35
I lie in Charlie’s bed the morning after he beat me with his hands, wrapped in a bloody blanket.
The curtains are drawn, allowing just a crack of light to stream in across the buffed floors, so I’m resting in the darkness. It’s a familiar notion. I used to do exactly this after Maksim beat me.
I’m still unclothed, staring at the ceiling where the chandelier burns on low. I’m thinking about James and where he might be right now, what kind of state he’s possibly in, craving opiate-based medicine or hardcore drugs. It’s an anxious musing, as I can do nothing to help him. If I try to leave, I risk unleashing Charlie’s wrath again. If I try to leave, he might punish James.
I probably wouldn’t get very far, anyhow, as my head is all floaty like I’m hovering in a cloudy fog. I think someone injected me with something after I passed out last night. There’s a ball of cotton taped to my inner elbow—I feel it every time I shift position in bed, tugging at the fine hairs. But it’s only a slight discomfort.
It doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as he hurt me.
He hit me. My lips quiver as I remember, causing a huge swell to form in my sore throat. I cannot get my head around the fact that after his promise—a promise that once held so much value to me—and after I was finally able to admit that I am in love with him, Charlie actually hit me.
I want to die.
Tears roll out of my eyes and down my temples, soaking in my hair.
I just want to die.
Luna creeps in the bedroom when the sun hits a peak in the sky, shimmering on the matte gray walls in shades of orange. She carefully opens and shuts the door, and clink clinks over. It’s her heeled slippers that give her away; she’s the only person in the house who wears heels. My side of the bed dips, and her aromatic, floral fragrance mists my ozone. A light gasp escapes her usually glossy lips, as she whispers, “Dios mío, your face.”
My face...it’s likely black and blue from where I hit my head, or from when Charlie was beating me and knocking me into the wall. Perhaps I deserve it for what I did. Perhaps I look like the old Blaire. Well done, Charlie.
I turn my head, so she cannot see even an inch of my eyes. The movement makes my throat twinge, and it stretches the skin on my ass, reminding me of the welts—from where he hit me.
He hit me. Oh fuck, Charlie actually hit me.
I push the memory from my mind. It’s agony, like a fist in my chest squeezing my heart until it is nothing. The emotional pain hurts more than the physical.
“Blaire, cariño, I’m so, so sorry,” Luna snivels, and I feel her hand slipping toward mine on the bed, an act of comfort. She blubbers with apologies for using me to her advantage, explaining how she had just wanted to ensure that Andres wasn’t present at Robert’s brutal murder—reiterating how he turns to drugs in his darkest hours. “I couldn’t risk him falling off the deep end,” she says. “I had to do something—I would have done anything!” She confesses that she was aware I might not ask Charlie to send her husband away, so she thought if I knew about James—if I believed Charlie was going to kill him—I would go after him, and Charlie would come after me. They would have stopped murdering Robert long enough for her to get Andres on a plane out of the country. “I just needed to get him home,” she whispers, on the verge of sobbing. “I really, really didn’t think anything this bad would happen, Blaire, I swear it. Please, try to understand my plight.”
I do understand, and I have to admit, her plan was good. I am impressed by her cunning. If only I had applied the same attention to detail...
Turning over with a hiss of discomfort, I put my back to her. She doesn’t seem to mind my ignorance. She sits with me for a while in total silence, assessing me, I imagine trying to read what’s going on inside my head.
When she finally departs from the bedroom, I sigh in relief that she’s gone. But then she returns and puts something on my cheek, making me flinch and rasp in slight pain.
“It’s just an ice pack,” she says in her husky accent from behind, stroking my hair. “It will help bring out the...bruising, so your cheek can heal.”
I allow her to hold it there, welcoming the numbness that sets in my brain, and this is just the beginning of her tender nursing. She disappears again at some point during the day, coming back to handfeed me sweet biscuits and soup. I briefly look at her, at the burning guilt in her deep, brown eyes. She’s wearing baggy gray joggers and an oversized, round-neck t-shirt. She doesn’t look like Luna. She looks wrecked, with her usually glossy hair bundled on top of her head, and her face is pale because she’s not wearing any makeup.
“Blaire,” she sniffles, her chin quivering, “please, say something? Do you forgive me? Please, say you forgive me.”
I blink a couple of times, holding her shattered gaze. “Don’t be sorry.” That’s all I can manage. I don’t give her a chance to answer or argue with me. I groan that my bladder feels like it’s going to explode, and she jumps to help me to the bathroom.
I pee blood. It’s my heaviest period yet, and it aches when I push.
“Don’t worry about that,” Luna says in a fluster, reeling out some tissue. “The bleeding will slow down soon.”
I take her word for it, assuming she’s had periods like this before. As I stand from the toilet, I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length window behind the shower, and I recoil. I’m hunched over and fragile, naked and unashamed of it standing at Luna’s side. It’s a blurry image, but I can see the thick, purple bruises wrapped around my neck.
From where he strangled me.
It fills my stomach with knots to remember. It makes me feel ill.
I take a shower, ritually to wash away what happened. Luna kicks off her heeled slippers, steps in the shower with me, and sponges me down with tears in her dark eyes. The water scalds Charlie’s handprints stamped on my flesh, and I try so fucking hard, but I can’t hold back from sobbing under the agony.
Then the other pain emerges.
At first, it’s just a twinge, until my stomach is cramping so badly I can’t stand it. I lean against the tiled wall on my forehead while the water beats down on me, hissing through clenched teeth. Luna softly insists I need to get dry, pull on a pair of panties, and a sanitary pad. “I’ll go get you some pain relief medication once you’re in bed.”
I don’t want any pain relief. Why numb out the only thing I can feel?
I shake my head and slam my eyes shut, lips pressed together holding back deeper cries.
“It’s okay to feel broken,” she says, wrapping around me from the side. She’s soaked through from the shower, but she doesn’t seem to care. “It’s okay to need someone,” she adds in a whisper. “I’m here. Let it out, Blaire. I’m here.”
Her words disrobe my barrier, shattering my numb state, and my desperate howls tear through the bathroom over the spraying shower. It’s like there’s a pinprick hole in my chest, and it’s getting bigger and bigger with every breath, every thought, so huge I know it won’t be able to heal.
I can’t seem to stop now that I’ve started crying like a maniac, tensing and screaming to let it out. The spraying water washes away my tears but new ones come just as quickly. I punch the wall, wishing for it to hurt but it doesn’t. Nothing will ever match this agony in my soul.
When I’m reduced to a state of existing, worn out and raw from crying, Luna flicks off the shower and pats me down with a towel. She wanders off to dig some underwear out of the closet drawers and fits the panties with a pad before helping me step in them. She gently clasps a hand around my arm and chaperones me into the bedroom, matching my slow lumber. I notice straight away that the sheets have been changed—all the blood is gone—and there is a letter on Charlie’s pillow, handwritten from him with his elaborate signature and his personal X.
At the sight of it, a weird sensation morphs in my belly, knots and twists and...dread.
Don’t think about it.
Shutting down mentally, I don’t open the letter. I crawl into bed and lie with my back to it. I battle to sleep without nightmares of Charlie’s angry, haunting face, his ominous stretch of silence, and then his voice, his words...
“You will do as you’re fucking told from now on!”
I dream of the aftermath; a reality I’ve created in my head. He’s standing there at my bedside in the shadows, and he stinks of alcohol. The stench is so strong I can almost taste the spice of brandy on my tongue. It’s weird, as Charlie rarely smells like this.
A rough, cold hand slips under my blanket, and I flinch in reaction. I pull up the blanket to my chin, just as the hand retreats. I hear the friction sound of palms rubbing together, then his fingers touch my belly again, splaying out to feel me. My chest constricts, hurting with heartache. That’s when I hear him sobbing in a voice weaker and deeper than usual. Broken.
I awake in that moment to my own tears, squinting through the night at a large, dark silhouette of a man exiting my bedroom.
It’s just a dream.
Over the duration of the next day, pain comes and goes in my belly, canceled out by the painkillers Luna serves like they’re going out of fashion. Maksim used to refuse the idea of me ever taking drugs to kill pain; said it was weak, that a trained killer must learn to own their pain, that it makes them stronger. Yet here I am, summarized to nothing. I am not strong anymore. All those years I trained and learned were for nothing. Charlie has stripped that girl naked, softened her... I will put on clothes again, but they’ll only cover my transparency, the weakness inside.
I am no longer Blaire-Markov.
I am no longer my hopeful Blaire Decena.
I am just...Blaire.
I am empty.
The bedroom casts over with another night. Luna plays a movie on the flat screen hanging in the bookcase, I suspect hoping it’ll evoke something in me. It doesn’t. I just stare at the screen, barely registering the images. She tries to talk to me, even while I’m verbally incoherent. I do ask if she knows where Charlie is, but that’s it.
“He’s not at the house, cariño,” she says. “He’s been mostly staying away because he thought that’s what you would want. So, if you would like to leave this room at all, you are safe to do so.”
Safe. That’s such a powerful word with such little effect when one says it. I was safe—and happy. Charlie was my whole world. I chose him over my master, who was evil, but at least I knew where I stood with him. I chose him over James, when I had the chance to run with him.
What have I done?
I cuddle a pillow and sob my heart out after Luna says Charlie is staying away, and she lets me. She cuddles me from behind and tells me everything is going to be okay.
I don’t believe her.
I don’t believe anything will ever be okay again.
But I also don’t push her away. I need someone, arms to hold me and make me feel loved.
I’m not certain if I sleep. I think I just lie here daydreaming, tormenting myself. I think about how perfect Charlie can be sometimes in the way he touches my face or plays with my hair. I imagine—and almost feel—the way he kisses me: unholy, all-consuming desire, radiating through him and into me. Real love.
It won’t ever be the same again.
“Blaire, this is Mary,” Luna says at sunrise the next day, standing at my bedside. “She’s a nurse. She needs to take a blood sample and check you over.”
A thought flickers through my head—she’ll stab me with a needle. Please, in my heart.
Elastic wraps around my forearm, my inner elbow pricks, and I feel the pressure of my blood pumping out. I focus on a spot on the bed to forget anyone is here, and Luna fades into the distance of silence—but I can’t mentally wish the nurse away. When she’s done taking my blood, she tapes another ball of cotton over the tiny scratch on my inner elbow, and then wants to check my face.
I shut my eyes.
Her fingers are short and stumpy yet warm as she touches my cheek, adding too much pressure in places. She asks if it hurts more than an ache. I shake my head. She’s convinced that my eye socket and cheek aren’t fractured. She then asks a few more questions: when was my last period, and if I feel sick or if I’m in any pain.
Only in my heart.
“Do you know what is happening to you, sweetie?” Her voice makes me feel...peculiar. There’s a tender undertone to what she’s saying. “You can talk to me. I’m here for you and only you, to help you, sweetie. I have the results of your internal scan that was taken two nights ago.”
I pull the blanket up around my neck as more tears prick my eyes. Don’t talk to me like that.
“She thinks it’s her period,” Luna whispers, materializing from the silence. “The Señor insists.”
The Señor. Their master. My new design of hell.
Don’t think about him. But I want to think about him. I want to think about the good Charlie: the man who adored and loved me. Not the man who went crazy hitting me. He didn’t mean it. He was in that dark place in his mind. If I had just run, if I had gotten away, none of this would have happened. He told me he can’t be around me after spilling blood. It messes with his mindset.
He still hit me though.
Don’t think about him.
I try to focus on the nurse instead, really looking at her. She’s English with golden blonde hair under the funny looking white hat she wears. All the English women I see are blonde, as was the woman Charlie was drooling over at Maksim’s party—the night he bartered me to clear Maksim’s debt. She doesn’t realize how lucky she was that he came after me and didn’t pursue her.
No, she’s not lucky. Charlie can be good. Charlie can also be bad.
Stop saying that!
I’ve finally gone crazy, but I’m desperate to go back to before, when my life was full of love and magic—but the darker me knows that’s not possible. The darker me is realistic. The darker me knows better.
“Can I feel your tummy, Blaire?” The nurse’s voice penetrates my mind, pulling me into the physical present.
I briefly wonder why she wants to feel my tummy, though I don’t vocally answer her, just nod. She rolls me on my back, pulls the blanket aside, and uses her stumpy fingers to prod and poke me. I groan when she hits a spot in my lower abdomen that sends a surge of pain throughout my body, making me heave.
“I know it hurts, sweetie, but it will go away. I promise.” There’s that tone of voice again, the sympathetic there, there, it’ll all be okay.
I hate it.
She also checks the huge, angry, purple bruise enveloped around my neck, and the welts Charlie created on my butt. She touches and kneads spots there at the hardened flesh that’s grown thicker under the bruises.
I’m glad when she leaves, so it’s just Luna and me. She comes back a few days later to take more blood and practically shoves soup down my throat because I haven’t eaten. She asks again if she can feel my tummy, too. It doesn’t hurt so much when she presses down on that same area.
After my final physical examination, she and Luna talk. When I hear the mention of Charlie, I zone out. I become engrossed in the bookcase, where hundreds of stories have been stored on paper for people to relive. How many of those stories are true? Will anyone ever read mine? Would anyone even want to read about the brutality I have lived with, man after man dominating their power over me for nothing more than their own satisfaction.
I smile to myself, thinking about my story and how it would start.
I, am the equivalent of a honeybee in their world. I, am their pollinator, edified only to fertilize their desires. But, if I accidently sting them, they will kill me, just as one would kill a honeybee.
I have been killed by both Maksim and Charlie, abridged to nothing but a shell of a person.
It’s so sad. I just wanted to be free. I just wanted to be happy.
———
A week later, when all the stomach cramps have passed and my period is lighter, I wake to the sight of flowers.
They’re lying on Charlie’s pillow next to the unopened letter, blood red petals on long spiky stems, wrapped up in clear packaging.
Roses.
A horrible, sinking feeling of dread comes over me as they look like the roses Maksim used to burn before putting on his parents’ graves.
For a second, I consider the idea that Maksim isn’t dead—as Charlie doesn’t have his body. He’s alive, and he’s here to torment me. He’s come to punish me for what I did.
In a panic, I scramble out of bed in my panties, brushing my wild mane back out of my eyes. I rush around to Charlie’s side of the bed and poke about searching for a note, finding it crammed in the bouquet.
I’m so sorry, Blaire.
Te amo, Charlie. X
It’s from Charlie, obviously. The notion calms my rising nerves, but I’m offended by the minimalistic apology. I stare at it with affront, then at the flowers. Note. Flowers. Note. Flowers.
He’s sorry? I ask myself with sarcasm. He hit me, and he’s just sorry? So, does that mean we’re okay now?
No. Anger comes over me in a wave of fire, balling in my belly. No, we’re not okay. I don’t want things to be okay. I don’t want to be that girl anymore, who must accept what is. I want to love and be loved in return now that I know how wonderful it feels.
I. Want. To. Be. Free.
I. Want. To. Be. Happy.
I. Want. To. Be. Loved.
My dreams and needs are a mantra in my head, and I refuse to let them go. As soon as I can find a way to ensure James’ safety, I’m out of here. I’m done living in this fucked up world of crime, evil, and danger.
I peel open the clear packaging wrapped around the bouquet and wander across the bedroom to lay out the roses on the coffee table, patting them down flat. Nine roses in total. The amount must have meaning—Charlie’s actions always have hidden meaning. I would Google the concept, but I don’t have my phone. I lost it the night I set James free.
Thinking back, I count how many roses Maksim use to burn before putting on his parents’ graves. Two. It was always two, to show mutual feelings.
“People lay flowers on graves to symbolize their emotions,” he once said, watching a single rose smoke in the breezy, Russian wind while I was watching him speak. “I hate my parents, My Little Pet, even now when they are dead. I do not love or miss them, and I do not think they deserve pure, beautiful flowers. So, I burn them.”
I had already figured that’s why he burned them, to show his hatred. He was right to hate them, too. They didn’t deserve pure, beautiful flowers. They raped and beat Maksim whenever he was bad.
They were bad.
Maksim was bad, too.
And Charlie is bad.
Reminding myself of how viciously he beat me hurts. It makes my heart ache, and the pain swells so fiercely I can hardly breathe for a second.
Everything we had is gone in the space of one night. One fucking night.
Anew tears in my eyes, I cast a glance across the room at the vase on my bedside cabinet, to stare at the flowers Charlie bought nearly two weeks ago. They are brown and crunchy, decayed petals scattered about the cabinet surface around the vase. The irony of them dying is sickening.
I rub my bruised throat, broken emotions resurfacing, threatening to consume me. It’s a mixture of things, as usual. I want to cry, scream, and laugh all at once since I don’t know how to level how I’m feeling inside.
“You can’t go in there!” Luna shouts from outside the bedroom door, and my heart drops like a rock. “I don’t know if she wants to see you—stop!”
“Tell her I want to see her then, Luna. I miss her.”
It’s Charlie!
I freeze on the spot at the sound of him, totally blank. My breaths come harder and faster, lungs struggling for air, but it’s my only reaction.
“I don’t need permission in my own house,” he hisses, and whacks the wall outside the door. “Move your ass, now.”
“Why don’t you make me, hijo de puta!”
What the hell is she doing?
Nervous she’s making him irrevocably mad, I lower on to the big armchair and hunch over, cuddling my middle. From this angle, no one can see me tucked into the chair. In my mind, I am hidden.
In my mind, I am not here.
I am not here.
I try to mentally block the sound of them, rocking myself back and forth in a wooden stance, but it’s so hard. Their voices grow louder and deeper, entwined in a shouting match. Charlie is desperate to see me. Luna is refusing to let that happen.
“This isn’t about you!” she screeches. “Chocolates won’t help either, idiota! She’s ruined!” Something thumps the floor, and I assume she’s knocked the box out of Charlie’s hand, still going mad with screaming. “You need to leave! I told her she’s safe to wander the house! I told her you’re never here!”
“Andres!” Charlie roars at the top of his lungs. “Come and manage your fucking wife before I do! I’ll have your fucking head—I should! After what you’ve done, I should put a bullet in you!”
“That’s your answer to everything! Blood! Murder! If you didn’t—”
“Don’t!” he barks over her, momentarily subduing her arguing. “If you had kept your mouth shut of lies...if you had just stayed outa my business, this wouldn’t be happening!”
“I was trying to spare my husband!”
“I wasn’t gonna let him do anything!” Charlie yells back, saying he only wanted Andres there to display a united front. “You stupid bitch! I love my brother—he’s the only reason I haven’t cut out your heart!”
Luna gasps, and squeals, “Cut out my heart?!”
I grab my face, unsure of what to do. I feel like I should get out there and defend Luna, but I’m just not ready to face Charlie yet.
Andres’ voice interrupts the chaos, struggling to contain his wife.
“No!” Luna fights for what she believes in, groaning and grunting as if someone is tugging at her. “I am not leaving! ¡Que te jodan! I’ve watched that girl die inside this past week! I am not leaving her alone with you!”
“This is none of our business!” Andres yells. “Ay Dios mío, Luna, Charlie already forgave you once...if you don’t stop—come, now! I won’t tell you again!”
“No! No!” she cries. “Charlie, don’t go in there!”
The bedroom door opens anyway, creaking on its hinges, and my pulse hits an all new high. I want to get up and find some clothes but at the same time, I can’t move.
I’m paralyzed.