In Your Head

fourteen

**

One Year Earlier

September 1998...

The shot ruptures into the air like a firecracker, about to shatter the logs of wood keeping the cabin together. A celebration of some sort, although it doesn't leave the little girl happy. No excitement jumps inside her with streamers and cheers. No wide smile grows along her grimy skin. No, but an endless nothing. A dull, numb, empty nothing as she stares hard at her creation on the floor, her ruins.

What did I do?

The question swarms, hanging in the air above her and doesn't go away. It's captured in the shot, echoing off every wall in the cabin.

What. Did. I. Do?

Her ears ring with the gunshot, all other noise dying around her like she's the killer of sound.

*BANG*

A lingering afterthought.

*B-A-N-G*

A deathly sound she can't get out of her head. An action she can't take back.

What did I do? What did I do!

It happened so fast. She was just locked in the cellar. She was just brought up. He just had the gun in his hands. He just told her everything, he told her the truth. The plan he had been constructing for three years now, the plan he created in the fall of 1995, the year she entered grade 11. He just told her if he couldn't have her, no one can. She just fought him for the gun. How did she get it so quickly? How did she manage to pull the trigger?

These questions have no answers, none to her, none to me. But one thing she does know is that she can't move, can't breathe, can't think properly as she watches the slithering trail of blood leak from his head, drain his body. A gaping hole now punctures his forehead, a perfect sunken circle in the bang centre of his head, like she's been practicing all this time. But that's crazy, insane, because she's never held his gun until today. She's never planned anything out. She's never succeeded, until today.

His skin is still warm, fresh, caving in towards the bullet hole. His eyes stare up at the ceiling—dull, cold, empty. Like the many times she has stared hard at the wooden ceiling, trying to concentrate on anything else other than what was happening to her. Shivers run up her spine as the seconds tick on. Forever pauses, forever moments that stop time.

Pause.

Pause.

P A U S E.

The colour fades from his face, turning grey and old as if aging years only in these few short seconds. But these seconds might as well be lifetimes, her life freezing like black and white photos stuck in history books. And maybe, that's what this truly is, the only thing she was ever meant for; a tragic, cautionary tale.

What do I do now?

The question leaves the little flower unmoved, the stillness so eerie it mixes with the ringing, becoming deafening. A new fear is unlocked, swallowing her mind. She tries to settle the angry bees stinging her stomach, but there's no stopping them. She bites her cheek until a strong metallic taste leaks into her mouth.

What's going to happen to me? I'll starve now. I'll be all alone to die. Why did I do that? Why didn't I think this through?

Her questions remain unanswered in her head, like usual. The little girl of eighteen now, grown two years older than when she was first brought to the cabin of hell. The small, awful, horrifying cabin within the dense woods that looks as if any ordinary hunting cabin, but she knows otherwise. The little girl that's had her growth stunted, her dark hair straggly and much longer, her nails overgrown and her body unwashed by a month. Her skin crawls with filth and dirt, her face sickly pale and sunken in, her bones almost visible. The large bruises and welts spread like fire over her body, burning along with them. Her limbs weak, as if she hasn't walked for months, which is almost the truth. The little girl who's now considered a young woman, but no one would guess by the way she appears. The little girl who once had a name, once had a happy life, once loved herself, until everything was stolen away. Until she turned into this broken young woman who doesn't know who she is anymore.