Prologue BELLA
As much as I tried to keep my breathing as normal as possible and stay calm I could still feel my heart pounding against my chest. Squeezing my eyes shut and hiding under my covers in bed hoping that he might not come tonight. I knew it was pointless, I knew my bedroom door would soon open and the man who I seen as an uncle for the first 13 years of my life would soon enter, he would do unspeakable things to me. Things I didn’t fully understand at 13, and things that changed the course of my life forever.
Five years later and the visits are still as often if not more and I have great plans to leave here as soon as I finish school in 2 weeks time and head off to college with my best friend Abby. We already have a flat ready and it’s the perfect distance from this house I now call a prison in Richmond, Virginia. I’ve tried to tell my dad countless times of the horrors that happen in his home but he either doesn’t want to accept them or doesn’t care. I suspect it’s the later. I know he blames me for my mother dying while giving birth to me. Fourteen days and then I will be free from here.
I suddenly get brought back to the here and now when I hear the door open and the creek of the floor board as a foot passes over it.
“Now my precious Izzy why do you hide under the covers, show me that beautiful face and my body” the sickly whisper comes from him, I feel vomit rise in my throat at the mention of my body belonging to him. Slowly removing the covers and lifting my head slightly to meet his dark empty eyes. The sinister smile that creeps across his face as I pull the covers back from my body, the way he slowly licks his lips and pushes a hand back through his thick greasy hair pushing it off his forehead. Before I even get a chance to mutter a plead of mercy the same hand flicks out and grabs my throat, the hold he has is not hard enough to leave marks but hard enough to let me know he could cause damage if he wanted to. I let out a whimper and let my body go limp. I know there is no point in fighting him, I know there is no point in trying to alert anyone to what is going to happen, I just let him do as he pleases and hope it passes quickly. Fourteen more days, that’s all I repeat in my head over and over again as he brutally tortures my body with his own.
The next morning I wake to the familiar aches and pains that come after a visit from “Uncle Brian” I slowly sit up and take stock of the sorest areas, my wrists where he held my arms above my head so strongly I know I will have marks. My side where his other hand held me so strongly I will have matching bruises to go with my wrists and of course in between my legs. I stand and make my way to the bathroom joined onto my room and turn on the shower making sure the temperature is as high as it can go to burn away his touch from my memory. I gingerly step into the shower and just allow the water to fall over my long auburn hair and shoulders letting the flow of water work into my tight, sore muscles. I spend 20 minutes scrubbing my skin so hard it’s red by the time I step out of the shower and wrap a large fluffy towel around myself.
