The Proposal Series

Chapter 6: Recalling the Past

Sara felt the water turning cold. She gently stepped out of the bath, grabbed her towel from the rack beside the tub, and hugged it around her body. She picked up her phone and stared at the time, 8:15 pm. She hadn't eaten and had no desire to. She shuffled into her bedroom and grabbed her pajamas from behind her pillow. As she pulled on her boy shorts, and oversized jersey, she allowed herself to rest her head against her pillow. She wanted to fall asleep. She was tired. Yet, her mind wanted to wander, to grey skies, and grey eyes. But after a few minutes, her body betrayed her mind and she drifted into a deep slumber.

There he was. Tom was standing behind her. She sensed his presence before she felt it. He crept up behind her. He took her arms in his hands and tied them taut behind her back with some sort of rope. The material cut into her skin to the point of pain. She endured the pain for Tom. He needed her pain. She went to turn around and face him, and as she did so he brought his fist into her stomach, hard. She gasped and fell to the floor in pain. As she cried out, he bent down and cradled her in his arms.

“Angel. What did you do wrong?" he said. “I turned to you without permission, master." “Why did I hurt you, angel?".

“Because I deserved it."

“Yes, yes you did."

Sara woke up in a hot flash, sweat on her face and neck, panting. She hated nights like this, hated remembering the bad things. She tried to focus on the fact he had saved her from a different type of horror. But in the same sense, he also caused it. The line he crossed—she couldn't bear to think of it.

Bonnie barged into Sara's room.

“Sara? It's midnight. Are you okay? I heard whimpering, and you were asleep when I came home. Was it another nightmare?" she asked, her voice thick with sleep.

Sara sat straight up in her bed. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and stared at the wall in front of her. She didn't move. She was lost in her dream, her memory. She went to clutch her stomach, remembering the sharp claw-like agony she had been in that night.

“Sara?" Bonnie whispered.

Bonnie sounded concerned. She edged her way towards Sara's bed. Lifting the covers, she slipped in beside Sara. She took Sara's hand in hers. Sara forced herself to lay back down. Bonnie didn't say another word. Bonnie was well aware of what had happened. She knew of Sara's nightmares, what kind of dreams she had. Bonnie never let her sleep alone when she had a night terror. With their hands entwined, Sara eventually drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

[FLASHBACK TO THE PAST]

In the old Victorian style home of her childhood, Sara would sit on the first step of the staircase that led down into the foyer. It was a perfect spot. A perfect spot to hear all the noises of the house, the creaking of the floorboards, and the opening of the front door. The staircase was the only portion of the house that did not creak when it was walked on. She was hidden, she could not be seen, but she could hear all, making her feel safe to prepare for his arrival. She had spent many hours on those stairs, waiting for the moment he would return home. She couldn't risk sitting in her room upstairs. She had the room at the far end of the upstairs hallway, and from there, she wouldn't be able to hear, and she needed to hear. There had been days where she waited for hours on those stairs. Jack never came home at the same time every day. His drinking would have him out at all hours of the day, and if she were to have any chance of getting away, she needed to be prepared. Sara had a system for escape. She knew that hooking her study desk chair under her bedroom doorknob in just the right way would provide her with enough time to slip out through her bedroom window and onto the roof.

She had only fallen once from the roof, but luckily it was grass that awaited her fall and not pavement.

Sara had created a rope of bedsheets she could easily fish through the window. She was able to climb down onto the grass easily, as long as the desk chair was able to hold the door closed long enough.

There had been times when he broke into her room, busted the doorknob. When that happened, she closed her eyes tight and pretended to be somewhere else.

Every time he did what he did to her, a piece of her would break. As time passed, she knew she didn't have many unbroken pieces left. As an eighteen-year-old girl, she was meant to be starting her life. But to her, it felt like the end, the end of a life not truly lived.

When she had tried to install a lock, he removed it the following day while she was at school. She learned not to try to install a lock after that because when she arrived home, he was the one waiting for her and she had been punished.

Punishment was a relative term. What he did to her, wasn't so much punishment, as it was a way for him to regain control, to assert his dominance as her stepfather, the only person she had left in the world.

There had been a time when things weren't like this. When her mother had been alive, and Jack wasn't drinking. His drinking had started shortly before he found out her mother, Maddison, was having an affair. Sara never blamed her mother for the affair, as Jack had become abusive in more ways than one long before that. She would sometimes contemplate whether her mother's illicit ways contributed to her death. It didn't matter. Her mother was gone, and she wasn't coming back.

She knew she could have left. She was certainly old enough, an adult technically. She could have disappeared. But she wouldn't do that. This was her mother's house. This was her home. She would not allow herself to live on the streets, and she could not ask Bonnie's family to take her in, not when they had so much on their plate already. So, she stayed. The stairs were her solace. Her place of hiding. She knew she couldn't hide forever, but for the time being, she would sit and wait.

Wait for his arrival.