DELILAH
“Oh, god, no! No, please, stop!”
No matter how hard I press my hands against my ears, it’s not enough to block out the screams. I’ve never heard screaming like this before. I didn’t know human beings could make such sounds. Like an animal, desperate, in pain to the point where they lose their humanity.
“Please!” I squeeze my eyes shut and curl into a tighter ball on the corner of the cot. Why won’t they stop? When will they stop? They’re going to torture him to death.
The question that looms larger than the others: who is it?
I have a feeling I know. I’ve never heard Matteo scream like that before, but when he sounds human, the voices are similar enough. If Quinton has Matteo, why am I still here?
I can’t let myself start asking questions like that, or else I’ll go crazy. Not that I’m not already halfway there.
Another wordless shriek tears through me. I clench my teeth and rock back and forth, humming in a vain attempt to block out the horrors happening on the other side of the wall at my back.
I’m reminded of how cold and hungry I am then; the shiver that racks through me is almost as painful as the ache in my stomach.
Quinton is doing his damnedest to break me. I don’t want to give him that satisfaction. I can’t.
I have no idea how long I’ve been here. There’s no way of telling how much time has passed. If this was a normal situation, I might mark time by the number of meals I ate. That’s not going to work here. If I went off that, I’d say it’s been maybe three days. But I know it’s been a hell of a lot longer than that. My clothes are the same clothes I was wearing when they picked me up—I’m practically swimming in them now. I can smell myself, and I hate it.
At first, I was determined. Yelling, screaming, spitting in the faces of the assholes Quinton left to keep watch over me. But over time, I’ve quieted down. It takes too much energy to do that kind of thing, and energy is one thing I’m pretty low on. That’s been the plan all along, obviously. To starve me and keep me weak and docile. I hate letting him have that small victory over me, but there’s only so much my body can handle.
I lower my hands just long enough to draw the thin blanket tighter around my shoulders when I hear what has to be the sound of a fist meeting flesh. Matteo, if it is Matteo, lets out a strangled grunt. It’s better than the constant screaming. Maybe his vocal cords are too fucked up for him to scream anymore.
That’s okay. They’ll give him just enough time to heal up before starting it all over again.
I should feel sorry for him, and in a way, I do, but it’s the same way I’d feel sorry for anybody being slowly tortured over the course of days, maybe even weeks. It’s nothing personal. There’s no deeper feeling. I should probably care more about my brother’s life, but it’s not like he ever gave a shit about me.
There he was, living in a great, big house with all the money in the world. He could do whatever he wanted, could have whatever he wanted. That’s what you get when your father actually acknowledges and cares about you. Our father treated him like his flesh and blood.
Me? I only deserved a trailer park with my aunt. I wasn’t even allowed to live with my own family. I wasn’t allowed to have their name attached to my own.
I don’t think anybody who hasn’t been through a situation like that could understand what it’s like. Nobody had to come out and tell me I wasn’t good enough. They didn’t have to sit me down and explain all the reasons I couldn’t live in the big house. Why I couldn’t participate in family events like birthdays.
Nobody had to come out and say those things to my face. I figured it out over time, day by day. It’s stuff like that which slowly whittles away a kid’s sense of worth. It makes a kid wonder what’s wrong with them. Why they aren’t good enough. Loved enough. Why no one gives a shit about them.
Then they might go out of their way to be better. Like I did. What a waste of time that was. I told myself if I got perfect grades and always behaved and never did anything that could embarrass anybody, they would finally see how worthy I was.
What happens to a kid when that day never comes? When they try, and they try, and it still isn’t good enough? What happens when they finally realize nothing will ever be good enough for the people they want so much to please?
They get hard. They shut down.You can’t hurt me if you can’t reach me. That became my motto.
And that’s why I’m able to curl up in this corner of my pathetic little cot, wearing these filthy clothes that stink worse than anything I’ve ever smelled on myself. How I can sit here shivering, covering my ears, drowning in the darkness but not shed a tear.
If Rossi expects me to beg and wail for mercy on my brother’s behalf, he’s going to be waiting a long time.
Lost deep in my thoughts, it hits me that the sounds around me have grown quieter. I lower my hands slowly, just in case this is nothing but a momentary break in the action. The only thing I hear is my heart pounding in my ears. The silence is unnerving. For all I know, that might be another part of the torture. The sense of being so disconnected from everything else in the world.
I rest my head in the corner, closing my eyes to shut out the bleak cell around me. What’s Matteo going through? What did they do to him? I don’t hear him weeping, not this time, but I have before. A memory pops into my head and reminds me why I haven’t shed a tear.
The day my father told me they finally found something to prove myself useful—him and my brothers. I guess it was a joint decision. Who knows?
“It’s very simple.” My father leaned back in his chair, holding a glass of liquor in one hand. My brothers were drinking, too. None of them offered me a glass of my own, even though I could more than use one now.
“We’ve been working on this for a long time,” Matteo informs me, standing at our father’s right hand. “So you could at least muster a little enthusiasm. Perhaps a thank you?”
Enthusiasm? I was still trying to catch up with what they were telling me. They acted like I was supposed to be on the same page when I couldn’t remember the last time I saw any of them.