Here's to Falling by Christine Zolendz
“Well, I’m unimpressed, honestly. That was a less than stellar performance from you. I don’t understand what my son saw in you. Maybe because you were so easy?” he stated, zipping up his pants, tucking his shirt inside them, and straightening his suit jacket.
Quickly, he untied my leg from the bedpost and pulled my tied hands off their prison against the frame of the bed. “Get up,” he demanded.
I don’t know why, but I did what he said. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything worse to me at that point, so I just followed his directions, hoping the next thing he would do was kill me. I wanted to die just from the feel of his semen running warmly down the inside of my legs.
Unlocking and opening the door, he shoved my body through the doorway into the hallway, pushing me hard into the bathroom. I stumbled, hitting my shoulder against the edge of the sink and falling hard against the hard, ceramic bathtub. He stood over me and turned the faucet on in the tub, touching the water with his hands to check the temperature. I silently cried and watched the steam rise up off the tiles. Yanking me up by my hair, he forced me into the tub. The water was scalding, but the burn of him rubbing the soap over my skin and deep inside me hurt so much worse. To this day, I can sometimes still feel the phantom sting and fire of that awful white bar of soap. That shit never leaves you, and the smell of it…the smell of that soap makes me want to peel my own damn skin off.
When he was done with me, I sat in a dripping heap of towels on the cold, tiled, bathroom floor. He threw my clothes at me and offered a smile. “If you tell anyone, I’ll make sure to tell Jase how hard your little pussy came for me. I felt it, you know, when you came." He yanked my hair back until my eyes met his. "You came so hard it milked my cock dry." He smiled then and chuckled down at me. "I also recorded it on Jase’s little camera; did you hear yourself moaning, Charlotte? If you want to come back I can teach you how to be a real woman…how to please a man. If not, this is me telling you, you will not ruin my son's life. He wouldn't want you now, anyway.” He walked out, laughing, the steam of the hot water chasing him out.
Dressing as fast as I could, I ran out of the bathroom and down the hallway into the kitchen. My throat gagged back more hot bile when I saw Mrs. Delaney sitting in her wheelchair next to the kitchen table. Cold, hard eyes blazed at me. Her head was trembling and her nostrils flared with loud, noisy breaths. “You’re disgusting; you pathetic piece of trash,” she growled, with the first words I had ever heard her speak.
My shoes became concrete, and my skin felt like stone. I had just been victimized in a room a few feet away from someone who could have helped me—his wife. Did she not hear me scream? Couldn’t she have called the cops? Did she think I wanted that?
What the hell would Jase think? And then everything seemed to crumble and disintegrate around me, and I knew. I knew there was never going back from there.
Running out the back door, I couldn’t even think a straight thought. My insides hurt; my thighs burned. But most of all, my eyes ached with the tears. I tore into my house, grabbed my purse, which had an extra set of Jase’s truck keys inside, and stole his damn truck to take myself to the hospital. I would not let him get away with raping me. My body moved, pushing itself through the motions of taking me someplace safe.
Hospital.
Police.
Help.
I didn’t remember the drive there. I have no idea how I came about slumped in the arms of a nurse in the middle of an emergency room in a hospital that was over twenty minutes away from my house, still clutching one of Jase’s old T-shirts.
Hysterical and terrified, I was taken to an examination room to wait for a physician to administer a rape kit. The word suffocated me, cut off my oxygen, and my world turned black as I collapsed against the chairs and walls and whatever else I hit on my quick fall to meet the floor. The doctor watching over me held the police at bay, not allowing them to question me until she was finished.
Sometime later, when the sky outside the window was dark, I was awake enough for evidence to be pulled from me. Documents were signed. Questions were asked. Swabs of DNA were taken out of my private areas with long Q-tip looking things that scraped the Hell out of my insides. Urine was collected, and blood was taken. Everything was bagged and labeled in front of me. They offered me a morning after pill, and horrified by the chance of having a monster's baby grow inside of me, I took it.
I took it.
A pretty, dark-haired nurse held me until my trembling stopped.
"Miss Stone?" I looked up from behind the nurse's arms to the sight of an officer holding open a small memo pad. "Did you know the perpetrator of this attack?"
All I could do was nod.
The officer sighed and leaned at the edge of examination table I was on. "Can I have his name?"
"Michael Delaney," I said in a low voice.
The officer narrowed his eyes at me and folded his hands across his chest, rumpling his memo pad. "Really now? Judge Delaney?"
"Yes," I whispered, swallowing hard.
"Do you know false claims of sexual assault are punishable with jail time, Miss Stone?"
"I don't understand..."
"You don't understand? You're accusing a Supreme Court Justice of a felony, Miss Stone. Is there a chance you could be wrong about the identity or the actions...?"
"That's enough!" The doctor shouted over the questions. "I just examined her myself, Officer. There is physical evidence of an assault, and I want to press charges on her behalf."
The doctor physically escorted the officer out into the hallway. "That line of questioning is just victimizing her all over again."
Female officers spoke to me about Penal Laws and Rape in the third degree since I was only seventeen, and Rape in the First degree since I said it was forced. They warned me about a long backlog of rape kits and how sometimes kits don’t get tested for years after the evidence is collected.
When I was escorted into the waiting area, my mother was standing with a scowl slashed across her bright red lips. I ran to her and threw my arms around her, but she didn’t hold me back. She just stood there, still and hard. “How could you make up a story like this? Is it attention that you need? First you accuse Owen of something he would never do, now Mr. Delaney?” My mother. My own mother physically shoved me into the passenger seat of Jase’s truck and then climbed into the driver’s seat. Without even a glance in my direction she said, “I want you out of my house by tomorrow.”
What?
Where the hell was I supposed to go?
In my wildest dreams, I had never thought about leaving that house. With all the shit that was said to me there, with all the times I had to stay in the tree house at night to hide from her and her drugged up friends, I never thought to leave. The only safe place I could think to go was to Joey’s mom, and he was gone. Mrs. Graley couldn’t look me in the eyes without bursting into tears, remembering her son. I couldn’t go there.
“And Charlotte, don’t you ever come back.”
“Sure, not a problem, Mom,” I said, swallowing the lump of sorrow in my throat. I held my chin up, trying hard not to show her my tears. The rest of the drive home was my mother telling me how awful of a person I was and how much trouble it had been to raise a whore, a piece of lying, good for nothing trash daughter, who was just like my father.
The minute she yanked the truck into park in front of our house, I jumped out and ran inside. Owen was sitting at the dining room table with two big guys smoking a huge joint together. He laughed when I stumbled inside. Ignoring them, I raced down the hallway and into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. From under my bed, I pulled out my schoolbag and dumped the contents all over the floor. Rummaging through my drawers, I grabbed a few days’ worth of clothes, my deodorant, my albums full of photos, a few of my sketchpads, a shitload of my favorite books, and shoved them in my bag. Dashing past the high-as-hell assholes in the living room, I yanked Jase’s truck keys out of the hands of the person who spit me out of he
I took my bank account books, and the stash of rolled up hundreds my mother kept hidden from Owen inside her make-up case in the bathroom, shoved deep inside an empty bottle of wrinkle cream. I held on tightly to the cash and leaned against the cool, tiled wall of the bathroom as tears streamed down my cheeks. I forced myself to look at my reflection in the mirror behind the sink before I left. The person who stared back scared the hell out of me. It was the face of a complete stranger, with knotted tangled hair stuck against the sides of her face and giant, frightened, red-rimmed eyes with deep purplish skin below them. You couldn’t see any bruises or cuts on my skin. The pain that ached and hurt in me was somewhere deep inside, far away from the surface. But the pain was pure and real, and mine.
I staggered through the rest of the house, sobbing. Without saying goodbye, I walked out the front door, hoping to God it was the last time I ever had to see those disgusting people.
I stumbled down the porch steps and fell to my knees on the walkway.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed Mrs. Delaney sitting just inside her entrance door, watching me. She was in the wheelchair, just like that first day, but now she was alone. There was no kid bouncing a basketball against her and no husband carrying her luggage.
"You weak bitch!" I screamed at her, grabbing a handful of her garden pebbles and hurling them against the glass door she hid behind. "You are going to live with this. What he did. What you let him do. You heard me screaming. You heard me. I hope you rot in hell." I crawled around the dirt and grass throwing whatever I could grab with my hands, and screamed until my throat was raw.
I was completely dead inside when I started Jase’s truck and took off, peeling out and smoking the tires when I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal. Somehow, someday, I hoped I would be able to say I survived what had happened to me. But the truth was, at that moment, all I wished for was a quick and painless death. Something to just end all the chaos, end all the sorrow that was overwhelming me.
I drove to the only place I could think of….the cemetery. I needed my best friend.
I made it all the way there, crying and screaming at my windshield while taking huge gulps from the box of wine. Parking the truck on the side entrance to the cemetery, I hauled myself over the cement wall, clutching my wine and landing with a hard thud against the hard ground. Pathetically enough, even in the pitch dark of night, I knew exactly how to get to Joey’s gravestone. I probably could have walked blindfolded and found it. I fell on my knees in front of his marker, praying, and talking to Joey.
“Please, just a minute,” I cried, slurring my words. “Just talk to me for a minute. Tell me what to do to make this shitty life worth living. Tell me what I need to do. You were my best friend, and I lost you. I lost Jase, and I lost everything. Please talk to me one last time and tell me what to do.” The silence that answered back almost killed me.
Alone.
I felt so dirty.
Helpless.
I felt so ashamed.
I’m so fucking scared.
I emptied the box of wine and I could no longer read the name on the gravestone through my blurry vision. Quickly, I forgot the hands that touched me and the lips that kissed me, but I still saw that cold, blue stare hovering over me when I closed my eyes. Slowly, the raw pain of my dirty shame got swallowed, along with the alcohol that surged through my system, and I floated along the dark sky of clouds above me.
I don’t know how long I slept on the soft grass above the grave of my dead best friend, but I woke when the sun was warm and shining brightly against the front of my eyelids.
With throbbing eye sockets, I climbed back into the stolen truck and drove without a shred of direction.
When all was said and done, when it was all over, I was numb. Then, it rushed back in flashes. Minutes after, days after, months and years after. When I showered alone, when I was in a crowded room with people who thought they knew and loved me, when I was shopping for food. The flashes came and they reminded me, reminded me of who I am, and what was done, and what I’ve lost.
And every day after Mr. Delaney raped me, a little more of me died. It peeled away my layers of skin, little by little; my self-worth, my beauty, my innocence, my smile—until I was nothing but a bag of bones. The further the days got from what happened, the further I got from the seventeen-year-old girl I once was. It shredded me into fine, little pieces of thin tissue paper. He took everything that was me, and all I could wonder was who would I be now? I had no sense of self. I didn’t know who I should be. What was the right me, because even though I knew it was wrong and I hated it, my body responded to him. Did I really want him? Did I ask for it?
How could I go back to being me now, after that? How could I face Jase after what I had done with his father? How could I ever let him see me again? His last name was like a poison to me. All these people poisoning my life; the bullies who thought they had the right to punch people and hurt them, call them names, scar them, kill them, touch them, all these people in my life who had made their poison seep through my skin. I was done with it. I couldn’t be that girl anymore. I couldn’t be Charlie anymore.
This wasn’t how my story was supposed to be written.
This wasn’t the way I wanted my story to go.
So I needed to rewrite it.
Word for word.
Rewritten.
Because, I was so young.
So young.
And utterly broken.
Chapter 11
Jase
Tonight's another routine buy and walk, picking up a bottle of a hundred Oxycontin for a supplier. It was supposed to take place on the corner as always, but the perp called my job phone to change plans. Doc, as we called him, the dealer, wanted me to hang out and meet a bunch of his friends at Club Underground. He explained that his girl was there and he had to watch her. He thought she was messing with some other dude. Wanted to know if I had the sort of friends that would see to it that she and the guy she's giving it to could permanently disappear.
"Of course I got those kinds of friends, if the price is right," I told him.
So it was Carter and I going as the undercovers, and Brooke was ghosting us. I was getting closer to Doc; real close to finding out who he got his pharmaceuticals from. Now he was asking to put a hit out on someone? I couldn’t wait to put this asshole away for good.
The team parked the van by the side entrance of the club and the three of us jumped out, dressed to the nines for clubbing. And if Doc was being a little weasel tonight, Carter and I both had a few placebo Oxycontin decoys in our front pockets, to prove we weren't narcs.
I hated clubs with half naked girls walking around drunk out of their heads, trying to find guys to buy them their next rounds, and the pumped-up testosterone of the juiced-up players ready for a fight.
We were in without a hitch. I thought it was thanks to Brooke since she was practically wearing an outfit right out of a Fredricks of Whoreywood catalog. She looked hot, though. I'd give her that. But that was all I was giving her.
"Beer?" Carter asked.
"Yeah, whatever. Let's get this shit done. I have a ton of paperwork to get to," I said, leaning myself against the bar and scanning the dance floor.
Carter ordered two bottles and slid one to me. Brooke was on the dance floor dead center, trying to dance provocatively and giving the head of a beer bottle a blowjob for my entertainment.
It wasn't very entertaining.
I brought my bottle to my lips to take a sip, when I spot a mass of copper-colored hair in the mix of swe
I watched that mass of copper-colored hair though, captivated. Her body was moving enticingly to the rhythm of the song. The way her hips rocked and swayed was so hypnotizing. I took another sip of beer and warmth mushroomed like a strange poison across my stomach. This girl in front of me stood out like a rescue ship in a dark sea of waste. She wasn't dressed like the rest of the girls; she wore a simple, low hung pair of jeans and a plain T-shirt that revealed her toned back when her hands swayed in the air above her head. Her profile, the curve of her breasts, the round swell of her hips as they moved, and the contour of her ass just mesmerized me. Every move was like magic, causing my body to lean forward, craving something.
"Doc's at ten o'clock. Flanked by two. Dude, what are you staring at?" Carter hissed in my ear.
"Hmmm? What happened?" I snapped my face in his direction.
"Bro. Let's just do this buy and go. I gotta take a piss." Carter's eyes slid across the dance floor. "He's waiting on us, let's go."
"Yeah, sure," I said, my eyes drifting back to the girl dancing. She twirled around laughing, and suddenly my pulse was racing, the sound of it like crashing waves against my ears. No damned way.
It couldn't be her.
No way.
My steps faltered as Carter went forward clapping and shaking hands with the perp. I stood frozen, my eyes watching that familiar neck, the shape of her lips, the move of those hips.