Page 2 of Black Hearts
“Shut up,” he bit out the words, turning to look at me for the first time during the drive. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel; he didn’t appear to be happy at hearing my voice, nor did he look happy that I was once again with him.
Shouldn’t he be thrilled that I was still alive, that the Scotts didn’t kill me? Shouldn’t he be overjoyed to see me again?
He wasn’t. Daddy looked like he wanted to kill something. Maybe me. But Markus would never let me go knowing Daddy would hurt me, would he? I guess it didn’t matter, because Markus wasn’t the one who let me go. It had been his father, the elder Scott.
I knew if I tried to speak again, he’d only get angrier, so I kept it to myself, not knowing how to go about this. I wanted to bring up his extracurriculars, the girls who had lost their lives to him, demand to know why he felt not only the need to kill, but also the need to… to have sex with them before doing it.
Or after.
That was all different kinds of messed up. That was about as screwed up as you could get, and nothing I thought could explain it or excuse it.
Daddy and I needed to have a talk, that much was clear. If he thought I would shut up and spend the rest of my days being the meek, accepting daughter I used to be, he couldn’t have been more wrong.
Every so often, he threw a look in the rearview mirror, as if he thought someone was following us. I didn’t see any cars taking the exact same roads we did, so I wasn’t sure why he acted so paranoid. Maybe he thought Markus would come and take me back, or maybe being away from him for so long had simply created a paranoia he couldn’t shake.
Honestly? I didn’t care. I didn’t care what he’d gone through while I was gone. I loved him. God, I did love him. He was my father, after all, but at the same time… no amount of love could excuse the terrible things he’d done. Love could only be a defense for so long. I refused to accept his sins simply because I loved him.
No, I’d hold him accountable. Not like I could do much, but I could at least do that.
During the drive, after my failed attempt at talking to him, I lost myself in my thoughts. I daydreamed, what I used to do when locked up in my room. How I’d crawl into my closet, close myself in there, and lose myself to the darkness. Make up scenarios in my head, little stories about the normal life I could’ve had.
This time, I daydreamed about Markus and the others, and what life we could have had together if Daddy wasn’t a part of the picture. How, eventually, they’d grow accustomed to sharing affection with me. Every so often jealousy might peek through, but they fought it, fought their dark natures, for me.
Because when you loved someone, you did everything in your power to make them happy. Hurting them was the one thing you never tried to do.
I thought of Markus, his scowl, those pitch-black eyes that could stare straight through me. I thought of his hands, how they liked to find my neck and squeeze, choke me just a little, enough to remind me that I was submitting to him.
I thought of them all, each of their quirks and their personalities, how I felt when I was near them. I lost myself in those daydreams, and when we came upon a neighborhood that was familiar to me, it took everything in me to bring myself out of those thoughts and back to reality—and the reality was, I was stuck with Daddy, thrown back into the life I used to have.
The moment Daddy pulled the car into a driveway, I knew we were back at home, and everything in me sank to new lows. He turned the car off, getting out, and I made no moves to do the same. He must’ve expected me to be petulant, for he walked around the car, threw open the door, and grabbed me by the arm, hauling me out. Daddy dragged me from the car to the back door of the house, unlocking it before taking me inside.
The house was just as I remembered it. It was like nothing at all had changed. The furniture, even the air; everything was the same. It was the same, and yet it felt so utterly foreign to me.
Daddy didn’t let me go once we were inside. No, he hauled me to the stairs so quickly I tripped on my own feet. Up we went, stopping only when we stood before my bedroom. He only let me go so he could throw me inside, and he threw me so hard I landed on my hands and knees on the carpet, barely able to catch myself. I couldn’t even toss a look over my shoulder to see his face before he slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside.
I got to my feet, moving to the light switch, trying to flick it on, but when my finger hit it, no light came on. Nothing at all. I went to the window, pulling open the curtains to find that my room wasn’t quite the same as I’d left it.
Thick, black bars hung on the window. Before, Daddy had simply put something on the window, some kind of child safety mechanism, that stopped it from opening more than a few inches—too small to slip out and escape from. But now I couldn’t open the window at all.
At least it shed some light into the room, though, which was more than I could currently say for the ceiling fan.
I meandered to my desk, trying the small lamp sitting on the side. It wasn’t working, either. What in the heck… I checked the plug, finding it was still plugged in. As I straightened myself out, I wondered if Daddy had done something to the electricity in my room.
Could he turn it off while keeping the rest of the house on? It looked untouched, minus the new black bars on the window, so it wasn’t anything in here. I thought I remembered seeing something on a TV show where there was some kind of electrical box in the basement, but I didn’t know.
Turned out, I didn’t know a lot of things.
In the end, I went over to my bed, crawling on top of it. I wore no shoes, so I stuck my legs beneath the blankets, laying down. The pillow was soft and comfy, but old, and since it had not seen use in however long, it smelled kind of musty. The sheets did, too.
And yet, it was home. This room had been my home for so long, it was hard to see myself wanting anything other than it. Thoughts and daydreams were not the same now; now I knew what it was like out there, what it was really like, and a simple daydream would never be enough for me.
I would never be happy here. If Daddy thought we could return to the way we were before, he was dead wrong, and I would do everything in my power to make him see that. And if he couldn’t? If he couldn’t, I would then have to figure out how to get out of here, get away from him, and get back to the Scotts.
I wouldn’t sit here and let Daddy control me anymore.
But, alas, there was nothing I could do in my bedroom until I got out. At the very least, I needed Daddy to calm down enough that we could have a conversation face to face. I wanted to bring up his killing, to ask him why. I wanted to demand answers about my mom. What was real, what was fake? Was that dream of me finding her in the basement more of a memory, or was it my mind playing tricks on me?
I deserved the truth. After everything I’d lived through, I believed I deserved the truth.
