Behind Drawn Curtains

Chapter 20

I felt the rain before I saw it. It first it was just a light drip here and there but soon I had to run for the nearest shelter. Huddling between a huge tree and a wall I looked on as the ground in front of me turned into a stream, washing all the dirt away.

I wished that could have been me. That it could have been so easy to just wash away the dirt from the past and be new and clean again, but nothing was every truly that easy. Just as thunder struck my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was really as if the weather was somehow trying to add a soundtrack to my life.

I pulled out my phone with trembling hands. It could have been anyone… My mom, Chris, James… I didn’t want to speak to any one of them, and at the same time I just needed someone to talk to me and remind me that I was somehow still alive, still standing, and getting out of here forever this time.

Chris: Schools boring. Where r u?

For a moment I didn’t want to reply. I knew the plan. I was supposed to get to the train station as soon as possible. I needed to leave this town before James had enough strength to come after me. I needed to go before I had the chance to break Chris’ heart even more than what I was already going to break it. Above all however, I needed to leave before I could fall in love. Before I did not have the courage to do what needed to be done anymore. I needed to flee, not from everybody else but from myself and my own reckless heart.

E.J.: Standing under a tree sumwhere. Waiting for the rain 2 stop.

Right now I needed a friend. I needed someone who cared about where I was and what had happened to me.

Chris: Did you get ur stuff?

E.J.: Yeah I did.

Chris: Gud thing J wasn’t home.

If only Chris knew…

E.J.: Yeah. Good thing.

Chris: Where do I get u after school?

E.J.: The apartment?

Chris: Cul. Lemme know when ur there.

E.J.: Will do!

I had no intention of seeing the inside of Chris’ apartment building ever again. I had every intention to walk to the train station and buy a ticket that would take me to Timbuktu where nobody knows me and I can at least make a new start, but unfortunately for me my legs had other plans. As soon as the rain started to stop I found myself walking in the direction of Chris’ place, thinking about how nice a hot shower would be and how much better it would be to lay down in his safe arms tonight and not bumping up and down on a train to somewhere I have never even heard off. And it was only the right thing to do to be with him for one more night, to say a proper goodbye. He had done so much for me. He had been there when nobody else was. I needed him more than what he needed me. It was fitting to go back and say goodbye to my old life properly, and that included Chris. He has always been the one that walked behind me, ready to catch me when I fall. It only made sense to allow him to be there behind me when I finally soared into the big vast world. He would understand above anyone else why I need to get away from this town. He knows what it’s like to hate his life. Maybe this way I can keep the one good connection to the past. That person who will always remind me of where I came from.

***

I stashed my belongings underneath Chris’ bed before I went and had a shower. I needed to get the past as far away from me as possible and the only way was by taking a hot shower. Chris wasn’t home yet which gave me more than enough time to get my mind sobered up. Luckily he hid a key to the apartment underneath the doormat. I always wondered how houses weren’t broken in to because of that cliché mistake everybody made, but then again. Each to their own, and not everybody is probably as paranoid as I am about safety.

I stood in the shower for a long time. At first I tried to think and call up everything that had happened to me, but somehow I couldn’t. It was in a way all just a blur. Everything happened so fast that I struggled to remember what was said and how it came to be that James was laying on the floor. I knew how it happened, and at the same time I could not recall his eyes, my movement, the sounds, the smell… I just couldn’t. So I decided to forget. I closed my eyes and allowed everything to go black. I didn’t think of anything and at that moment I didn’t want to either. I wanted everything to just be blank and black. I needed to forget that I was a bad person. For all I knew James could have been dead, but I could not allow my mind to dwell into those dark spaces. I needed to keep track of my plan. I needed to get out of town. I knew how, but I had no idea if I had the physical strength to do so. For the first time in my life I felt like I could not move another step. Not because I was sore of because there was pain in my every muscle. It was different this time. As if I had been carrying a mountain for a very long time and someone had come and taken it from my shoulders.

“E.J.?”

The voice broke the silence that was thick around me. I knew I was sitting down, but I had no idea how I had gotten in the sitting position I was in. I couldn’t recall the water being cold as ice against my skin without even a shiver going down my spine. I didn’t even know why my eyes were burning from the tears and water mixing together.

“Christopher?”

I sounded like a child to myself. Maybe around 3 years old? I felt smaller than that actually. I felt insignificant. As if I was just born. The light hurt my eyes and I could not help but lifting my arms up toward him, as if begging for him to pick me up.

“Oh baby,” Chris said as he grabbed a towel with one hand as he closed the tap to the running water that still fell on my back. He draped the towel over me as he took me in his arms and squeezed my face into his neck, picking my up from tiles in the shower.

“I don’t want to go back…” I could not stop the sob that ripped through my body like a violent hurricane ripping the roof from a home that was once the stability of an entire family.

“You don’t have to. You never have to go back. We will make a plan,” Chris whispered as he drew me so close to him that I got scared that his body would meld with mine and become one, something I wished on nobody. Nobody should be one with me. Nobody should ever have to feel the pain that was lurking inside me, pulling every happy memory away until all I have left is the most painful and violent memories of my life.

Without waiting for an answer he started leading me to his room, and without even bothering about clothing he dried me off as best he could and then pushed me into the warm bed. I didn’t care that he was seeing me naked or even touching me. I was safe. I knew he would never do anything to hurt me. He was not James. I have come to know. Not all men were James. It was a difficult lesson but it was one I needed to learn.

Within minutes I was gone.

***

“Come here you little s**t!” James screamed as he came down the hall.

No matter how fast I ran the hallways seemed to get longer and longer with every step I took, the stairs always staying two feet away from me.

“No! I am free!” I cried as I ran. My chest was sore, but I kept running. He was not allowed to catch me.

“You will never be free! You are mine! You promised! You belong to me!” James screamed. I knew he was right. He had been in me. A part of me will always belong to him. I would never truly be free as long as I could remember the past. And even if I were to forget there were still the scars from where my body could remember him for the rest of my life.

For one moment I glanced behind me, looking back at James. His face swollen and broken. Blood running from above his left eye, right under the hairline. He looked like something out of a horror movie. I gasped. My foot twisted. I fell.

“No!” I screamed as his body fell on top of mine. “I’m free!”

“You’re mine!” he screamed into my ears as he unbuckled his belt.

“I have to be free!” I gasped as I started to cry, knowing that this nightmare would never end.

“You will never be free,” he whispered into my neck with his sour breath as I felt my jeans sliding down my legs, his cold fingers burning my skin.

“I want to be free,” I sobbed as his hands pushed my legs apart so that he could have better access.

“You will always be a prisoner of my love,” James said as he pushed my hands away from his chest where I was still trying to push him off my body.

“I will never be free,” I said almost silently as I stopped sobbing and accepted my fate.

***

I woke up in a cold sweat, darkness lining the room around me. Not knowing where I was I kicked the blanket off me and got out of bed only to realize I was naked, sending me back into the bed immediately.

I held up my breath, trying to listen where he could be. Under the bed? In the closet? Was he ready to push me down?

The light burned my eyes as the door opened…

“No!” I screamed as the light went on, illuminating the scene around me, showing Chris in the doorway, looking startled at me.

“E.J.?” Chris asked as he walked over to the bed moving at a very slow pace, almost as if he was to afraid to step one foot in front of the other.

“I’m okay,” I answered almost too quickly. Was I ever okay? Would I ever be okay? What did okay even mean?

“Did you have a nightmare?” he asked as he sat down next to me, capturing his eyes in mine, the worry a ghost in the reflection I saw.

“I need to get out of town,” I blurted out. It wasn’t how I was planning things, but it slipped out without me having the slightest bit of a chance to stop it.

“To your mom?” Chris asked.

“No. Away… From everyone. Everything… Even you…”

There was silence. Chris didn’t talk after that, neither did I.