Page 31 of Ruin

“Why can’t you learn?” I want to shout at him because no matter what, you will hurt me anyway. If I play his sick game, he will still hit me. If I don’t play, he hits me, slightly harder. So I might as well show him that I hate him touching me and I hate him talking to me.

I’m never going to cower down to him. I’ll fight every single time. I’ll take the fucking punches, the slaps to the face, the kicks to the stomach, but I will never lie there accepting what he is doing to me. Never. Not for him.

Three years ago, I made that promise to myself, and I still keep it. I’m never going to let him think he has won. He won’t win. One day, I’ll fight him and win. I just have to be strong until that day comes. Until then, I’ll take the beatings from him. There is nothing else I can do, so why bother.

School has been shit all morning. I got another stupid flower in my locker. I want to ask Declan if it’s him, because if it is, I don’t understand why he’s sending them to me. To mess with my head? But how? It’s such a delicate flower.It doesn’t seem like something he would send.

I’ve been watching people for a long time, and can read them well. However, Declan is so hard to read. He hides himself from the world, so you can’t tell what he’s thinking, or what he’s going to do next.

On Saturday, I never thought he would kick me out of his house. In the space of five minutes, everything changed in him. It was after he was on a call. His voice was a lot more sharp, hard, and angry.

But I didn’t fight him. I left. I was happy he said I could leave. Standing there naked in his room was horrible. I felt like I was in a fucking fish in a fishbowl. I’ve never felt so exposed, or so low in my life. Robert does things, but he never looks at my body like Declan did, and I didn’t know how to feel about it.

It was strange. With Declan, the knife should have scared me, but it didn’t. Why would something I use on myself every day scare me? Declan wasn’t going to kill me, that much I knew. Did I think he was going to fuck me with it? Fuck no. But that one object made me feel so much more than I thought it would have. It made me feel like, in some fucked up way, Declan understand the knife isn’t a fear for me.

It’s something I crave, to pierce my skin, and when he cuts me, I want to moan in pleasure because it gives me more pleasure than anything else ever has. Him fucking me with it is the best thing to happen to me, and I cried because he didn’t let me come, he didn’t let me finish. But it also makes me feel like a fucking freak because of how much I liked it.

In my head, I was hoping he would cut me more, wanting him to dig the tip of the knife into me.

What is wrong with me?

I see him laughing at the lunch table with his friends, and the only thing I can think about is whether he has a knife on him now. Would he use it on me again?

Fucking freak, that’s what I am, a fucking freak.

I hear a whistle and I look around to see who it is, but stupidly, I look at Declan first, because he seems to whistle at me when he wants my attention. Asshole. He nods, telling me to come over. I shake my head, but I do it anyway because I’m not in the mood for him to make me feel like shit today. Grabbing my bag, I walk over to him and his stupid friends.

I took another peek at the list last night, and if I go to his hockey practice, it knocks one hundred dollars off my debt. Something I might do. All I have to do is sit there and watch him skate up and down the rink. But then again it doesn’t say I have to watch, I can draw instead.

Standing next to him, he leans back in his chair and looks up at me with a smile. I wish I could slap it off his face.

“Did you finish what I asked you to draw?” he asks, and the color drains from my face. Shit. I thought he was fucking with me. I can’t show him what I’ve drawn. He won’t like it.

He holds out his hand for my sketchpad. I take it out of my bag, open it to the page I was drawing on, and place it in his hand.

He looks at the picture and bursts out laughing, a full on laugh which makes everyone in the cafeteria turn and look at us.

Great. Now every set of fucking eyes are on me now. Just what I don’t need.

I drew a dick and balls, his name inside the shaft. Because that’s what I think he is, a fucking dick.

Closing the pad, he shoves it into his bag. I kneel to take it out, but he grabs my wrist.

“I don’t think so.”

Oh fuck. His words send a chill through me. He has something planned. I remember his warning.If I don’t like it, I’ll find something to do, to you.

“Time for your punishment, I think,” he whispers in my ear.

I stand up, and he licks his lips, tilting his head slightly. I can see him thinking, deciding what to make me do.

“Dance. Get on the table and dance.”

He scrolls through his phone like he’s already bored while I stare at him, wondering if he’s serious.

He slams his hand on the table to get my attention, it makes me flinch.

I hear a few of his friends snickering about how stupid I’m going to look. I bite on my lower lip as Stephanie chimes in about how ugly I am, how no one wants to watch me dance.

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