Chevy Stevens - Still Missing

The finger traveled down to right above my pubic bone and paused.

My skin crawled.

“Describe your fear to me.” His voice lingered over the word “fear.”

“My knees—they feel weak. I feel sick in my stomach. I can’t breathe. My heart, it feels… it feels like it’s going to burst.”

With his hands pressed into my shoulders, he walked me backward until the edge of the mattress hit the back of my knees, then shoved me hard, so that I fell onto the bed. I watched as he ripped off his clothes.

I crawled across the bed, but he dragged me back by my ankle. Then he was on me, tearing my pan ties and bra off. It all happened so fast. He was hard, then he was inside me. I screamed. He smiled. I gritted my teeth, squeezed my eyes shut, counted his thrusts—struggling when he faltered—and prayed.

LetitbeoverLetitbeoverLetitbeover

When he finally came, I wanted to pour bleach on my crotch and scrub with boiling water until I bled, but I couldn’t even get up to wash. When I asked, he said, “That’s not necessary, just rest.”

In his postcoital afterglow, he lay there stroking my hair and said, “I’ll take some chicken breasts out of the freezer tomorrow.” He pulled me close against him and nuzzled my neck. “We can make chow mein together, okay?” He cuddled me until he fell asleep.

His wetness was still between my legs, but I didn’t cry. When I thought of Luke a sob almost broke free, but I bit the inside of my cheek, hard. I whispered, “I’m sorry,” into the dark.

I’ve watched shows about women who stay married for years to guys who keep beating the crap out of them—worse, they don’t just stay, they try desperately to make the guy happy, which of course never works—and I’d want to be sympathetic, want to understand, but I just never got it, Doc. Seemed pretty simple to me. Pack your shit and tell the jerk goodbye, preferably with a boot to his ass. Oh, yeah, I thought I was one tough cookie. Well, all it took was five days of being left alone for this cookie to crumble. Five stinking days, and I was ready to do whatever he wanted. And now I get to be paraded around as a heroine. Heroes dive into burning buildings and save children. Heroes die for the cause. I’m not a hero, I’m a coward.

I have to do another interview tonight, look at some perky blonde with her Chiclet smile who’s going to ask, “How did you feel up there, were you scared?” No shit, Sherlock. They’re no better than him—just sadists with a bigger paycheck.

Interesting that hardly anyone asks how I feel now, not that I’d tell them. I just wonder why nobody cares much about the after—just about the story. Guess they figure it stops there.

I wish.

Hard to believe it’s already the third week of January, isn’t it, Doc? I’m just glad all the Christmas and New Year’s hoopla is finally out of the way, which reminds me, did I ever tell you about Christmas with The Freak? You know, I don’t think I ever did get around to sharing his not-so-good word on all things red and green. Well, one day he sat me down and told me it was December but we wouldn’t be celebrating Christmas, because it was just one more way society tries to control people.

It didn’t stop there. I got to listen to an endless rant about the evils of Christmas and how society has taken a myth and blown it up into a money grab. The last thing in the world I’d wanted to do was celebrate anything with The Freak, but by the time he was done talking about every shitty aspect of the holiday I would’ve helped the Grinch steal Christmas myself. Actually, that’s what the jerk did. He stole Christmas from me. Along with a lot of other stuff, of course. You know, like pride, self-esteem, joy, security, the ability to sleep in a bed, but hey, who’s complaining?

Well, at least I tried with the tree…. Maybe next year will be different. Like you told me, I need to allow for the possibility I won’t always feel the way I do now, and it’s important to take note of small signs of progress, no matter how insignificant they may seem. Today when I stepped out onto my front porch I caught the scent of snow in the air and for a couple of seconds I felt excited. We haven’t had any snow yet this year, and as soon as there was even an inch out there Emma and I used to tear around in it. She’s so damn funny to watch. She runs, slides, pounces, digs, and eats it. Always wished I knew what she was thinking. Probably, Bunnies, bunnies, got to get the bunnies. Sometimes I’d toss a handful of treats into the snow so she’d actually find something.

Afterward I’d have a hot bath, make a cup of tea, snuggle up by the fire with a book, and watch Emma’s feet twitch as she reenacted the fun in her dreams. All those memories came back, and I felt good. Like I had something to look forward to.

The good feeling left as soon as I remembered last Christmas, though—trust me, spending an entire winter inside a place with shuttered windows takes “cabin fever” to a whole new level. And then, by the middle of January last year, I was four months pregnant.

On the mountain, I lived for the moments when I got to read—The Freak had good taste—and I didn’t even mind reading out loud to him. While those pages were turning, I was somewhere else. And so was he. Sometimes he kept his eyes closed, or he’d lean toward me with his chin in his hand and his eyes glowing, and other times, during intense scenes, he paced around the room. If he liked something, he’d place his hand over his heart and say, “Read it again.”

He always asked me what I thought about what we’d read, but at first I was hesitant to express any ideas and tried to paraphrase his opinions. Until the time he slapped the book out of my hand and said, “Come on, Annie, use that pretty head of yours and tell me what you think.”

We were reading The Prince of Tides —he liked to mix up the classics with contemporary novels, and they usually featured screwed-up families—and it was the scene where the mother cooks up dog food for the dad.

“I was glad she screwed him over like that,” I said. “He deserved it. He was an asshole.”

The second the words were out of my mouth, I panicked. Was he going to think I was talking about him? And “asshole” wasn’t exactly ladylike. But he just nodded his head thoughtfully and said, “Yes, he didn’t appreciate his family at all, did he?”

When we read Of Mice and Men , he asked if I felt sorry for “poor dumb Lennie,” and when I told him I did, he said, “Well, isn’t that interesting. Is it because the girl was a slut? I think you were more bothered about the poor puppy he killed. Would Lennie be so deserving of your sympathy if she were a nice girl?”

“It would be the same either way. He was messed up—he didn’t mean to.”

He smiled and said, “So it’s okay to kill someone as long as you don’t mean to? I’ll have to remember that.”

“That’s not what I—”

He broke into laughter and held up a hand, while my cheeks burned.

The Freak was careful with the books—I was never allowed to place them facedown when they were open or dog-ear a page. One day when I was watching him carefully stack some books back on the shelf, I said, “You must have read a lot as a kid.” His back stiffened and he slowly caressed the binding of the book he was holding.

“When I was allowed.” Allowed? A strange way to put it, but before I could decide whether I should ask about it, he said, “Did you?”

“All the time—one of the bonuses of having a dad who worked at the library.”

“You were lucky.” He gave the books a final pat and left the cabin.