Chapter 9

ChapterNine

ISLA

Crashing surrounds me. My instinct is to rush under the bed and hide.

They’re fighting again. Daddy’s always mad. Tonight, he throws his dinner against the wall and makes Momma eat off the floor. He always does this to Momma. No wonder she never laughs anymore.

Joseph pulls at his arm, but my father tosses him aside. It works. He’s not focused on Momma anymore. His foot is no longer at her head, holding her down to the bowl on the floor, but I don’t like how he’s staring at Joseph. That’s his angry look. The last time I saw his eyes slit in anger like that, he stroked my sister Sara with a belt so hard that she started bleeding. After that night, Sarah never spoke again. Momma keeps begging Daddy to get help for her, but he ignores the requests. I think he hates Sarah more than the rest of us. I hear him in her room at night, making weird noises as he calls her bad words. When he leaves, he’s always fixing his belt.

Lost in the past, I see my father covered in blood and Joseph’s lifeless body at his feet.

“Isla.”

A deep voice penetrates my nightmares. I try to speak, but I’m assaulted with silence.

“Isla, stop screaming. Please, stop.”

The voice sounds tortured. He begs and shakes my shoulders. I need to tell him about Joseph, what my father did. But I can’t form words. My hands. I stare at my hands. They don’t have crimson on them, but I know they’re stained with blood.

“I didn’t help him,” I finally say.

“Help who?”

I focus on his face. It’s him. Paul. “Don’t touch me. Stay away.”

“Isla,” he says, his voice calm. “Isla, it’s me. Bryce.” He shakes me gently. “Snap out of it. You had a bad dream.”

I can’t register my high-octane scream. It’s like a tornado, wild and out of control. “GET AWAY FROM ME.”

I claw at his face, not to hurt him but to push him away and ensure he doesn’t harm me. They always say I’m safe, that I’m their good girl, that they love me. But what they love is to hurt me. To view their twisted art on my skin.

I’m in a vise. I can’t move. He’s overpowered me. His arms are a steel cage wrapped around me, holding me prisoner. But this prison doesn’t seem as bad as those I’ve been forced into most of my life. Something about this one doesn’t make me dread the next moment.

“You’re safe, Isla. It was just a dream.”

But it wasn’t a dream. It was a vivid flashback of my life and the beginning of my personal horror story. Tears stream from my eyes in rivulets. If it were possible to drown in tears, I would have been pulled under by their heavy weight.

A crash startles me. What is that? There are no animals here. I pull back and gaze up at him, and he stiffens. He tries to withdraw, but I hold onto him like a life raft in the middle of the ocean.

He pulls open the top drawer of the nightstand and grabs a gun. “You know how to use this?”

I nod. “Yes, I took a few classes when I left home.”

“Good. Take it. It’s loaded. Do not hesitate to shoot if anyone other than me tries to come in.”

I nod as he places a chaste kiss on my forehead and walks to the bedroom door, leaving me alone in the darkness, holding a deadly weapon.