Chapter 9 – Chap 9

Asking Pandora if he had been in the property was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

At first, I started describing him physically, but then the next thing I knew was crying in her arms as I told her how he slapped until I said his name and begged for forgiveness every little time I made a small mistake – or anything that he considered to be wrong.

“I saw you quivering in fear every time you dropped a glass or something. You apologizing frantically for that, even if there was no one there. So yeah, no need to tell me anything else if you don’t want to”, she awkwardly ran her fingers through my hair.

“So, has he been here? Have you killed him?” I asked, panicking for a million different reasons.

“Oh, hell no. He’s still here. I’m keeping him under the hen house, a cozy spot for some torture as you could see from my review. I’m breaking him nice and slowly.”

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, Pandora, I can be arrested for that. You know the police won’t just believe that a dead person did it.”

“It’s fine, roomie. He’s the one who tried breaking into your house to kill you. And do worse things too.”

I was completely freaking out, and nothing she could say would ever make it better.

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His sister had told me that she called the cops on me, so they could search my farm.

“You don’t mind, right?” her voice dripped the same venom that his did every time he hurt me. “If he’s not there, you’re just being a good, cooperative citizen.”

I hate this bitch with all my might, but that isn’t the point.

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“Will you kill him?”

“Of course I’ll kill him! And then probably revive him to suffer more and kill him again”, she replied, coldly. “I might be cool, but you keep forgetting that I love to make humans feel pain, especially when they are such horrible assholes.”

I urged Pandora to think this through. “What if he dies and becomes tied to the house forever? It will be so much worse than having him live. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that he showed up?”

“I really didn’t think I’d have to worry you about him being here. I didn’t want you to relive all the abuse. You have a beautiful and strong demon to take care of such things to you after all.”

She was too laid back about it.

“But now you made it all even worse!” I yelled, exasperated. “You might be a demon and have your damn rules but you can’t make the rest of the world bow to it. I’m so fucked up, yhere’s no way I can claim self-defense if he didn’t even come near me.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the little shitty laws you humans created. I give a fuck about protecting you”, she replied.

And I wanted to say “okay, let’s think together. Let’s figure a way to deal with this. There must be a way out”. But I was too far gone in my panic and despair.

Just like when I grew apart from all of my friends. They begged me to leave and I got angry at them, I downplayed the abuse because those things don’t happen to women like me, right? Educated, middle-class, strong-willed women like me? It only happens to vulnerable girls who didn’t know better, right?

Just like when I cut contact with my parents to a minimum because it hurt to lie that everything was fine. It hurt to be asked how was my day and being unable to think of a single nice thing to say.

Just like when I cut my hair and threw away all my make-up so he wouldn’t have reasons to feel jealous of me.

Just like when I yelled at my neighbor because she called the police on him; I said that it was none of her business and all couples are like that.

Just like when I started hurting myself to punish me for not leaving and not taking my first opportunity to be helped.

I was too far gone into my trauma, into my pain, into the ugliest part of me that he so thoroughly fed.

“Is that so?” I didn’t sound like me. I was so bitter, so angry, so utterly unable to act like myself. “Because ever since I moved in you have been a total bitch and treated me poorly, so fuck you. I never asked to get a cursed poltergeist trying to boss me in my every move. This is serious and I don’t want to rot in prison, so this time I’m not sitting around and letting you do as you please.”

“Fuck you and all of you humans. You piece of shits are all the same anyway. You think you’re some shit but you’ll live for 50 more years, 60 years tops, and when you turn to fucking dust and manure, I’ll still be here, and I’ll have things my way.”

“Then I hope you disappear”, I retorted. I wanted to stop myself. I was being so childish, on top of everything. But I couldn’t. Not in that moment; right then I was the frail, the loser, the pitiful person that he had convinced me that I was.

“Great, because that would be a fucking ray of sunshine in my miserable eternal life”, she made two heavy thuds as she took off her shoes, one of the many pairs I gave her, and dematerialized. “So have it your way, stupid bitch. I’m turning off my telepathy and going dormant because I’m too fucking mad and I don’t want to recklessly hurt you.”

***

I know what you’re going to say. This is too out of character for you, Melinda. Considering all that’s happened so far, there’s no way that that you are this dumb. You’re better than that.

You’re lucky to not know first-hand that, when it comes to our abusers, sometimes we’ll display incoherent and self-destructive behaviors, and coming back from it is not linear. You’re broke in a way that, no matter how good of a job you do to mend yourself, you’re forever at risk of snapping again. The risk can be small, but it’s there, and given enough pressure, it’s unavoidable.

You’re lucky not to know that a piece of your abuser grows on you like a parasite and it becomes pretty much a ghost limb, acting up and hurting yourself every now and then.

My irrational behavior came from a place of fear, from manipulation and from hating myself for having been manipulated. When you feel like that, it’s hard to do anything but act on the belief – so carefully seeded into your heart – that your abuser will always be in control and you’re just a sad Pavlov dog.

I am not. I am strong. I am a survivor.

But it didn’t keep me from freaking out and deciding to go to hen house before the police arrived.

It didn’t keep from having mixed feelings when I saw him, his throat ripped off and his vocal cords all destroyed so he could never again scream at me, his face filthy with chicken crap and dried blood.

Does he really deserve it? Isn’t it my fault that I accepted to be hurt? Isn’t it my fault that I’m too clumsy and incompetent?

I am strong. I am a survivor.

But I’m also the woman who made the worst possible choice at that moment:

To set him free.