thecockycockless

"You should've let him have his way with her."

Those were the words he saw in more and more faces, the few times he managed to leave their house - no longer a home - and spend time where other people could see him. Faces that held pity, alongside this admonition, and faces that each time had him stock up even bigger bulks of food, and bottles, in order to make the solitude until next time last even longer.

 

The only person who said the words outright to him was his wife, and the only reason she was not his ex wife was because both of them knew that a separation would lead to another death, maybe two, and in spite of them longing for it too often to admit out loud, he guessed they were both clinging on to some hope that life would, eventually, somehow, impossibly, go on.

 

He had started wondering if the words were true. And if the man he'd held at gunpoint, with his baby girl between them and a knife to her throat, had been telling the truth.

"I don't want to kill her", he had grinned, so obviously aroused by the crying, terrified body he was pressing against, and by his confidence the gun could not harm him. "I'm just gonna have some fun with her, I promise you'll get her right back."

But the confidence had been misplaced. The gun was fired, in growing panic at seeing a daughter being pulled away, and though the aim had been perfect the knife had slipped and she was lost nonetheless.

 

And now he was left, tortured by an unknowing emptiness that he would never be able to fill with any answers, since the only one who could've given him the truth was gone. He had tried, but could find no solace in the fact that at least noone took parts of her she did not want to give away, cause he could not be certain that she would've prefered it so. He had not grown up being taught the value of one's own body in the relation to what others want to do to it.