Slave For Him |M.B|

Chapter 9: At Ease.

Present

The room had fallen silent, the kind of silent you hear and feel at a funeral. Mourning hung heavily in the atmosphere. I was used to the feeling of mourning in the air but to him, it must be crippling. At first it was for me but then I grew habituated to it. Detective Newton didn't say a word; he only stared down into the teacup. I could see heavy thoughts in his eyes. There was something there, something deeper than what I was seeing on the surface. On the surface he seemed bothered by my story but I could tell it wasn't just because of the brutality of the case back then, it was something else. But it wasn't my place to ask questions, that was his job and it'd be rude to do his job for him.

So, I stayed quiet while he gathered himself professionally. My hands held the half full teacup on my lap and listened to the quietness that filled the air. This kind of funeral silence has filled my head for a decade now, ever since Matt died in 2003. This kind of silence has filled this house for a decade and it's killed me every day. I always try and have the television on or the radio playing all day and most of the night because the silence kills me. It hurts not having anybody to talk to throughout the day. Every morning I wake up and hope today will be easier but it never is, there is always an empty chair by the window and conversations left unspoken. Matt and I left the home we lived in for most of our adult lives and came here when Matt started losing his memory. It's a senior's housing block that has carers who come in a couple times a day to check on you and make sure you get your medication. Clara was the one who suggested it to me one day when she came home to visit for a couple days. She said it was free as long as you're eligible, and boy, we were eligible. Clara was worried I couldn't take care of Matt by myself and she was right. I couldn't do it alone. He was forgetting everyone including me and he was one stubborn sonofabitch when he wanted to be. Matt hated it but when he found out that he could do everything he was already doing, he eased into the thought a bit more and let us move here. Clara and the Grandkids got most of the furniture from the house, but I kept all the photo albums. I always enjoyed looking back on the memories; but it became a daily routine for me after Matt died. It kept me sane, really. Wandering through those memories made it seem like my soul mate hadn't left me, he was right there, all I had to do was reach out and touch him. But those are just memories; I can't just reach out and touch them. They're trapped in a photograph. They're trapped in my old mind. I can remember the way those carnations smelt or how Matt's hand felt in mine, but I can never relive any of that. I suppose that's why I thought it'd be so easy to talk about what happened back then. I thought they were just memories that couldn't hurt me anymore. But they hurt, they've dug their hooks so deep into me that I can barely say a word without feeling the lingering pain of knowing the truth all these years and not doing anything.

"I'm sorry about what happened to you." Detective Newton piped up with a rusty voice that caught my attention right away. I looked up at the bright eyed Detective from my half full teacup on my lap. I smiled sheepishly at him and shrugged a shoulder.

"It's alright, Detective. It only happened a handful of times. After Clara was born he didn't do it ever again. He was still one kinky bastard but he never forced it on me ever again." I smiled cheekily at the memories. I hoped that information would bring closure to him but it appears it didn't. Now that I think of it, I wouldn't want that kind of thing to happen to any of my Grandkids or Great Grandkids once. Unfortunately it's happened to Clara. She came home a mess one night after a rave in the summer of 1966 when she was only 19 years old. I expected her to come home a mess but not in ripped and bloody clothing crying about a man forcing her to do it. She told me she was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and she couldn't fight back so she pretended to be asleep and she just let it happen. Neither of us told Matt about what happened. He'd go bat-shit crazy. He'd probably hunt down the man who did it to Clara and torture him before a slow and painful death.