Warning: This is a bit NSFW
There's no way. Not me, they must have been talking about someone else, some other person with my name and my face and my--- The point is, the important part of the story is that I was the one trying to stop it. I was the one trying to keep her safe. Her father, you know, her father was a monster. Every other day she would show up with a split lip and black and blue fingers embossed across her pretty little wrists. He was a brute, he'd scared his wife away ages ago and she'd been too terrified to take her baby girl with her, don't you know? Olivia thought she had been abandoned, and for years he'd let her, spun stories of what a whore 'that woman' had been, how she'd never cared for anyone but herself. He painted her as a painted woman, more in love with crack than she ever had been her family. But I met her once, Ursula, beautiful woman, beautiful like Olivia.
Anyway she would cry, cry because as much as she hated him he had convinced her she needed him. Humans can be trained too, like animals, caged and deprived and forced to believe that nobody will ever love them if they don't do as they're told and stay forever imprisoned where it's safe. Home. The door was always locked. Her light would go off first, then his, and if you waited long enough you could see hers flicker back to life again because she couldn't sleep. I wanted to be there with her, but it was him that kept us apart. It was always him. How can it be my name in the paper and not his? The picture is all wrong. They should have used the one, the one on the table in the living room of him on a golfing trip. He would rather spend the weekend away with his buddies than taking care of his daughter. She had finals that week and I remember her in the library pouring over her books like her life depended on it. College was her dream, to get away, away from him, to start a new life, she talked about it all the time. I know, I heard it.
Her favorite season was fall you know, she loved the sound of the leaves under footfall, I could see it in her face when she walked home. Her cheeks get rosy in the colder weather, it was so beautiful, so much more beautiful than the smear of blackberry and ash he left in its wake some evenings after a rough day of work. He fancied himself important, I think, but he was wrong. She was the important one. A goddess on earth, the ground itself surely trembled at her touch. How could it not? Her fingers were so soft, and I cherished even the brush of them as she passed a paper back to me in history class.
One day she didn't come to class, and I heard in the hushed tones of teenaged gossip that she was in the hospital. I knew right away what I needed to do. I waited until after school. He wouldn't be back from work until five anyway, and I was sure he wasn't there with her. He'd never taken good enough care of her. At five thirty five I finally heard the tires of his pickup truck roll through the gravel. I had been waiting. I had a key, after all, why wouldn't I? I remembered the day I picked it up from her locker.
So I waited, I've always been patient, you see? So when he finally came into the kitchen and I was there with the steak knife you could only imagine his surprise. I don't remember what he said to me, and it doesn't matter anyway because he's a damn liar. I don't exactly remember, either, how I found myself plunging the knife into his gut over and over and over and over and—you know, he was a big man, and so how could I really be sure she was safe until his blood had soaked into the knees of my jeans?
That was two days ago, and the picture they used for the newspaper, well it must have been from the security camera on the front porch. I wondered if she'd seen it, wondered how happy she was to know she was finally free. They were looking for me, unfortunately, because they didn't know the truth, and I hadn't had time to shower or change, but I did sneak home long enough to grab my hoodie before I left for the hospital.
I walked into her room with my hood up, a crust of ruddy brown soaked through my clothes and flaking over my skin, but I knew she would be so happy to see me that she wouldn't care. Smiling, I approached her, the angel, as she was staring out the window at nothing in particular, probably contemplating our new life together. “Aren't you happy now? He can't hurt you anymore.”
She screamed. Revulsion and fear twisted her face and skewed her beauty as she scrambled away from my so quickly that the IV tore from her arm and her heart monitor began that long, drawling beep. And it was so perfectly in time with my own pulse when she shouted, through tears that streaked her cheeks and bathed her cupid's bow lips, “Who are you!? Why? Why did you do this? WHO ARE YOU?! HELP!”
I thought...
No, I knew. No, no no no, no, don't take me from her. It was him, he hurt her, not me. It's not me. But she looks at me in a way she never did him...
Does it hurt?
I'm sorry, my love.