Death In The Family

Chapter 6

Simone focused on the little yellow sign that marked where the dribble of blood and sex fluids had dried on the floor, bringing back the twinge of pain from the abrasion still healing inside her vagina and the ache of her arms restrained behind her. It was hard to interpret anything else she might have observed inside the room with that memory burning so bright at the forefront of her thoughts, her imagination drawn again and again to the conflicting ecstasy and agony of being so brutally forced.

Gladwell didn't look up from the little notebook he wrote in as he asked, "This was the fourth time he'd raped you with his brothers in the house?"

His question startled her back to the present, her confusion derailing her comprehension at what he was asking her. "Sorry, the fourth time he...?"

"Raped you," he repeated. She could hear the hard edge of discomfort he forced the word out with and see his reluctance in the way he refused to remove himself from his writing task to even face her. "With your uncles present in the house."

She looked at the desk, the area she had worked at daily to hide the bruises Leif had bestowed on her, and tried to swallow her hesitance at allowing Gladwell to continue calling it rape. She wouldn't be flushed hot with the desire to be pressed into the floor under him again if it was rape. That heavy fear that coupled with her arousal felt different than it had at the beginning, somehow more unclear now. There was a longing in her to feel that helplessness and terror tied to his sex, but that was too painful for her to place any faith in being a real desire. Another symptom of her madness. Or lack thereof. Legally sane, but crazy as a bag of cats.

She rubbed the back of her sweaty neck, the fever burning her up and making her shiver in chills as she tried to figure out the unnatural effect his sadism had on her body. She shoved that line of thought aside along with the crisis that lied at the other end of that looming revelation. There would be plenty of time later to shiver and scream alone in a small dark space about what he had done to her. She wasn't there to learn about herself anyway.

"Yes," she answered, still unsure if she was lying or not. Maybe she wasn't. It didn't matter.

While he wrote, she approached the bookcase along the wall next to the closet. Nothing but academic textbooks and nonfiction centering around architecture and design. His presence could be felt in the caution he took to hide who he was behind what he had wanted to be seen as, magnified by how early that habit had formed in his life. The framed photos of what she could only suppose were meant to be his friends in youth never had the same people twice and never once included him, giving what was meant to appear as a large social pool the obvious lie that these classmates even knew him at all. He was still green enough to make that mistake back then.

She wondered when he had started to have fake friends instead of faking friendships, but it was clear that he hadn't yet learned that skill while living here. She shivered again, the chill winning over the heat in a frigid draft that ached into her bones, and she rubbed her arms to attempt warmth.

"Take a jacket."

"What?"

"Take a jacket from the closet," Gladwell repeated grumpily. "Your shivering is distracting."

She didn't want to risk questioning the unexpected offer or rebuke the pity that burned at the end of that thinly veiled kindness. She pulled out the fitted plum pea coat and hurriedly slipped it over her hoodie. Her mother had gifted it to her for her birthday just two months ago, making it relatively bare of memories and attachments.

Her mom had complimented her on how the color made her eyes "pop", the wording making Simone laugh with the violence of the imagery it invoked. Oedipus had stabbed his eyes when he had finally seen the evil his hubris had blinded him to. She had committed such similar wickedness with her eyes wide open.