Yard Sale
There was nothing special about that Thursday evening. Lyanne’s father was absent as always, her mum was dealing with her younger brothers downstairs, and Lyanne laid in her bed, watching the ceiling, listening to her new favourite song, Click Clack Symphony by RAYE (ft. Hans Zimmer), as she twisted a strand of her ginger waist-length strand between her long fingers. It had been a long day at school and it was cold outside, so all she wanted was to watch a movie with her mum and brothers after dinner and get into her warm bed, where she would rinse and repeat everything tomorrow from the top.
It was around nine pm, shortly after dinner when they are handling the dishes with her mum, they heard a loud thud coming from the front door. Lyanne and her mum, Shannon, flinch and look at each other for a brief second before they put the dishes they were drying and putting to their assigned places, aside and walk slowly to the front door. Shannon got the little ones and Lyanne pressed her ear against the dark old oak door, trying to gauge what is going on. “NO! No, please, please, I beg!” it sounds like a man pleading for his life but who the hell could it be? Her dad won’t come home till late, and nine is not late for him. She was terrified, looked at her mum for comfort but her mum is just petting her brothers’ hairs and telling them to shush.
Lyanne turns around and puts both of her hands on the door, looking down to her feet, she takes a big breath in and lets it out slowly, then mumbling to herself “It’s okay..”. She closed her eyes before she lightly pushed herself away from the door– Don’t do it! – something from the depths of her brain yelled and as if on cue, her gut was knotting and her heart started shaking her body with every beat, her body was aching. But all came to a halt when the weeping man outside started banging on the door and yelling, not a care in the world that he could be waking someone up, or better yet, ruining someone’s life.
“Open the fucking door, Shannon!! I said, open it! Now!”
Lyanne flinched and instinctively covered her mouth with one of her hands as the other one held onto the door for balance. She learned how to be invisible, be quiet. Her eyes darted to her mother's honey-brown gaze. The fear was common. the only thing they had in common about life.
What was her mum going to do? Was she going to open the door and let her personal devil in? Could this be an opportunity to get away from his abuse? “Shannon! Open the God damn door, now!” Lyanne’s mum flinched so slightly “Get your brothers, Lyanne.” Shannon was terrified and quiet so she did as she was told to not face the aftermath of his wrath. The second the door unlocked anticlockwise, Jaime threw it open and yanked Shannon from the back of her gold hair “You do what I fucking tell you to do, you bitch!” Behind him, stood a tall man with his hands in his pants’ crotch and a smile on his face. His dark skin glimmered under the yellow-ish light of their entryway. He wasn’t a hallucination, he wasn’t a shadow. He was real and he was enjoying every bit of scream, tears and fear he caused. He was standing at the last step of the stairs that led to the door staring right at Lyanne with a filthy smirk on his scarred face. Shannon followed his gaze only to pin it on her one and only daughter, her own bone and flesh. The lump was now permanent in her throat from all the years of bottling it up and not speaking up for herself, but this was the seal, she would never speak again, she just watched her husband give their daughter away for his ticket out.
“Is this her?”
“Yes– yes, it is. This is Lyanne. My daughter.”
“Better than what we thought, innit?”
Then the men started laughing, reminiscent of hyenas in the wild when they saw their lunch. Lyanne was confused, shaking, mortified, blindsided. Her brown-black eyes as wide as they could go and her lips parted, her chin trembling, the tears threatening to fall but building up on her water line. What was going on? Who were these men? What did they want with her?
The Crotch Man curled his hands around Jaime's collar and yanked him outside, throwing him down the couple of steps, onto the front yard. It has started raining now, thunder was rumbling. Lyanne was hiding behind the door frame, her mum was behind her with her brothers, trying to silence their screams and cries by hugging them and pressing their heads to her chest, she was trembling, the fear sliding down her face was in form of tears, her honey-brown eyes wide with shock and familiarity of the abuse.
Lyanne knew she was to pay the price for her own father’s serenity of mind because why else would they be here? They wanted what Jaime owed them, but Lyanne didn’t know the payment method, yet. Lyanne only knew she wasn’t even worth a quid in her father’s mind so Jaime went and gave her away for nothing. “Her?! You want her? Take her. She’s yours, just let my debt free and forget my family from your book!“. Jaime begged and cried under the thunder storm as his tears intertwined with his own blood leaking from his skull due to the many hits he received on his way here. That was the first moment where she became the shadow, and soon enough, lingering in the shadows would be the only thing keeping her alive.
