Samantha felt so isolated. Seth started getting on her case with all the phone calls she was making to her family. He kept asking her if she was hiding something from him. He ended up calling her at random times throughout the day making sure she was home. She was still using debit cards under his account so he was able to keep track of everything she bought. The more time that went by, not only did she not feel like his girlfriend, she barely even felt like a person.
Autumn was approaching and Samantha started to get nervous about the holidays. Her parents had started asking her if she and Seth were coming for any of them. She of course wanted to, but she wasn't sure how Seth felt about it. He had never mentioned going to see any of them for the upcoming holidays, so she didn't know if he just wasn't thinking about it or didn't want to go.
She finally decided to bring it up to him during one of their phone calls, but it just turned into another argument about her being selfish and trying to take them away from his family for the holidays. And how she knew how important all of that was to his mom. She tried telling him that she hadn't seen her family in months and she wasn't asking for both holidays just one, but he just kept arguing with her and calling her horrible things, so she dropped it. He was blowing this way out of proportion so she figured something else must have been bothering him and she'd try and bring it up again at a later time. She thought that was the end of it until she was vacuuming the next morning and heard the front door slam.
"Seth, what are you doing here? Is everything okay?" Samantha asked worried. He wasn't scheduled to be home for another few days.
"Family emergency." He replied.
"What happened?"
"My girlfriend is being a gaslighting bitch and it ended up getting her into an accident."
Before she even had time to react to what Seth said, he had punched her so hard he knocked her to the ground, then proceed to knock the air out of her with a kick to her stomach.
"I don't know what the hell you thought you were doing by calling me while I was on the road, bringing up shit I said we were done with, then arguing with me about it." He said as he stood over her wit his foot holding her down.
Samantha was terrified. She wasn't even able to process everything that was going on around her, or why. And Seth had never been this angry before. She didn't even understand why he was so angry. She just wanted it all to stop.
"Seth." She tried to choke out.
"Shut up." He said coldly.
He removed his foot from her and seemed to walk away. She rolled over onto her stomach trying to push herself back up.
"You clearly have no respect for me. Bothering me while I'm at work, arguing with me while I'm away thinking you could because I was far away."
He returned back to her side, pushing her down yet again.
"Seth, please, I swear I wasn't trying to. I was just trying to talk to you about the holidays. My mom had asked me what we were doing." She said in a shaky voice, trying to explain everything so he would stop.
"Again, all I hear is that my family isn't good enough for you and you want to run away."
"No! I just wanted to see my family for Christmas or Thanksgiving, that's it. I'm not running away." She begged. But even her begging didn't change the fact he thought she was still trying to argue with him, which made him even angrier.
"You're going to learn to respect me one way or another." He said.
She then felt a sharp stinging in her back and yelled out. It wasn't until the second time when she heard the crack of his leather belt hitting her back that she realized what it was.
"Are you done now?" He asked, almost annoyed.
She didn't answer. She was just trying to breathe normally as tears welled up in her eyes. He reached up and swung the belt one more time, harder than the previous two causing her to yell out again.
"Get up." He ordered.
She tried as hard as she could to suck all of the pain in and get to her feet as quick as possible. She was having a hard time, but she was worried the longer she took the angrier he would get. She managed to stand, shaking due to the pain and fear. Seth seemed to be getting more and more aggressive as the months had gone by. What used to just be a mean word or a shove, had turned into a punch, which turned into kicking her when she was down. She didn't know where he would go from here and she was terrified she was going to find out.
"Now you're going to spend the rest of the night doing what I say when I saw it. If you utter one word that I didn't tell you to say I'll make damn sure you regret it. And maybe by the time I leave you'll understand how to respect your boyfriend. Understood?"
He spoke in a low threatening voice. She nodded tears silently flowing down her face. She tried to hold them back, but they were just falling. "Good girl." He commented. Then reached up and grabbed her tightly by the back of the neck dragging her to another part of the house.