Call Me Home

I told myself that it would get better; that he loved me; that the good outweighed the bad inside of him. Going up to his door, I prayed that today would be a good day and that maybe tomorrow would be too. Deep inside, I can feel the dread snake up from the bottom of my stomach and wrap itself around my heart. I knock anyways.

The moment the door is opened I can smell the alcohol and instead of running like I should have, I wrapped my arms around his frame and kissed him hesitantly. Whiskey was all I could taste, but I attempted to put all my focus into restraining my trembling body. Once we separate, our smiles greet each other and he leads me to the couch. I know where he wants this to go, but the tension in my body and the raised hairs on my arms tells me that this isn’t right.

His hands and fingers are greedy, roughly feeling my body as if I am an animal that he doesn’t trust to stay if he doesn’t assert his dominance. I try to tell him that I should go, that my little sister is home and she needs me, but he shuts my mouth with his so hard that I can feel my top lip swelling. My mind is racing, desperately trying to remember what my dad had taught me to do if I ever got pinned down like before. Wrapping my legs tightly around his waist, I wait for him to lift his hands, even if just for a moment. As soon as he does, I use all my strength to swing my left hip to the right so violently that he has been thrown off me. That’s when I run.

First, I run towards the front door, frantically trying to turn the deadbolts before he gets up, but I am too slow and he is only a pace away. He comes at me with his fists clenched and I make a split decision to dodge him and run towards his dad’s bedroom where I could escape through his open window. I get one step past the bed and suddenly, I’m grabbed by my hair and thrown to the ground. Fury creates a fire in his eyes. He yells at me to take off my pants, but I won’t and he begins to try and rip them off me. I’m squirming and kicking and tears prick at my eyes. I curse myself because once he’s seen, I know exactly how this is going to go.

He takes his hands off my legs and laughs, telling me that he hasn’t even done anything yet so why am I crying? Gripping my hair even harder, I am dragged down the hallway and onto the tile of the kitchen floor. The tears won’t stop and they continue to fuel the flames. He demands that I tell him that I love him, gives me one more chance to take off my pants and make things right like I usually do, but this time I’m fed up. Refusing to succumb anymore, I try to get up and hit him, but he slams the back of my head against the granite countertop and stars invade my vision. He asks me again if I’ll be a good girlfriend and obey him, but even with my head throbbing and swelling, I tell myself that I needed to fight and I pray to God that He will somehow intervene.

He doesn’t. Instead, I watch as he reaches into a drawer and pulls out a knife. Pushing me onto the tile again, he sits on my chest and holds down my left wrist as I scream. I try to convince myself that this is a dream, that this can’t happen because he’s never done this before and usually he has a routine, but when the blade cuts into my skin I know that I am a fool. He makes a vertical incision on my wrist that looks to be almost a quarter of an inch deep and the blood leaks from the wound and down my arm and onto the kitchen tile. Before I can do anything else, he grabs my head again and slams it into the tile so hard that, this time, there are no stars- only blackness and as my eyes closed, I revoked my earlier prayer and pleaded with God to call me home.