin, not more than an inch long.
Right where I have a scar from falling off my bike when I was seven.
I was looking at the scene of my death—perverted and parodied, over and over and over—played out with these strangers—these girls, these poor, mutilated, living dolls of me.
I don’t know how many pictures there are. I didn’t get through them all. I couldn’t keep going after I got to Lynn.
She was wearing the neon eye shadow I’d gotten her for her birthday, the palette she’d worn the night we fought. The night she disappeared. Her mascara had run and her lipstick was smudged around her mouth. I thought of how she used to kiss me with those lips, a coat of lipstick freshly applied leaving an imprint on my own lips when she pulled away.
“Thought I’d refresh your lipstick,” she’d say, and laugh like it was the funniest thing in the world.
She had the most beautiful laugh, rising and falling like a roller coaster.
She was done up the same way as all the others—her wig was crooked and the running mascara had ruined the freckles. She must’ve struggled when he made the cut because there was more blood than the other photos. She must’ve fought him hard, just like she wanted to fight the world.
I wonder if she cursed my name when he snapped the picture.
It’s getting late. My dad will be home soon. When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him. I’ve already taken the shotgun out of the safe. It’s loaded, safety on, resting beside me on the desk while I type this. My father made sure I know how to use it—he wanted me to be able to protect myself against a hard, cruel world.
“A gun is not a toy,” he said to me at the shooting range. “Don’t pick up a weapon unless you intend to use it.”
He’s a wise man, my dad.
I’m writing this so someone, anyone, will know what he’s done and what I’m going to do.