Don't Come Back

The cold, crisp sheets that surround my worn body cause me to shudder and fold into myself. The sound of wind exhaling against the walls keeps me awake to watch the shadows that will become furniture in light. It's dark and soundless in my bedroom, as it is in the rest of this forsaken house. My mother isn't home, which is expected, and my father is dead. He drove himself into a tree on a night where he had decided that the world around him wasn't bright enough with just his routine amount of downed bottles. After the crash, my mother got a job at the gas station next to the local pub, where she works the night shifts and visits the pub during the day. She only sleeps if she passes out of exhaustion or if she gets utterly wasted. I haven't seen her in weeks.

The distant clap of thunder and sudden downpour withdrew me from my gloomy thoughts with a jump. When I was younger, those thoughts would bring me so much pain, but now I've accepted what happened and come to terms with the fact that I'm the reason my family fell apart. On that day, their voices were louder, and the blade went through my veins. They were especially mean to me at school that day, not holding back on their hurtful words. They screamed them at me, carved them into my bones, and when I got home, I tried to cross them out with the sharpest knife in the kitchen. Several days later, I awoke on a stiff white bed in a bright, shiny room, with bandages on my arms, a diagnosed label on my bullies, and a dead father. My mother told me that I might as well have poured the liquor down her deceased husband's throat and turned the steering wheel off the road myself. It turned out they were right when they told me that I made people want to kill themselves.

I turn and lay on my back, letting my fingers brush the wrinkle free sheets then travel up my bumpy arms. They run along littered scars, some years old while others only hours. I can't help but treasure the stillness of the house and of my mind. I hadn't heard their voices in a while, which is peculiar. I won't think about that, though, I don't want them to hear me and make a reappearance.

A steady creak of old floorboards makes me tense. Mother should be at the gas station at this hour, and she never misses a minute of work. My thoughts and body movements halt when the footsteps sound on the outside of my wall and continue to my open door. The thing, or person, responsible for shattering the silence walks into the room. They stand there, directly in front of the door, only a black figure, yet the slight hairs on my body stand on edge, warning me of danger.

"Ollie," the shadow says in a deep voice that I immediately recognize. The voice causes confusion, hope, happiness, then fear, to snake through my spine, one after the other. I sit up and swing my bare legs over the side of the bed, shivering as the cool air kisses my boxer clad body. He walks towards me and stops only a pace away from my feet. His aura is the same as I remember it, intimidating and deceitful.

"Have you missed me, Ollie? I've missed you very much." His tone is unsettling and sensual, and seems to cause old memories to try to resurface in my mind. He steps closer until I can see the features of his face and almost feel his toes touching mine. An alarm goes off in my mind and chills go through my body, but not because of the chilly atmosphere. "I've missed you," he repeats, "And I know you've missed me, too, my son."

Images of him, of us, flash through my mind, like a book's pages turning with the breeze. I can feel his touches, the pain he brought me, the things he did to me, even with me being as young as I was. I remember it so clearly now, all the times he told me to be quiet, to ignore the pain, to enjoy it, or he would punish me. The memories I spent years burying all come back to me, hitting me like a truck and making it hard to breathe.

He's smirking now, just like he did when he saw pain flash through my eyes when he did things to me or when he stripped my youthful body while I held back screams. I don't hesitate to cry out in fear this time as I scuffle back on my bed with my skinny chest still facing one of the many causes of my pain. My back hits the wall and pain blooms across the sensitive skin. I flinch and hear him laughing his signature, revolting laugh as he starts to leisurely remove his clothes. I cover my leaking eyes and pounding ears with trembling hands and scream until my throat feels raw and I can't hear my own terrified voice. My whole body quakes with waves of terror and I feel dirty, disgusting, just like I felt as a child after he left my room with a smug expression and sweat coating his body when he was finished with me.

My screams fade into gasped breaths when I see that he's gone, as if he was never there. Was he even there? Their voices are back, reminding me of how messed up I am. They're taunting me more than they ever have. How could I have believed that he was there, that he was real? They keep telling me I'm stupid, disgusting, too damaged to be alive. I know they're right.

I'm disturbed and exhausted. I just want to sleep, but I know they won't let me. They hardly ever do. Why does this always happen to me? Why do I try to live a normal life? Why do I even bother living? Maybe it's time to listen to them and do what they've been insisting I do. It's the solution to all my problems, really.

Nodding to myself, I untangle my sweaty limbs from the messy sheets of my bed and amble out of my room. I take the path to the only bathroom in this poor house and shut the door behind me to enclose myself in the small, dimly lit space. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub directly in front of the sink, I open the drawer beneath the solid bowl and fish out a shiny blade the length of my thumb. The light shines off the sharp metal and I tilt it to show my reflection. My teenage face is distraught and I look miserable, shaken, and I feel it, too. I wish the memories I buried had stayed gone, just like my father, but nothing is ever goes according to plan with me.

Without hesitation, I allow the blade to dance across my skin, like so many times before. It had memorized the choreography, practicing nearly every day, sometimes more than once a day. It slid and flitted and swayed gracefully with my skin, drawing all the attention upon itself. It was familiar with its dance floor and moved perfectly. It added intensity and energy to its dance with every jump, until the audience was blinded with awe. The dancer had never performed so passionately.

The blade slipped from my hand when the lights were too bright and I couldn't feel a thing. It was finishing the job it had started so many years ago. I don't feel my body falling from the edge of the tub or the thick liquid pouring down my arm and between my fingers. All I can hear is the crowd applauding the remarkable dancer for the breathtaking show that would be remembered for lifetimes.