Page 19 of Creed

This is actually my hundredth letter to you, can you believe that? All this time I never got your phone number and I lost my chance when you told Monica that you weren’t my real family.

That fucking hurt, by the way.

Honestly, I don’t know why I even bother anymore. You’ve stopped answering and I just don’t see the point in writing anymore when it feels like no one hears me. Asher doesn’t respond to my letters or texts either, and if it weren’t for watching him play baseball on TV, I’d think he was dead. Just like the rest of my family.

My foster mom left without informing the social worker, and my foster dad is a real piece of work. He’s the kind of wealthy pig who thinks he can put his hands on me without any repercussions. I’m scared, Creed.

I tried telling the police one day after work, but they didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe the bruises written all over my skin. They just called Guy to come pick me up, and that later turned into a punishment. He’s got so many people in his pocket, the man would get away with murder and no one would bat an eye.

I’m trying to make it to my eighteenth birthday in a few weeks so I can get the fuck out of here but I’m losing hope. The punishments keep getting worse. He tries to make me scream, but you know the impossibility of that.

I’m stuck in this shitty bougie town with these shitty bougie people and I’m worried that I’m going to be a prisoner here for the rest of my life. I’m not the begging kind, but I’m begging youto help me, Creed. I have to get out. I have to escape.

I’m not asking for money, but I just need help. I don’t know how to ask for it.

I just have to get out. I want to disappear to a place where no one in this God forsaken town will ever find me again.

Get me out of here, Creed. Please.

Xoxo, Collins.

I slide the polaroid face down into the folded letter and slip it carefully into the envelope, praying to God that he answers my plea. Just this once I’m asking for him to help me. Over the years, I’ve continued to send letters to both Asher and Creed, and somehow at the same time, they’ve both stopped responding. I guess I don’t blame them considering each of the letters sounded more and more jaded and desperate as time went on.

I can’t help it. My life wasn’t super great before my mom died, but from the moment I found her body and I was put into foster care, it just got worse.

I was passed from family to family every three to six months, each one worse than the last. By the time I had turned sixteen, I had a higher bruise and broken bone count than any professional fighter out there. They weren’t all flat out physically abusive, but I did get shoved around, yanked about, and even bullied in school. For what reasons? I don’t fucking know.

My current foster family takes the goddamned cake, though. Guy rivals even my own father who is currently sitting in prison for the next thirty-seven years for the premeditated murder of my mom. Forced overdose and strangulation when the drugs took too long.

No idea where the fuck my foster mom went but she’s been gone for about a week now. She always had a distaste for me, which makes no sense as to why she’d agreed to even take me in the first place. Guy probably strong-armed her into it, knowing him. The fucking psycho.

I finish placing the stamp on the upper corner of the envelope and write Creed’s address when a loud bang on my door reverberates throughout the space of my room. The sound makes my entire body jolt, and a splice of fear runs down my spine when the door handle jiggles.

I’ve locked my door. Guy hates it when I lock my door, because then he wouldn’t have easy access to hurt me. He doesn’t know about my letters and I certainly don’t want him to know about this particular one, so I quickly hop off my bed and tuck it beneath my mattress and bedframe right as Guy’s voice booms from the other side of the door.

“Unlock your fucking door, Collins.” His voice is violence personified. I can already tell from the slur of his words that he’s intoxicated this afternoon. And his intoxication usually translates to him putting his hands on me to hurt me one way or another.

I rush to the door and I speak through the thick wood as I move to unlock it. “I-I’m sorry, Guy, I had spilled something on my shirt and just wanted to change my clothes?—”

I’m cut off as the door is shoved open so hard it knocks me back a few steps and the door hits the wall, further expanding the hole put in the drywall by the doorknob. I barely have time to catch my footing before he’s crossed the threshold of my bedroom and has me backed against the far wall of the room with a bruising grip on my shoulders.

That’s the thing I’ve learned about Guy. He’s a master of leaving his mark in places that are easily hidden. Or places where one might develop a bruise by bumping into something out of pure clumsiness.

The expensive whiskey on his breath penetrates my senses as he bends his face so close to mine that I have to hold my breath and suppress the gag I feel working up my throat as his spittle hits my face when he speaks.

“How many fucking times have I told you to not lock that fucking door, huh?” his grip tightens, and I swallow the whimper on my lips from the pain.

“I only wanted a moment of privacy to?—”

“You don’t get fucking privacy in my house.” He grits through his teeth. He yanks my body off the wall and one of his hands shoots up to grip the hair so harshly at the back of my head I fear he might pull it out by the roots. Tears prick my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Guy has never given a good reason as to why he treats me this way. I think he has a fucked up pain kink because every time he gets creative and finds a new way to hurt me, he leaves my room with a hard-on.

“You’re nothing but an ungrateful little cunt. After taking your pathetic, skinny ass in and feeding you, clothing you, you have the fucking nerve to demand privacy, as if you’ve fucking earned it under my goddamned roof.” He scoffs.

He makes no sense because I’ve fed myself from the day I arrived. Never once has he given me food or clothing. At first he was just absent, constantly working and putting on his mask of perfection as he wooed his wife and the people of this rich man’s town. But after his wife left, he started coming home earlier and drinking before the front door could click shut. That’s when the violence started.

His drunken state has him spewing the biggest bouts of word vomit, constantly saying things that make no sense. But I don’t dare argue with him. That only results in more hidden bruises. I force myself to stay silent as he just stares at me like a complete lunatic, saying nothing.

It’s moments like this where reality sets in for me. I’m unwanted. My social worker, Miss Duinski, has no idea that I heard her on the phone days after my mom died. The way defeat shone in her eyes as Asher refused to answer his phone all sixteen times she tried to call him about taking custody of me. Then there was the phone call with him…Creed. He’d actually answered, and I listened on the other side of her office door as she spoke to him.

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