Poor Girls

Only the Beginning

By the time she finally woke up, I was staring out at the dim light through the grimy window with no feeling at all. My heart told me, this was it. I might leave within days, even hours, if all goes according to plan.

My brain deadened to any feeling and remained passive and hollow for the rest. If I let myself go, I will never come back. And I needed to be in control for what I would do next. It took her ten minutes alone just to stand up and perhaps another ten to cross the room and untie the rope around my wrists. I avoided her gaze as she did so. It would only make me appear suspicious if I looked her in the eye, I reminded myself. I had no reason to want her to start paying close attention now. Once I was free, I sat for a few minutes purposefully rubbing my wrists until she looked away. Then, slipping my hand underneath my shift, I tucked the blade neatly into the waistband of my breeches.

 She never suspected when she turned with a burnt chunk of bread in her hand that I could mean her death at any moment. Wordlessly, she shoved it at me. Presumably my only meal for the day. Thunk. I tilted my head to listen, terror flooding my veins and why not admit, anticipation. It wasn’t him though. Just a lousy rat come to make my bread its breakfast. It even had the gull to linger in the shadows of the corner between the two rooms and wait, just out of sight of my lazy guard. Just as I relaxed back into the chair however the door flew open and heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. I jumped a few feet and even the crone shrieked in surprise. My heart thudded in my ears, and I knew my time of waiting and submission was over.

The door slammed shut while he tortured us by dwelling in the front hall longer than was to be expected. Presumably inspecting the walls for any stolen tapestries. He never spoke of it, but I knew his greed controlled his every thought and doubt. It's what made other, smaller men tremble in the back room when he slyly suggested they had cheated him at his trade. First came the high-pitched denial, then the reluctant admission, and finally the pleading. That was when I shut everything out. The sound of others' screams of pain were not ones I cared to hear. Pity for others was not a main concern of mine. Slow steps finally echoed in the dim passage that led to the back part and at last, he found us. The lady bustled about nervously until he shut her up with a smack to the face. It wasn't hard. Not what I was used to but it turned her whole face red. Shame or pain, I couldn't tell. I knew his attention would be turned on me soon anyway.

She blubbered until he finally yelled for silence. "Father is displeased by your husband's absence at business. He will not tolerate it again." His tone was cold, his words short. Sister then. He held no restraint for anybody, this I already knew. She cupped her cheek and nodded hastily before ducking her head and slipping past him out the door. I felt no panic, being alone in a room with this black-hearted man. Not since a year ago. His grey blue eyes scanned the room quietly as if looking for the slightest change, then he left the room. I had been lucky he hadn't acknowledged my presence as well. Although I knew my turn was coming. It wasn't until he drank in the evenings that I expected him to come for me. And I wasn't wrong. Near midnight, he came into the kitchen where he had left me tied the whole day and drunkenly released the knot around my wrist. I breathed deeply for a few seconds, my hands regaining the blood in their veins before he yanked my wrist up almost causing the blade to fall into my pant leg.

He pulled me along with one hand and raised his bottle to his lips with the other while I quickly and subtly repositioned the blade. Up the creaky stairs, into the musty room he claimed for his own. Although the whole house was so broken and unfixable in the gloom that stifled every movement I wondered why anybody would want to claim it for their own. He wasn't one for words. This had always been true. He guided me to the large, half broken bed, one of the only pieces of furniture in his room and threw the bottle against the opposite wall. It shattered into a thousand pieces but he didn't care. He didn't do it out of anger or malice. He wanted to scare me. I lay on the bed willingly and unbidded flashes of other, more frightening memories entered my brain. Things I had succeeded in not thinking about until now.

I had screamed the first week, no one heard me. Often he had a knife to my throat and tied up otherwise he would at least be bruised. I hated him, every day and he knew it but somehow this only drew him to me. For the first year I planned his demise until I realized any attempt would be futile and anything otherwise would make me only despise myself for not succeeding. I was never allowed near a potential weapon, thus the kitchen had usually been off limits unless he watched every movement. Mostly I was kept in a dark room when he was present within the house.

A few times throughout the years, I became gutsy enough to taunt him for what he was doing to me. It never ceased to drive him bezerk. The only problem was that with his temper came his smashing violence and often I didn’t escape the room without him breaking something. If he had ever broken my spirit, I would have ceased to exist though. And I never stopped wanting to live. Away from him. Away from people. Back to the only peaceful, happy place I had ever known. Even that became a figment of my imagination, a fantasy I visited less and less often.

I focused only on keeping my mind alive and to do that I knew dreaming and scheming for my future, when I might not have one would push me right into a lurch. If I was to survive, I would have to clear my mind of anything nostalgic or any plans to take out the object of my hatred and my despair. There were periods when all hope fled me. When I experienced the worst of the beatings or when I was pulled, yanked back to the house by neighbors. I only found out there had been others before me, when one of his few friends mentioned me and then joked about where the others had gone before me. It had only made him cross and want to change the subject. I wondered how the man knew anything about me in the first place. For some reason, my jailer trusted him and that in itself was rather alarming.

I stopped eating, food made me sick. Everything grew distasteful to me.

It wasn’t until later that I realized that this had only given him power over me, when I lost all joy in life, all meaning outside of that cage. I never wished for death though, only an end to my misery, a way out of that house. When I did discover about the others, often I kept hope that they existed and that I would soon join them, but that time never came. I wondered why he never tired of me and only recently realized it must have been another curse of the gods. I hated them more and more fervently as I grew older. Appeasing them or sacrificing was never a question, I wanted to destroy everything in their possession. There were never any mirrors in the manor, so I was ignorant to my appearance all my life. I only knew of the unnaturally black hair I inherited from my mother and the pale skin that plagued me as an outsider. For everyone was allowed to be outside except for me.

I never knew his name, I didn't care to know. He wouldn't allow guests to use it, or if it ever did slip out it would always change. The curse of the house being poorly built were the thin walls that separated every room, everyone could hear everything. But usually everyone was just me. I knew if I eever needed to find him again it would be by the trail of horrors he left in his wake which would lead me right to his doorstep. There were certainly many that hated him more than they feared him.

As he approached the bed and leaned over me I slowly reached under my blouse for the knife handle. He wouldn't see in the dark. I found my voice steady, "Touch me and you'll lose your hand." He wheezed and whooped then, sounds I'll never forget but something that could not be mistaken for anything but laughter. His bony clammy hands reached forward anyway, daring me to do something about. Exactly as I had wanted. I stabbed for his stomach but at the last moment he glimpsed the metal and wrenched back just as I caught glimpse of his hand flailing by my left eye. At that glimpse I slashed forward so that the blade slashed his hand.

He cried out in pain and lunged forward in fury but I moved faster. He was old and drunk in a stupor. I had the weapon. He swung out at me but I jabbed with the knife and then hammered it down on the same hand. His scream could be heard by anyone that time. It was then that my senses came back into play and I threw the knife at him before I dodged his mad dash and jumped most of the stairs. I rushed for the back exit in the total darkness of the house, corners and walls I had hidden against many nights in fear. His hand must have been nearly off. There was so much blood and too much ripped open skin. Was it? Thoughts plagued my conciousness as excitement pushed me forward. Yet even as I rusehd forward I heard his clomping steps on the cracked stairs. Even in my final moments in that nightmare I heard him chasing me. I suppose his secrets died with me and those meant everything to him.

I rushed through the kitchen, past the closet, and through the old study, now in shambles, to reach the back door. It briefly jammed and only then did fear fill up my chest but in my haste I snatched a book from the shelf and smashed it onto the doorknob. Somehow that worked. It was only when I burst through the door at last, unable to stop myself from glancing behind me every five seconds that I realized, I was surrounded.