The Light at the End

2: Literally the Worst Thing

A/N: trigger warning here- heavy physical and sexual abuse in this chapter. While this isn't a true story I draw a lot from personal experience and because of that you can expect pretty vivid depictions of sex, both consensual and non-consensual, especially later on where there will be several instances much more violent and horrible than what happens here. If that triggers or bothers you, that's ok, don't feel bad, there's nothing wrong with you but I recommend you stop reading here. Also, if you think these scenes of assault and rape are sexy or if you're reading for sexual pleasure do not read this book. There's a lot wrong with that, which I'm not going to get into but this is not bdsm, this is not dom/sub play. This is abuse. For everyone else, I hope you don't find my writing terrible. Drop some comments or questions if you'd like and expect another update soon.
/////

After dinner I spend a couple hours playing COD on my old Xbox, just going against the computer match after match because only assholes haven't upgraded from the 360 yet and considering myself one of the assholes, I don't want to be playing against a bunch of me. It would be a boring, camping filled mess of sniper rifles. The bad mes shooting the good mes in slow succession and all that. Quick succession from the real me cause I'm an amazing sniper. Just not all the mes are. God, I can't even make sense in my own head but it would be weird.

I was supposed to get a new console when I turned sixteen but considering that happened about a month after the blow up involving Vincent and his dad,  and with my mom and I having just moved it was like I didn't even have a birthday this year. My sixteenth birthday, erased. No cake, no presents, no acknowledgement of the day at all except for Mom telling me that I wouldn't be getting a driver's license until I was 18 when she could no longer do anything to prevent it. Just another clear example of how much she hates me. She knew how excited I was to drive and... Fuck it, no... Not even going there.

I quickly turn my attention back to the match my team is losing. I wouldn't even be playing Xbox but for once I have no homework; my last day of school was Friday, yesterday, when Mom showed up to pull me out at lunch and tell me I'd be starting at a private school on Monday, that it was Harold's idea and that they both thought it would help me with my "discipline problem."

So I'm in limbo right now, hoping that maybe on Monday things will start getting better but terrified that it will just be more of the same. We've been in Tennessee for a good while now and I didn't get close to anyone at the public school here. Hell, the closest thing I had to friends were some kids I'd sit with every once and a while at lunch who liked to make fun of my "Yankee" accent and then shit all over everything else about me when I brought up the dumb country twang everyone here speaks with. I found out my freckles are ugly, fuck, my whole everything  is ugly apparently, that I have crooked thumbs and a clown mouth, whatever that means, and girl hair. That I'm so so ugly even my mother couldn't love me, which hurt bad because it's true, and that I'm stupid. So, so incredibly, all encompassingly stupid, as if I needed that told to me.

As if a cloud of stupid wasn't hanging over me, maybe a sign with that word and an arrow pointed right at my head. Stupid Riley, the fuck up idiot who ruins everything for everyone else because he's so stupid, so fucking ignorant.

All the anger that's been welling up, pushing at the walls of my chest, boils over and before I can think to stop myself I'm hurling my controller at the wall where it hits with a loud bang before clattering to the floor, the battery pack cover flying off and the batteries rolling away somewhere I'll never find them.

A bubble of text pops up at the top of my TV screen to notify me to reconnect my controller  just as my phone buzzes beside me. The number is unfamiliar but the message -what was that sound - let's me know that it's Harold.

Sorry, I dropped something- I text back but it's too late; I hear the creak of him coming up the stairs. Immediately my mind zeroes in on the two options I have to keep me out of the worst possible trouble: pick up the controller so he doesn't know about my tantrum or unlock the door that he specifically yelled into my ear for me not to lock yesterday while his hand crushed my balls in a vice grip.