Page 37 of Unwell
I clapped my hands over my ears to block it out, pursing my lips until they ached.Useless. The noises kept coming. The chamber was alive. It breathed in my ears and whispered down the back of my neck. My whimpers turned into wails. My gasps into shrieks.
The walls throbbed. I swore they moved behind me,stilling only when I turned to face them. Damp spread like cracks across the ceiling, splintering like veins on weathered skin. Dark and uneven, like Pops’ arms.
The air itself buzzed, the phantom cockroaches swarming at me with their incessant cries. My name.My sins. Words crawled out of the din and slid across the floor and clawed up my legs.
Bad girl…ugly girl…heinous child.
Mama’s voice rose loudest of all.Why, Ginny? How could you be such a terrible child? Why do you keep letting him put them in you? I hate you.
I tried to rock away the noises, wrapping myself in the smallest ball I could manage with my swollen tummy. My toes grew scuffed and bloody against the floor. Fingertip-sized bruises covered my upper arms from my own punishing grip. My nightdress clung to my sweat-soaked skin as I clawed at my skin to abate the itching beneath.
‘They’re going to drive me mad,’ I whispered against my knees.
The chamber latched onto my words like a greedy monster.
DRIVE ME MAD.
DRIVE ME MAD.
DRIVE ME MAD.
The words battered against my head until I was sure they were ricocheting from the walls of my skull.
I screamed. My voice in raw tatters. The chamber snatched it up and threw it back at me, wrapping me in the screeching mayhem.
Then the whispers beneath it changed.
Elijah.
I choked.
No. No. No.
But the sound swelled, attacking me from all sides.
Elijah, Elijah, Elijah, Elijah.
And then his voice cutting through the racket.You’re mine, Ginny-girl. Don’t you run. You know what happens when you run. They gave you to me. You’ll always be mine.
The memory surged up like oil, blackening my mind. The woods. So often he found me in the woods in the early years. Before Mama had started letting him in the house. In case the neighbours saw. Bark rough against my back, the stink of damp earth and his sweat. Later, when he’d become my Elijah, he’d force my wrists against the cold iron bed frame at home, his aftershave filling my nose. He wasn’t as rough, then. He’d touch me differently. Make me moan his name before filling me with his babies.Be still, sweet girl. It feels better this way, doesn’t it? Let me make you sigh before you grow me a baby.
And hehadmade me feel good.I grew to long for his visits. To wile away the days until he’d come back to me. Those short minutes in my bed, surrounded by his peppery smell and with him telling me how good I was. Long after Mama and Pops had decided I was a devil.
‘Stop!’ I screamed, clawing at my hair as Elijah’s words changed to the awful ones he’s thrown at me in the woods after my hair had been taken. My hair came away in tufts between my gripping fingers at thememory of his mocking. I slammed my head back against the wall, trying to silence him.
Cow. Heifer. Ugly. Worth nothing but breeding. That’s all you are. Might as well put a bucket under you.
I bit my lip until blood filled my mouth. Rocked harder. My spine crunched against the wall with each tip. The sound amplified until it sounded like bones broke all around me.
But the chamber gave no mercy. The voices layered on top of each other, echoing like an angry rabble around me.
Elijah’s. Mine. Mama’s.
I lost track of time. The sweat running down my face might have been tears.
I tried to whisper, to beg for it to stop, but even the smallest sound was seized, twisted, and screamed back at me in a monstrous chorus.
Ugly girl. Bad girl. Dirty girl. You’ll always be mine.
