In the Absence of Light

51

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Isaac 

I stare out of the window, eyeing the building in front of me. Its walls are tall and thick, painted in different shades of beige. The windows have steel bars before them, reminding the inmates over and over again that they're stuck—caged in their four-by-four cells.

If there's anyone that deserves that life, it's him.

My body is still covered in the shit he did to me. I have all his bruises and all his scars. And I wouldn't have any of those if it wasn't for him.

I would've been better off without him. I could've been happy. I could've been good. I could've been pure.

How many of us did you infect,

with your endless years of selfishness?

My own voice blasts through the speakers, filling the car with the anger I need to face him. I can still see the look in his eyes—the violence and hatred and death. He fucking hated me. He hated all of us. He doesn't feel anything but anger.

You are the villain we can't defeat,

the seaweed that flows at our feet,

the unbearable heat,

the one who made a mistake,

the one who made us afraid.

That's all I am to him—a fucking mistake. He's told me that time and time again. I can still remember the shit he used to say to me.

We should've left you at the hospital.

I should've drowned you as a baby.

I should've killed your mum after I fucked her.

He made sure I knew. And I still do. There's no way I could ever forget.

That's how my mum feels too. I know she does. She's just as much of a victim as I am. She turned to drugs because of him. And despite what I said to her, I know it was her addiction that made her aggressive towards us. She lived in a world of violence. She was constantly manipulated and abused, and addiction is an illness as much as every other mental health condition. But that isn't the part that hurts.

She left us alone with him. She left us there, to be tortured every fucking day—as if we never meant anything to her... as if we deserved it. And she didn't even come back for us when she could.

That was definitely a choice.

It would've been hard for her to come back, I know that. But she wouldn't have had to. She could've sent the cops, she could've sent a friend, she could've found a way to get to us without having to face him. It's not like he would've cared if we didn't come home.

She didn't even have to come back as soon as she was sober. If it was a year later, two years, even if she showed up when I was 17 and took me out of that place, I would've been happy.

But she never came back. Not when I was 17, 18, 21, or ever. She never reached out to me. Only to my sister.

Is that because I was a mistake—because I wasn't meant to happen? Because I was the product of rape? Do I remind her of that?

In that case, I wish she could've been stronger for me. I wish she could see me instead of my father, and I wish she could've realised I was a child—that I was vulnerable, too.