FicWad

I flick absently through TV channels watching the time with an urgency no one could understand. She was meant to call over an hour ago. She could have forgotten but… no, she knows how much I’d worry. I’m half way through dialling her number on the house phone in the hall, dreading what kind of a state she’ll be in if and when she answers, when there’s a pleading knock at the door. The site that greets my eyes takes my breath away. In a bad way.
Amelia is stood on the doorway in jeans and a vest top, soaked to the skin in an almost exotic mixture of blood and rain. I usher her inside and seat her on the sofa not even pausing for a second to think about her making it dirty. I remain standing, choosing to pace back and forth in front of her instead. Someone watching the scene from outside may think I’m being heartless. I mean my girlfriend’s just turned up on my doorstep inadequately dressed for the weather, with one black eye already, a busted lip and various bruises and contusions already clear on her pale skin. All of this done to her by someone who is supposed to care for her, dote on her, protect her. Her own father… We know better though, we’ve played this scene out enough times to understand it fully. When she’s in this mess she doesn’t want contact or physical affection. Hell if you go within a meter radius of her she flinches so bad she runs the risk of falling off the sofa, and there’s strictly no pity.
I let her cry herself out then sit on the other side of the sofa waiting for her to talk.
“I’m sorry I showed up this late. I just have no where else to go. I thought he was going to kill me.” She says at last. It’s barely a whisper and the crying has made her throat raw so it’s more of a croak than normal speech but worst is how pathetic and small she sounds. I will never get used to this.
“What happened?” I ask when we both know that what I really mean is ‘why’d he do it this time?’
“He, he was shouting and screaming. He was saying stuff about you, about how you don’t love me.” This was old news, if he couldn’t be bothered to physically abuse her he would tarnish the things she loves instead. That doesn’t explain the bruises though, in fact it makes them stranger than they’ve ever been.
“What went differently this time?” I ask her. She’s gradually shifting closer to me down the sofa, we’re not quite touching, there’s a small slither of space between us that feels like a huge canyon but I let her take her time.
“I couldn’t take it! He was, he was so horrible!” She confesses almost pleadingly, tears are threatening to spill from already bloodshot eyes when she looks at me. I just want to reach out and hold her but I restrain myself with difficulty. “I shouted back at him. I said everything I’ve ever dreamed of.” A strange look of euphoria dances across her face and I don’t know whether to be pleased or worried. “In return he did this.” She motions at her bloodied face. She’s leaning on my shoulder now. I hook an arm around her and hold her and tight as I dare. I just desperately need to convey the message that she was safe here. That she is loved here. That I’m here.
“Can we, can we go upstairs? I just…” I don’t need an explanation though. I just nod and lead the way upstairs to where mine and Mikey’s bedrooms are. “Did you want to get cleaned up?” I ask her as we pass the bathroom. She nods and whispers “I’ll be back in a minute.” Before disappearing behind the painted white door.
I make my way to my room. Quickly stuffing dirty washing in the basket and shoving loose papers and drawings onto my desk. I hadn’t been expecting company tonight. Especially not company in my room.
She knocks hesitantly on my door and enters. She looks a little better with the dried blood washed away from under her nose and off her chin. “How do I look?” She asks with a half hearted attempt at a smile.
“Beautiful.” I reply honestly. I hold my arms open wide and she crosses the room to the bed where I’m sat and sits in my lap.
“Why did you choose tonight?” I ask her after a few moments of silence. “Why choose tonight to stand up to him?”
“I don’t know. He was saying really ugly things and rather than getting scared like I usually do I got angry. Plus he was really, really drunk. I guess I was hoping he was too drunk to do a very good job.”
“So you didn’t like, wind him up on purpose?” It was a tricky question and I know that I’m walking on extremely thin ice but I have to ask. As long as I’d known Amelia, even before I knew about the abuse (her Dad tended to avoid spots that would be easily seen, he’d obviously lost that sort of control tonight), but even before I knew about all that I had known about her self-destructive streak. It may be a round about way of self-harming but I wouldn’t put it past her.
“No! I fucking wasn’t Gee! Thanks!”
“Look… I know you wouldn’t… I just…”
“If you knew why ask?” She’s up off the bed now, stood over me and shouting in my face.
“I care.”
“Like hell.”
“If I don’t care maybe I’ll just leave you here and meet Mikey and Ray down the pub.” I hate it when she starts on at me. She always accuses me of not caring, not loving, not being absolutely fucking perfect. It hurts. Not only because she might actually start believing it but also because if she doesn’t believe it it means that she’s just trying to push me away, and that she wouldn’t want me there hurts a lot. It would appear that she was the needy one in this relationship but we both have our moments. She gets a lot of 3 am phone calls off me too.
“Don’t say that.” She says, tugging up the sleeves of my hoody that she had obviously donned whilst cleaning up in the bathroom. What I see there on her arms makes my flesh crawl, it makes my heart break and stomach churn, it makes me shudder and freeze all at once.
I swallow painfully. “What have you done to your arms?” She looks down and notes her mistake. A slight flush appears on her cheeks although I’ve been here enough to know that it wasn’t from the act of cutting herself, just from being stupid enough to get caught.
“Why this time then” I ask wearily. All Mikey’s half-joking comments about ‘too much baggage’ leap to mind in a half taunting, half haunting kind of way.
“I thought that would be obvious.” She says bitterly motioning once again to the battered face, neck and shoulders that are usually so soft and delicate.
“He hurts you so you hurt yourself?” I ask, I’m trying to reason with her, show her the contradictions in her logic but it sounds taunting even to me.
“Well as we’re pointing out character flaws why don’t I have a go?” She screams, getting right in my face again even though she’s over 6 inches shorter than me. “How about your drinking habits, your more-than-occasional drug taking, your depression that you lumber me with on top of everything else? The fact that you’re so bundled up in your own little irrelevant problems you can’t give two shits about anyone else?” My blood is boiling, this is all so unfair and the last statement was also extremely untrue. She was trying to wind me up, tear me down and a forbidden thought crosses my mind. Is this what she does to him? Is this why he does it? Can I blame him?
“You think you’re Mr Sophisticated. In your own house with a semi-decent job. There’s a huge snag though isn’t there? The fact that you’re so fucking retarded that you can’t even make your own friends.” There’s mocking and loathing dripping off every word. Forget blood boiling my whole body is ready to explode. “You hang round with your eejit of a brother’s fuck up friends like you’re some big guy…”
“-Don’t insult my brother! Don’t bring them into this!” I didn’t want to snap. I wanted to let her shout it all out then collapse into tears and say she’s sorry, then I’d forgive her like I always did and it would be Ok. Life was never that easy.
“Why not? Scared he might find out and won’t let you have a little cuddle? A little touchy feel because you’re too fat and inadequate to get it any where else?”
“Shut up!” I yell with notes of hysteria in my voice. My arm is moving of its own accord. I feel it swing forward. I feel my fist collide with something but no where during those few moments do I tell it to do those things. Time seems to be frozen and I stand with an outsiders detachment looking in at the scene. My arm drops back to my side and time speeds back up with a crash. I take in the sprawled figure on the floor in front of me, looking up at me with terrified, reproachful eyes. I feel the throbbing in my hand where contact had been found. I hear a faint whimper from the sobbing mass in front of me and I do what I do best. I run.
I turn and run downstairs into the kitchen and over to the fridge. I open the fridge door and take out 3 or 4 beers, I don’t stop to count. I down them all. Then I turn to face the work top and place my hands on its cool surface palms down. I’m shaking uncontrollably, the alcohol is starting to enter my blood stream now but rather than warming me, rather than settling or distracting me it makes my blood run cold as I realise she’d been right. All those things she’s said about the drink and the drugs and my social incompetence and the over all patheticness of me in general. Not the stuff about Mikey, God knows what all that had been about. All the rest though, it at least had roots in the truth. And I’d hit her for it.
No I’d hit her for all that crap she’d said about Mikey and me…
I’m a monster.
I’m like her Dad.
I’m everything I’m supposed to hate. I’m everything she hates.
I race back upstairs fully aware that she probably wants to be no where near me but having to go and check on her anyway. I turn into my room and see her huddled in a ball by the side of the bed. She’s not crying anymore but I had a feeling it was more that she was past tears rather than not being so upset any more. “No.” I whimper. “Oh no.” I cross over to where she is and wrap my arms around her, she flinches but I don’t let go, I can’t let go.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so fucking sorry.” I sob pathetically. She disengages herself from my grip and shifts away from me. She’s shaking and I see blood on her face from where I’d hit her, I think I busted her lip but I can’t tell. Tears are blurring my vision and she has covered her head with her arms anyhow. “Amelia…”
“Just, just k-kill me, just f-fucking kill-ll me.” she stammers. Pure fear is etched in every syllable and it breaks my heart, my soul, my spirit to hear her say those words, like that, to me. How did I become this? I’m supposed to protect her… “Amelia please. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. It’s just those words, those things you said…”
“You’re all the, all the fucking same.” She sobs. Her eyes are struggling not to roll back into her head now and it’s obvious she’s about to pass out.
“I love you.” I say, hoping it will spark something inside her. Make her realise that I didn’t mean what I just did. She just slumps down onto the floor, not moving except to breathe in ragged gasps of air.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.” I cry, tucking my head up against my knees and sobbing for what seems like forever.
I don’t know how long I stayed like that but when I look up you’re gone. I know I’ll never see you again. Just like I know I’ll never ever forgive myself for what I did to you. Just please , believe me when I say I’m sorry… and that I love you.