Page 247 of Obsession

Harris let out a quiet sob, then looked at me briefly and rolled up his right sleeve. I didn’t understand what he was doing until he showed me the inside of his forearm. I had seen this tattoo before, but it hadn’t caught my attention because there were many lines of words that I could barely make out. It was more scribble than anything else, seemingly written by a shaky hand. But now that I focused more on those lines and narrowed my eyes so I could read Harris’ skin….

There were four of them, they cornered me in an alley. I went out with my friend after school and lost track of time, so I took the shortcut by the wood factory to get home quicker because it was getting really dark outside. I don’t know how long they’d been chasing me, but they attacked me there and covered my eyes and mouth with something. I didn’t see any of them. They picked me up and threw me in the trunk of a car.

I couldn’t read the rest and looked at Harris, puzzled.

“That’s her statement?” I asked, even though I knew it was, feeling my heart pounding because of the shock.

Harris nodded, looking at the words with an indescribable sadness.

“I kept a copy of it after Johnatan made me read it. My mom was pretty shaken up when she wrote it, and she could barely formulate coherent sentences; but he probably made her do it, anyway. I just took out the most important parts and had them tattooed on me.”

“Why?” I asked, my breath catching in my throat as it came out.

He shrugged his shoulder before answering.

“So I don’t forget who I am and how I came to be. So I don’t forget my purpose.”

I shuddered again as his voice, sounding like a criminal threat, washed over me. I couldn’t help myself and lowered my eyes again, continuing to read the words that stretched across many lines, starting at the top of his forearm and ending just above his palm. Harris didn’t stop me as he shifted his arm to give me a better view. His fist was clenched, his whole arm tense, making the already misshapen words even harder to read. His veins were unusually pronounced, a result of the intense training he regularly subjected his body to.

He pulled out his cell phone and turned on the flashlight so I could see better.

They got me out of the car and took me to a room. I heard loud music but couldn’t tell whether I was at a house party or a club. When they took off my blindfold, I found myself in a dark room where I could only make out the vague outlines of three men. I was lying on a couch, and after a few minutes another man came in. He was the one who raped me. The others just watched, but only one touched me. He was drunk and I couldn’t see his face. I could only see that he was a massivemanolder man. He didn’t say anything, he just laughed while he….

He smelled like alcohol. His breath over my face made me want to vomit. I felt dizzy and the pain his brutality caused almost knocked me out. At one point he wanted me to drink too, he held the bottle to my mouth, but I refused and he poured it over my face and chest.

There was another girl in the room. I didn’t see her, but she was screaming and fighting and begging him to stop.

I don’t know how long it lasted, how many minutes or hours he crushed me under him, but he didn’t stop at one. At some point I lost consciousness. I heard them talking after he finished, but I couldn’t understand their words. My whole body ached, and I thought I was going to die. Ithoughtwanted them to kill me… I can’t remember anything after that. I woke up in the morning and was lying in the same alley they had kidnapped me from the night before.

When I finished reading, I was shaking as though I had just escaped the claws myself.

Harris turned off the flashlight, darkness suddenly swallowing us.

I couldn’t believe that he had that tattooed on his skin so that he could always read it. I had no doubt that he knew it by heart. When he pulled down his sleeve, I raised my eyes to his face, and found it impossible to say anything right. Some words were cramped, scribbled, crossed out or rewritten. I was sure that the original statement looked exactly the same, and I didn’t want to imagine the strength it had taken him to get that tattooed, or the pain he felt. The writing was small, so it wouldn’t attract attention. No one would be curious to read it, and they couldn’t unless Harris showed them his arm up close. It was a tattoo he could always see, but other people couldn’t; it didn’t stand out, because there were others, much more intricate tattoos around it.

“It was more than this. This is just the part I took out. There were more details about him… about the others. They weren’t drunken teenagers out for a night of fucked-up fun. They were mature men, at leasthewas. She said he was wearing a suit, and he didn’t take it off. He smelled like expensive perfume mixed with alcohol.”

I swallowed the big lump in my throat. It reminded me of Monday night when I’d seen Harris drinking anything but alcohol. It was probably the reason why he didn’t drink; because his mother had been sexually assaulted by a drunk and forced to drink.

“Is he… in prison right now?”

“No. They haven’t caught him yet. They haven’t found out who did it,” Harris replied dryly, and I pressed my lips together.

“I always thought there was more to this story. The hatred with which he took advantage of her, the night-long torture… it was no ordinary rape. She didn’t describe him as a psychopathic serial rapist,” he gritted his teeth, “and her father, being a prosecutor, had a lot of enemies. I always thought he hated me so much because I am the son of one of his enemies, who took revenge on his daughter and ruined her life, but he never admitted it. He only ever spat in my face that he hated me because I was the one who ruined his daughter’s life. When I was ten, my mother decided to move. We couldn’t escape her parents’ hatred, especially his. She, my so-called grandmother, mostly just ignored me. So we came to Seattle. Things started to improve, and we were almost happy, but that happiness didn’t last long because when I was twelve she got sick, and two years later I lost her forever. Since then, my life has changed completely. I have had a lot of behavioral changes, and believe me when I say I am pretty calm now compared to how I was then, especially after I got into Carter’s group.”

I held back on asking who Carter was, because it wasn’t the right time.

A small smile crept across his face as memories flooded his mind that were apparently not as painful as the others.

“I was only fourteen, but I was very tall. My mother always said I took after her, and she was right. That was one of the few good things in a long list of bitternesses. Every time I lookedinto her green eyes, I saw myself, even though her eyes were much more beautiful in color, they were the same shape. Sheu.. um, she always had her long, slightly wavy hair, down over her shoulders, and she wore a sundress even when it was cold outside.”

I watched him smile, mesmerized by it. Was that why he wore the contact lenses? So he wouldn’t be constantly reminded that his mother was… gone?

“She loved flowers and animals, and she always brought home abandoned kittens or dogs. Or birds, lots of birds…” he chuckled, and I smiled “She liked them and also envied them because they could fly. Sometimes, when I was sad, she would make me close my eyes and imagine that I was flying, that I was free, that nobody could harm me and that nothing else mattered. She would say: “Don’t forget that you are a Harris Hawk; you are above evil, and you won’t let it shoot you down.”

He smiled wider, nostalgia sparkling in his tone as he repeated his mother’s words, and I hugged his arm.

“She spread happiness everywhere she went, and everyone around her thought her the most accomplished of women. She never revealed the true tragedy in her heart. She had started teaching art at our school, and she loved it.”

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