Wrenched

So I wait another couple moments.

“Master William!” My voice carries throughout the silent house on a determined echo.

Nothing.

He’s lying on his stomach. I feel braver and stand up, giving him a good solid kick to his leg to wake him...but he doesn’t.

I watch his back as I inhale and exhale slowly, waiting to see if it rises and falls with my breathing. I’m counting in my head slowly, One thousand...two thousand...three thousand...four thousand.

There’s no movement.

I have to know, so I take the plunge, leaning down to fist a handful of his hair between my bound wrists and lift his head. I cock my head to the side so I can see him properly. His eyes are staring vacantly back at me. His nose has bled; it looks bent out of shape, and that’s when I realize how wobbly his head feels. I give it a little wriggle. It feels loosey-goosey on his shoulders, and his facial expression is frozen in place.

I think his neck is no longer properly attached to his spine, and I can smell the strong scent of alcohol coming off him. I place his head back down the way I found it, careful not to have caught any loose hairs between my fingers.

I flop back down on the bottom step, placing my bound wrists on my knees. This is a lot to take in.

Master William.

Is.

Dead.

I’ve waited for this day for an entire lifetime. I honestly didn’t think it would arrive during my lifetime, and here it is.

I. Am. Free.

But am I?

I feel so disconnected from the scene in front of me.

My mind doesn’t feel free. Maybe it’s the drugs still leaving my system, but I don’t feel excited. I don’t know how to explain how I feel, other than I’ve spent my life without any freedom, any happiness, a social life, a caring, nurturing family, or any friends. I’ve lived from day to day without an opinion. My mind has witnessed cold-blooded murder and lived with the constant threat of violence. I’ve had things done to me without my consent. Those things I won’t label. My life has been constantly monitored.

My mind has been abused.

I should be excited about his death. I should be smiling, laughing hysterically over how I won.

I fucking won!

I survived Master William.

But my happiness had flat-lined years ago.

I don’t know how to be happy. My life has never been happy. I can’t switch happy on. I don’t know where my life goes from here.

I could still have heartache waiting for me around the corner. What happens if something worse than Master William is out there lurking in the shadows?

I shake my head to stop these negative thoughts.

I’m free.

I’m fucking free.

I get this sudden urgent crushing feeling to be out of these binds immediately. It’s all-consuming and intense, and I react by starting to pull at my wrists...hard. It isn’t doing anything other than hurting me more, and yet this feeling won’t let go of me, which makes no sense. I start yanking and twisting my arms about, trying to get out of these binds like a crazy person.

All I’m doing is crying out in pain, but I can’t seem to purge myself of this feeling. I yank my feet up and push with my bare toes, trying to will the rope to push over my wrists and release me, while my small grunts fill the ever-present silence.

I feel too anxious to be rational. I’m determined to damage my wrists even more, and that’s when out of the corner of my crazed eyes I see the knife laying on the floor.

He always cuts my dress off, but he never got around to doing it this time.

The realization dawns on me and I stop wrestling with myself, doing some weird worm wriggle over to where the knife lays, and I pick it up clumsily in my fingers and collapse back on my haunches.

I’m normally a very contained person, showing no outward signs of distress because it’s all hidden on the inside.

I’m robotic. I’m on remote control because I have to be.

Now, I don’t. Now I can shout and scream and swear at the fucking bastard, who can no longer touch me. He can’t lay a finger on me. There’s this wildness inside me wanting to escape, a black fog of rage taking over me.

I stand up, take a step closer to him, and stomp down hard using my bare foot on his head. I put as much strength as I can into it. I stomp with my heel until I’m breathing heavily with rage and a guttural wounded animalistic noise is leeching out of me. I want to fuck him up. I want to hear the crunch of his skull as I smash the bones under my feet.

I know he can’t fight back, but wasn’t that what he did to me? He was a bastard coward. I want to smash his evil brain until his eyes pop out of their sockets. I want to...

A sharp sting forces me to look down, and that’s when I realize my fingers have clenched around the knife blade and not the handle. Blood is oozing out like a flowing creek, and I was making that horrible noise. The pain brings me to my senses and I quickly let go of the knife. I realize I have been lost in my own dark, manic, fictional thoughts, and I hadn’t touched Master William at all.

My mind was playing tricks on me.

I move my body so I can use my feet to sandwich the handle between them, making sure the blade’s facing up, and I start rubbing the rope binding my wrists over it vigorously. I wince at the pain in my limbs, but I keep going, watching as each piece frays away until my hands spring free. I’m dripping blood everywhere, but who’s here to punish me?

There’s a bloody, raw mess waiting for me underneath my bindings, but my mind has switched off. I’m an outsider looking in. It’s always easier to put things into boxes as quickly as possible and seal them up.

The pain will come back in full force, eventually. It always does, but for now, I’m thankful to become the robot girl.

I cut strips off the bottom of my dress with the knife and do my best to tie them around each wrist, using my teeth to secure the knots. The cuts on my hands need to stop bleeding; they are making a mess. I hack off some more strips and bind my fingers and palms roughly. It’s enough to hold the wounds together until...

Until...I don’t know.

I walk over to the far wall and slide down it until I’m sitting with my knees bent. I look around me and try to piece together what happened. Master William must have tripped and fallen in a drunken state; it’s the only explanation.

I look over at the window. The sun has almost closed up shop for the day. I so could do with a friend right now, somebody to share this burden with. I was happy he was dead, but I did not know how to rejoice.

Because I am so alone.

It can’t be this simple, his death.

It can’t be this simple, my freedom.

Do I bury him out back?

Do I leave him here and just walk away?

Nobody will come visiting the house to check up on Master William. Nobody ever visited. He can just rot away and I’ll be long gone. I look up to where I know a camera is hidden, recording my every move. My innocence will be sitting on that tape. I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t have. I could just disappear.

But how would I live?

There are too many questions I can’t answer, but I can’t stay in this house with a dead body any longer—I know that for sure—so I haul my ass up and make myself climb the stairs to my room.

I strip out of the dress, which symbolizes so much I want to forget, and hurriedly change into my jeans, a simple sweater, and put on my black Converse.

I make my way around to my bathroom and up-end the little bin, dumping the contents onto the floor, and take the plastic bag and quickly walk back around to my bedroom. I pick up my copy of Wind In The Willows off my bedside table, placing it carefully inside the plastic bag. I look over at my bed and see Jenny, my ragdoll, sitting there. I can’t abandon her because she’s my only friend. I remove my pillowcase and put her inside it. I look around my room for anything else that means something to me, but there isn’t anything that’s worth more to me than these two things.