I swayed back and forth like a rocking chair and the rhythmic sound of the floor creaking echoed in my bedroom. A tree branch scraped against the cracked windowpane as the violent wind outside yowled, testing the fragility of the glass.
Take my hand. Tonight you will believe. Believe in me.
The warmth of your touch. The taste of your lips.
Keeps me coming back to you.
So believe. Believe in me and take my hand.
I’m here to love you forever.
Forever you’re mine.
I sang quietly, the complete opposite to what was happening inside me. It gave me the vacancy, the numbness, the void I searched for in order to stay sane.
Emptiness had become my survival—my sanity.
But darkness encroached, burying me deeper and deeper and I was suffocating under the blanket of desolation. I knew I might never find my way back to the surface. I’d be lost forever in this constant cycle of anxious desperation and revulsion.
I’d managed to keep my slow decline hidden from my brother by spending less time with him, and staying in my room whenever I wasn’t at school. A room where he came to. My savior and my hell.
He’d be here soon. He never let me get too strung out before he brought me more of my escape. And then . . .
Then I gave him what he desired. Fighting no longer existed in my world. I was a puppet, molded and played with. Limbs twisted. Body used. Abused. Ripped and torn until I no longer knew what lived inside me.
Yes, I did—nothing. But when he came to my room at night, when he held my arm, wrapped the thin band around it and flicked the syringe with his dirty fat finger . . . that was when it all stopped. I left my body behind and went somewhere else for a while. A place where no one could find me. Where I was safe. Where pain couldn’t reach me.
I always watched when the needle slid into my vein. I waited breathless for his thumb to press the plunger. For my escape from what he’d do to me afterward. Disgust came later when I showered and attempted to wash away the feel of his hands. But it was more than that. I tried to wash away the hatred for myself.
To my brother, Ream, I was his innocent angel as he shielded me from the harsh life we were immersed in. He didn’t know the shield had collapsed and been trampled months ago.
I discovered what he’d been doing in order to protect me. But with the sacrifice of his own innocence came the haunting guilt that ate at me. He was my brother. My twin brother and he was all I had. I knew he’d do anything to shelter me from this tainted world, but I was older and saw the truth.
I saw his gaunt pale skin when he emerged from the basement. I saw the way he gingerly walked up the stairs to his bedroom. But when he noticed me, he’d always smile. Always. As if nothing was wrong. As if he went into that basement to play video games all weekend.
I’d stayed untouched for years because of him.
It had been months since his visits to the basement stopped, our mother’s debt finally paid off to Lenny. But normal didn’t last long in our world. Lenny dying left us and his cruel daughter, Alexa, to Olaf. That was when my nightmare began.
Heavy footsteps strode down the hall and there was a mixture of fear, nausea and anxiety. I didn’t know which was stronger. It had been three days. Three days locked in a maze of uncertainty when I would get my next hit.
When did it change? When had I given up? When did I die inside?
Motionless, I stared at the closed door, the footsteps stopped. I knew Gerard’s stride, the way his left foot dragged slightly when he walked as if he’d been injured at one time. How the floorboards groaned louder under his weight than anyone else’s in the run-down house.
The doorknob turned and coldness encompassed me.
I screamed for what he represented—disgust and liberation. They clashed, opposites fighting a war that neither won when it was over; instead, the war cycled over and over again.
The door pushed open and I raised my head.
I waited.
I had to be patient. He liked slow.
I sang in my head, the tune calming my mind.
But my heart disagreed as it thumped wildly. Goose bumps raised, feeling as if ice shards pelted my skin. My eyes shot to his hand and I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the clear plastic syringe between his fingers. He twirled it back and forth watching me.
He knew after three days I’d be screaming for it. His beady brown eyes gleamed and thin lips pursed upward in a grin. He knew I was struggling to stop myself from running to him and begging for my fix.
He stepped into my room, closed the door then reached behind him and clicked the lock. A lock I’d once used to try to keep him out. I never tried again.
I stood. My legs shook so badly that I had to use the wall to steady myself. Once I had my balance, I walked to the end of the bed and sat. My stomach twisted and cramped, while the blood flowing through my veins raged.
He set the syringe on the dresser then lifted the back of his shirt, took out his gun and set it next to it. The gun was in full view, easy access to me. It was almost a dare for me to try for it. But I wouldn’t. To kill him would have too many possible repercussions for my brother.
My weakness had become my strength, because keeping this from Ream meant he continued to be free of what happened in the basement. If I kept quiet, Gerard promised to help keep him away from there.
I had no misconceptions of what Gerard was capable of, or Olaf. But for months, he’d kept his word and my brother was finally losing the dark glassy look in his eyes.