Johnny ruined my childhood today. I asked him why the yellow power ranger never had a skirt though she was a girl like that pink one and he didn't even turn his head from the TV when he asked if I remember whether or not either one of them had breasts. I wanted to look up "power rangers" and "boobies" online but I know that would lead some very strange search results.
Oh, and I got rid of my other notebook. Not rid of, per say, but I tossed it in a drawer and made my own. Johnny was just happening to be binding another notebook anyway and showed me how to do it...I don't remember now but I do have a brand new notebook with a shiny new black duct tape cover and my picture inside. Johnny took a Polaroid of me. I was wearing a very old cheerleader sweater that he pulled out for me. Now that I think back on it...it was creepy.
He begun to either forget my name or else give me a new one. I am known as either "Hailey" or else, "Batgirl". I'm going to assume this is because the only shirt I had with me was my batman logo t-shirt.
Saturday Midnight-ish
Batgirl told Johnny to leave the house apparently. I'm home alone locked in my little room. I have this notebook, a bevy of color pens, and a bottle of sleeping pills. What normal person WOULDN'T try and commit suicide and write a letter right now?
Sunday I have no idea what time this is.
Me, apparently. I took three and then just passed out for a few hours, until Johnny came back downstairs dragging behind him some random dude with dreadlocks. White people do not pull dreadlocks off nearly as well as black people.
This random dude was screaming and pleading and crying the whole night and got real quiet by morning-ish. I think it was morning because I was getting sleepy and I usually get sleepy by morning.
Now that he was home, Johnny saw no reason to lock me up so I was left to wander around. I wandered until I found Mr. Dreadlocks. He was chained to a wall with his head half shaved. Violently. There may have been skin missing too, he was generally bloody. And that may not have even been all him, when Johnny gets into his mood, everyone within a 20 foot radius gets fucked.
He was awake and lucid enough to start begging once he saw me. It was a lot like "please please don't let him kill me" and such things. I really had no idea what to do about him till Johnny came back. So there I was in a corner of the room curled up and pondering what to do with Mr. Dreadlocks, while the man himself was crying himself into a mess on the other side of the room and Johnny was standing with a newly cleaned electric razor in his hands.
A funny thing happened. He turns to me and starts asking me questions that I had no idea how to answer. Mostly about himself. All this is going on while he's shaving the dreads right off Mr. Dreadlocks. If Mr. Dreads would quit squirming, maybe Johnny would miss the skin and there would be a little less blood and a lot less screaming going on...and you know Nny's blocking my ONLY exit out of the room because I'd have to walk right by him to reach the door.
Once he was more or less done relieving him of hair, Johnny stood back up, wiped his hand on his shirt, then ran it through his hair, tilted his head to the side until it cracked loudly (like a shotgun), and approached me.
"Hailey," he said getting my name right for once, "how is it that you are able to stay so...neutral to that inside your head?"
See, your guess is as good as mine as to what he meant. I just flapped my mouth in confusion trying to figure out something coherent to say.
"Batgirl," he continued, running another hand through his hair and slicking it down with blood, "she listens to you, doesn't she?" He bent down until he was so close to my face I could hear him blink.
"Tell her," he whispered softly, "tell her that..." he thought I didn't notice the fact that he was slowly moving his hands to the sides of my head but despite that I felt I could move anywhere to get away from him, being pressed up against a wall anyway. "Tell her I'm listening now." and with that, he grabs at my hair and pulled me roughly to my feet. "Tell her if she wants to talk, she can do it herself," he tilted my head back painfully, still tugging my hair. "You'll tell her?" he asked me "you'll say something wont you?"
I gasped out a "yes" or something close to it and he let go. While I rubbed the back of my head carefully, he picked me up, slung me over his skinny shoulder, and I was hauled off back into my room, Mr. Dreads now eerily quiet. And dreadless.
Saturday Noon?
Last night's episode put Johnny into a deceptively good mood. We're both upstairs in the "living room" (haha!) watching tv and doing our own quiet little activities. He's doodling something on a piece of paper with both feet up on a table, tipped back in his chair in that way...you know the way? The front legs are off the ground and he's leaning on the back? And you know any second he's going to fall backwards and crack his skull on the ground?
Bingo.
Tuesday Some Time
Man. Was I punished. You know, now that I think about it, other than the attempted murder-by-vase he pulled a while back, he never really raised a hand (or knife or gun or razor) to me. When I pushed him over int hat chair two days back, he got really angry at me. Like...chase-Hailey-through-the-house kinda angry, holding his head. When he picked up that knife off the egg crate/table, I panicked and started screaming really loud. He was only threatening, but being cornered by him holding that thing up with only the glint of a yellow bulb shining off it... I saw my life flash before my eyes.
Instead, he dropped it and kicked me so hard in the ribs that I got winded. I couldn't catch my breath and could only hold myself and curl up, praying he wouldn't kick again. He cursed some and left the room.
I lay crying for a good long while. I felt so miserable. I was really hurting, I had seen horrible things in the last month, no one's come looking for me, and suddenly, the thought that I was going to die became that much more real to me.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, Johnny was pulling me up into sitting position.
"Hey," he asked me, now sporting a black eye, "hey, you okay? Hey...look at me. Hailey look...Hailey LOOK AT ME! Are you looking? Tell me how many fingers I'm holding up so I know you're looking." I opened my eyes to see him wave a hand in frontt of my face. His gloves were kinda blending into the blackness of his living room so I didn't see the number of fingers. Which upset me because I thought if I gave him the wrong number, I'd get kicked or something. I started whimpering kinda pathetically.
"Okay," he said wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me up, "can you stand yet?" I tried, I really did, but the room took that opportunity to spin and I leaned so heavy into him that I almost knocked him off balance. However, somehow, he was able to drag me back to that room, the third one he'd given me, and more or less drop me onto the mattress.
"Please," I said as he turned to leave, "please let me go home." I started crying again and he twisted his head around to watch me. "Oh god, I just...I cant...please don't do this to me..." I wanted to get up and beat him into a bloody pulp...except I've seen so much of that lately I got sick thinking about it.
"I cant m'dear," he said, using a pet name I never imagined he'd ever use, "at this point...you're stuck with me. " He turned to me and smiled so widely I thought I saw the edges of his skull in the corners of his mouth. "But please...try to make this pleasant. I wont kick you again, okay? Okay, Hailey?"
That's all I remember of that day.