Normal With You

Chapter 14

*Explicit mature content ahead*

Come with me, I said, and no one knew

Where or how my pain throbbed,

No carnations or barceroles for me.

Come with me, as if I were dying

And no one saw.

No one saw...

.....

It was dark.

He had switched on her lampshade when he walked into her room but she refused to look at the shadows on the wall. She could hear the crinkle of the condom wrapper as he crumpled it into the pocket of his pants before he leaned over her- delusional in his beliefs that she wasn't just his sister. That she was his lover and his partner and he tried to treat her as one. She turned her face as soon as she felt him hovering above her.

She wouldn't let his lips touch one more part of her that night. He had defiled every part of her already- there was nothing left for him to dirty and taint. He had blackened all of her with his lips and his hands and his body. He had sullied her lips, her breasts, her arms, her legs. There was not one part of her that he hadn't touched, kissed or bit. She was dirty with his scent and she knew that no matter how much she would scrub, it would never leave her.

He stood up, irked at her refusal, before he ran his hand through her hair one last time.

She refused to look at him, instead fixing her gaze at the bare tree across her window that once shaded her sunflowers. She would rather look at that- that bleak reminder of what her life had become. She had lost the sun that once gave her so much of hope. It had gone. It had faded into nothing as if it had never existed and she was too tired to run after it again.

She heard the door click softly into place barely comprehending who or what she was anymore. She felt as if she had walked out of her own body. She wasn't there. She was outside somewhere. She was far away in a beautiful place that held no darkness and no night. She wasn't Tasneem. She was someone else looking in through the window but she wasn't her.

It wasn't her who was a whore.

She wasn't her brother's whore.

It wasn't her.

She stood up, wincing as she lowered her t-shirt to cover at least the tops of her thighs. The bruises on her inner thighs had barely begun to fade before he stepped foot into her room once again. He would never take her once- it was always multiple times. He would touch her and stroke her and kiss her pretending she was taking pleasure from his actions but she felt as if she was a stone doll. Her limbs were there for him to move as he pleased. If he wished to stretch her arms above her head or if he wished to raise her knee, he would do so. She had lost the will and the ability to fight back. She had stopped saying No because No had no meaning anymore.

She did as he wanted to yet she was never there when it happened. Her body was present but her mind had wondered away. It had fluttered hundreds of kilometres away to a place he could never follow. Her mind knew what to do as soon as his fingers traced the edge of her shirt- it knew that it was time to flee and never know what it was that he was doing to her. She never knew when his mouth descended upon her throat or when his hands squeezed her breasts or when he began to unzip his pants. She never felt him even when he was breaking her from the inside out. She never knew when it was that he would finish or when it was that he would once again lay on top of her so that he could have her once again.

There was a time when she had begged him to stop. When she had cried out in pain as he invaded her body or pleaded with him to leave her alone. She had even tried asking for help from her mother but her mother never helped her. Her mother only took him aside and asked him it was true. She could see the way his face darkened and she cowered at the stiff glances he kept on giving her.