| 18+ | Damian looked so different with his shirt off and a crop in his hand. He felt more real: no longer wearing the mask of the good doctor, he was the Exorcist, the master over my wildest fears, the stones on the shore over which my ocean of ma...
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Richard Morrison raped me the autumn I turned 18. No matter what blame was cried upon me by my mother, my father, my pastor, by Richard himself - I knew the truth of it, even when shame forced me to swallow it down and submit. Even when I discovered my pregnancy. Even when I was engaged to him, to "make it right." Even when I stood there in the chapel, staring at my pale face in the dusty, cracked mirror, watching my eyes run dry of tears and cold hatred take their place.
I would not give in.
I would not go quietly.
I would not lie down and allow my fate to be decided, forced by the hands of others.
It was early winter in Lily Dale. Christmas and its joyous festivities had passed, although they had held no joy for me. I had been confined indoors the past few weeks, hidden away as my belly began to subtly swell. The first snowfall had blanketed the town in white; like a virgin bride, sparkling and clean for the daily footprints of townsfolk to ruin with their muddy boots.
My mother had cinched my corset as tight as she could, to hide the small growth of my belly. My face was powdered, my cheeks blushed, and a veil draped over my hair that my mother had painstakingly washed, oiled, brushed and braided with sprigs of baby's breath. She prayed over me, her spirits high. For all the shame I had brought on our family, I was finally setting it right. I would be married, I would become a good wife and mother. All the "nonsense" could be put aside.
This was good. This was right.
"Pray for a willing heart," my mother said. Her face in the mirror was so much like mine but worn, her mouth turning down at the corners, her long blonde hair streaked with gray. All I had ever wanted was to see her look on me with pride, to kiss my cheek and tell me I was safe.
"I don't want this, mama," I whispered. She lowered my veil.
"Then pray girl," she said. "Get on your knees, and pray."
I knelt in the evening sunlight that streamed through the small, round window in the angular wall of the church's attic room. I clasped my hands, but I did not pray. What I clasped instead was the meat cleaver I had slipped from the church's kitchen, when my mother and I had earlier helped my aunt and cousins prepare the wedding feast. The cleaver had laid beside the butchered lamb, and no one was the wiser to me having taken it and slipped it into my skirts.
My intention was to wait for the wedding night, when I would have Richard alone and could slip quietly away into the dark. I knew where I would go afterward, I had prepared. Village women I had spoken to in hushed whispers told me of a doctor who lived in the forests outside Lily Dale, in a massive and isolated place, who could help girls like me. Who could erase what Richard had forced upon me - if not the action itself, than at least its aftermath.
