Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
But other that that, I don’t think it means anything. My mother is still the woman who fell for the wrong man and then got caught up in a twisted relationship and paid the ultimate price. And even if this man in front of me isn’t my real father, my biological father is just as bad, if not worse, than him.
Most importantly, I still stand corrected about love. Love is not what my parents had, and I wish it hadn’t taken me this long to figure that out. Maybe I would’ve lived my life more fully if I’d known.
“I know you killed her,” I find myself saying.
And he stops talking, going on alert.
“I saw you,” I tell him, staring at him through the space, the man whom I thought was my father but isn’t really. “That night. I was there. I was hiding behind a couch like a coward. But I saw it happen. I saw you do it. You pushed her down the stairs. You killed my mother.”
At this, he jerks up from his seat and throws his bottle at me. It crashes against the wall just a few inches away and shatters into loud and countless pieces. I wanted to bait him. I wanted to be brave, like I wasn’t while I was growing up, and go head-to-head with the man who terrorized my entire childhood.
So when he comes for me, I’m ready.
I’m ready to scratch his face off. I’m ready to pull his hair. To smack him. To kick him. To scream and howl and take all my wrath out on him. All the times I hid and ran and cowered and took his beatings, I’m ready to make him pay for that. I’m ready for my revenge. And how ironic that I feel this way when only hours ago, I told the man I love to give up his quest.
Maybe we’re not that different after all, he and I.
And maybe I shouldn’t be thinking of him right now because this time around, it’s really over. He told me in no uncertain terms that he wants me gone. So I should focus on other things, like that my father has a lot more strength than me. He can overpower my fists and my scratching nails. He can throw me to the floor and kick me in the stomach. That even if I manage to crawl away and find a shard of glass to stab his leg with, my father will still come after me.
But it’s Arsen’s thoughts that keep me going. It’s his thoughts that keep me fighting. It was he who said I was brave. I’m beautiful and I’m a survivor. So I keep trying to survive.
Even when my father’s body is pinning me down on the floor and his hands manage to find their way around my neck. He chokes me with them, squeezes my throat, blocks my airway, suffocating me. No matter how hard I struggle, I can’t get his hands to budge. I can’t shut his face out, his cruel eyes and clenched teeth, as he tries to kill me.
And as always, it’s his name I whisper as I lay dying at the hands of my father: “Arsen.”
I really hope he doesn’t take this the wrong way. That he couldn’t protect me from my father. I know it’s over between us, but I know him. He’s going to think it’s his fault. But it isn’t. I baited my father myself. I knew what I was doing, and so this is not his crime. He doesn’t need to suffer for it till the end of time.
Just as my vision is blanking and all thought is leaving my body, I see him.
I see a bull mask.
I see it descending upon me, and then, suddenly, I can breathe. I don’t feel my father’s hands around my throat. I don’t feel his heavy, smelly body crushing my lungs. I don’t know if it’s a dream or if it’s really happening. But I see my father being thrown across the room, grunting and groaning as he falls to the floor.
Then, the man in that mask is straddling my father’s body and punching him over and over. He keeps smashing his face into the floor, and no matter what my father does, he can’t get him off. No matter what my father does, he can’t fight back, and soon he goes limp, just like that man in the cabin a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t know how I do it, but somehow, I prop myself up on my trembling elbow and call out as loudly as I can, “Arsen, no. Please. Don’t k-kill him. He’s not…” I cough and struggle to get the words out, to stay propped up even. “He’s not w-worth it. Not for me.”
And then I go back down. The last thing I remember seeing is the man in the mask—Arsen, the love of my life, my husband—getting off my father’s limp body and heading toward me.