Chapter Nineteen... when darkness touches earth

Because if we don't talk about these things... if we don't write about these things... if we don't talk about the children that live their lives in abusive places or as sex slaves then who will......  






Chapter Nineteen …









“Jennifer, Jennifer...” Screams reached her ears and shook off of her the fragrance of mindlessness, thoughtlessness.



Hearing her name being called pulled her out of herself and back into the day.



“Jennifer, Jennifer...” Patricia called.



“Coming.”



She had been sitting, staring, dazing off into nothingness.



How did her mind conjure up such things?



Hours had passed by.



She had been sitting in the loft staring out the windows and got lost into the passing of time.



She would stare out of windows and see the faded image of herself in the reflection. Reaching out to touch that which could never be held Jennifer's fingers would hit the cold reality of the glass and her image would disappear.



How did her mind even come up with these images?



Where did these images even come forth from?



She had spent hours with scenario after scenario being played out in her head.



Pretending she had the capacity to shrink people, Jennifer would allow her mind to go to places of what it would be like to shrink people and put them into a glass bottle.



From there Jennifer would follow one of many different story lines.



From tying them up and torturing them in multiple different ways to forcing them to have sex with each other, to murdering one slowly … ever so slowly. False images would fill Jennifer's head and she would follow the scripts into and through thousands of different endings.



Always she was in control.



Pretending to shrink her mother, her father, Sebastian, Faye.



Pretending to shrink different kids at school, all the way to just made up people or even celebrities.



Kidnapping scenarios would fill her head.



Kidnapping and torturing and maiming and beating.



Image after image would captivate her and pull her further into the story.



Having shrunk one she would think about what it would be like to take a medicine dropper and drop after drop drip water upon the head of the shrunken tiny human being stuck in a glass bottle. Of course it would dawn on the miniature being that at one point the drops would be more of a puddle, that would become a pool, that would become a lake, that would become it's watery grave.



At one point that miniature human being would realize it was going to die, a slow, painful arduous death.



At one point Jennifer would be the master.



Creator of the scenario Jennifer would deafen her ears to the screams of the pretend mini human, watching the slow torturous process of murder be enacted.



“Jennifer... Jennifer.”



Again her mother's voice pulled her out of her head.



Out of her made up world.



Out of herself.



Screeching back, “What?” Jennifer truly just wanted to get back to her trance like state away from the painfully annoying beckoning of her mother.



The Atari was on with Pitfall, Jennifer's fingers holding onto the controller.



Again her mother's call would interrupt her thoughts from fading away from the loft, from the television, from the internal stories that filled her head.



Putting the controller down, Jennifer lifted her body off of the floor and walked down stairs.



Sitting at the table, Sebastian was already at his place and Faye was finishing up preparations for the meal. Jennifer's eyes jumped from one person to the other.



They might as well have been strangers to her.



Familiar damp feelings saturated Jennifer's being.



This all felt so fake.



So made up.



So pretend.



Like tiny puppets they each were just going around and around in some ridiculous staged horrific comedy of errors. Some nightmare that no one could seem to ever wake up from.



Jennifer's eyes landed on Sebastian.



If anyone out of these characters knew Jennifer it would be Sebastian. Jennifer's heart fell into this cold distance, her eyes grew darkened and she sunk into herself.



“Dad home?” Jennifer asked in a dull monotoned question.



A flat no from her mother was the only thing that filled the air other than the awful reality of what life was like in the Galliant household.



It was as if the whole family could be summed up by that which a hamster does as it goes around and around spinning in it's wheel.



Sitting at a table.



Eating a meal.



Television droning on and on in the background.



And a nothingness.



A horrific awful nothingness saturating everyone and everything within the environment.



Dinner over.



Faye cleaning up dishes.



Mother disappearing off somewhere.



Everyone scattered to their own life, their own thoughts, their own activities.



Sebastian approached Jennifer placing a tiny slip of paper into her hand.



Jennifer made eye contact with Sebastian.



Sebastian left the note in Jennifer's hand and headed upstairs to the loft. Jennifer could hear the sound of the Atari being turned on, gazing down at her hand she knew what was written but unrolled it anyway.



“Let's watch Atari.”



Jennifer looked back over her shoulder into the lighted kitchen as her nana washed dishes. Wondering where her mother was and having no clue as to where her father was, Jennifer walked through the darkened living room towards the stairs that would lead her to the loft.



Her hand mechanically grasped a hold of the bannister pulling her up to the landing, step after step she took, knowing what awaited her... what always awaited her.






…...........................................................









They had been little.



She could barely even remember back that far any longer.



She could picture the large backyard.



The rock garden.



Her dad in the rock garden.



The strawberry patch alongside the northern facing brick wall of the house.



Jennifer's mind raced through all the pictures of where they lived back then.



Her heart remembering the Montgomery's.



Papa.



Mema.



The porch.



The steps that led to the porch.



The yards that would be crossed daily.



Sebastian had come back from the sleep over totally different.



No longer wanting to play cars or catch.



No longer wanting to play with their action figures.



He had curled up on his bed and yelled for her to leave him alone.



She had been so young.



She had known nothing.



Just that her cousin was acting like a weirdo.



She had missed him.



Even as a bitty thing the reality of their household landed upon Jennifer as a two ton brick.



Sebastian had been her light at the end of a tunnel.



Especially after Faye had come to live with them.



Everyone always fought.



Faye was never kind and always left Jennifer's stomach in knots and her heart caught in her throat.



Nothing ever was enough.



Nothing was ever good.



It was as if the sun had gone behind clouds on the day Faye moved in never to ever emerge again.



Jennifer had stood at Sebastian's door.



Frozen in his door frame.



He had yelled at her to go away but she ached and missed him.



She wandered across the upstairs into her own room and sat on her bed.



Fingers brushing against this stuffed animal or that.



Eyes looking out the half window that was above her dresser then skirting to her closet and the double sliding doors.



Jennifer would just sit and sit on her bed.
No one would ever come to tuck her in, kiss her good night, alleviate the growing gnawing ache that was threatening to over take her.



No words back then were able to be formed, just lack, just bewilderment, just isolation.



Sebastian would call her over to his room one night.

She was just relieved he remembered her. She had really missed playing with her cousin.



They would kneel on his bed.



Two children.



His hand would cross under the elastic of her pajama bottoms and down to her underpants.



Jennifer's eyes would grow a mile wide.



Sebastian's fingers would find her privates and a sensation would saturate Jennifer's whole being.



With his other hand he would then take Jennifer's and bring it down into his own underpants and place her fingers around his penis.



Jennifer's eyes growing huge but watching Sebastian's face with a terrifying stare.



Jennifer's breath caught into some ulterior place.



All sorts of emotions coursing through her all at once.



Two children kneeling on a bed finding one another.



Sebastian had taken her first kiss.



Jennifer's mind and body felt so different that night as she pushed her stuffed animals out of the way and crawled into bed. Curling up around the pillow, her mind both dull and beyond heavy Jennifer would fall asleep.



Altered forever.



The night would close in around her, and into the darkness it collapsed around her entire being.



….......................................






Playing with the piece of paper within the palm of her hand Jennifer continued up the stairs. Thoughts drifting forward into time and what was about to happen, thoughts drifting back through time and what had happened; Jennifer felt entranced and caught up into some cold dark interior prison that could never be escaped.



The loft had become her prison.



Remembering back to the other night when Mitchell was home, when her father was actually hanging around the family.



How they had all gone upstairs together.



The loft looked different with her mom and dad up there.



Daddy had taken the chair and she had sat upon the sofa with her mother as a movie played upon the television.



The chair.



The black leather chair.



Sebastian had used it once as a pretend throne.



She, his slave.



He had guided her mouth towards his privates.



Her cousin's hands upon her hair, upon her head as her mouth held within it his most sensitive parts.



Her teeth, her tongue, her throat... and him.



The sofa that she had sat on and leaned against her mother had been used as a bed and he had entered her time and time again. Leaving her body behind as he finished.



She always seemed on the edge of some sensation but it was never about her.



“The king,” would have his way with serfdom and Jennifer would be left with a pile of emotions as if it was dirty laundry on the floor by the washer machine.



Again Jennifer would crumple the note into the palm of her hand.



Steadying herself, climbing the stairs, the music of Pitfall playing in the background.



Reaching the top Sebastian was already on the throne.



He had been waiting.

Jennifer looked at the television.



The controllers ready to be grasped if adult foot steps were heard.



Adult foot steps were never heard.



Jennifer took her place and Sebastian started the story, making up lines to the same play that was acted out time and time and time again.