Читать книгу Against My Will - Douglas Wight - Страница 8

I woke at 7 a.m. to the same thought that hit me every morning. It wasn’t just a bad dream. It was reality. I was in the same bedroom, in the same house, with the same monster sleeping beside me. My nightmare continued.

And, like every morning, the second sensation to hit me was how cold I was. I was naked, of course, because he hated me wearing clothes.

Then it registered how much my body ached. Not just the odd muscle twinge or stiffness, but bone-shattering, soul-searing agony. I had been sure he was going to kill me last night. He’d come close many times during sex: forcing my legs so wide I thought they’d snap out of their sockets; pushing my head so far into the pillow from behind that I nearly suffocated; tightening the grip around my neck until I was sure the breath that squeezed out would be my last.

But no. Here I still was. Surviving.

Sex makes it sound like it was consensual. Let’s call it what it was. Rape. Repeatedly. Every day. That’s what happens when you live with a psychotic sex maniac. He would be like a wild animal, sticking his fingers into my eyes, screaming into my face and trying to rip the hair out of my head. He was so violent I thought at times that my neck or back would break as he threw me around, all the time shouting his commands, ‘Do this! Do that! You’re not moving enough!’ Then shoving me into the position he wanted. Me, compliant, lifeless almost – like the ragdoll he wanted me to be, my body covered in bruises and bite marks.

All the time I would think to myself, Nothing lasts forever, nothing lasts forever, everything’s got to come to an end. That was the only thing that saw me through it, the mantra I kept repeating over and over and over.

It’s got to stop at some point.

Everything comes to an end.

Nothing lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever.

On mornings like this, with another day in hell stretching out before me, it was hard to believe it wouldn’t be like this forever. Every day seemed the same. Sex, humiliation, excruciating pain, the debasing of my very soul. Day after endless day.

The monster stirred beside me. He got up.

‘Today’s the day we die,’ he said, calm but menacingly. He left the room and went downstairs.

My senses tingled. I forgot about the abject pain. He wanted us to die together. He told me that most days. Only he could decide when, where and how. He didn’t want me to be with anyone else. It was part of his many contradictions. He wanted us to be together. Together, together, together. It was all I heard. He demonstrated this by making sure he was with me every moment of every day. And I mean every moment.

I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone. He stuck to me like a leech, always touching me. If I needed to go to the bathroom, he insisted on coming, watching me or, worse, even urinating while I sat on the toilet. He wished we could be ‘sewn together’, and he carried me around like a baby and insisted on feeding me from his plate.

Now it was like being together in this life wasn’t enough.

‘Today’s the day we die.’ My mind buzzed with the possibilities of what he meant. Waiting around to find out seemed the least favourable option, but there was nowhere to run or hide. I thought about escaping out of the window. I was one floor up. I’d survive the fall and at least I would be out of the house. How far away would I be able to get before he came after me?

Before I could put any plan into action, he came up the stairs with the same Rambo-style hunting knife he had threatened me with before. His eyes flickered manically. He closed the bedroom door.

Oh my God, I thought, this is it. I am going to die.

‘What are you doing?’ I said, trying to reason with him, keeping my voice steady. ‘Put it away now.’

He stood there naked, waving the knife in my face. I tensed, waiting for the lunge. Instead he grabbed hold of his genitals.

‘I’m not big enough for you, am I?’ he sneered.

Instinctively, I tried to move his hand away, but I grabbed the blade and sliced my hand open. He twisted me around and pinned me to the bed, his 16-stone frame crushing my body, which was barely half his size. I couldn’t move from the neck down. He had the knife to my throat. Sweat was pumping off me. If I showed any fear, though, I was sure he would push the blade into me.

I tried to remain as calm as possible. I knew what he wanted more than this sudden blood lust. It was what he always wanted. Somehow I managed to talk soothingly, longingly – whatever it would take to instigate sex.

He released his grip, put the knife on the bed. While he was distracted I pushed the knife off the bed with my foot.

He grabbed me and put me in a headlock. We fell off the bed with such force it was sent flying across the floor on its wheels. He still had my head in his grip.

‘I’ll do anything, please,’ I said. ‘Just leave me alone.’

He got to his feet, still holding me around the neck, and dragged me downstairs. He was rambling about this fantasy he had of me being abused as a child. It wasn’t true, but he would go on about it constantly.

‘I wished I’d known you as a kid,’ he panted. ‘I would have totally fucked you.’

He was beyond sick. I kept trying to remain calm. I knew that showing any emotion would make this perilous situation even worse. I was shaking, though. My brain went dead. I felt numb, like I was not part of my body anymore.

Knock, knock.

What was that? There was somebody at the door. Thank God.

He answered it. It was Mum. Had she just happened to be passing? Had she sensed my distress? What a relief it was to see Mum’s face, but I could see the worry in her eyes. She knew something serious was happening.

Don’t say anything, Mum, I thought to myself. Don’t say anything.

She reached in and tried to grab me.

‘Come on, now,’ she directed her words to him. ‘Sophie is coming with me.’

‘She’s not going fucking anywhere,’ he said, grabbing me by the back and pulling me in. He slammed the door shut and locked it.

‘I’m going to get your father and sister!’ I heard her shout.

He moved me towards the stairs, but I knew if I went up there I would never come down again.

‘I need to go to the toilet,’ I pleaded.

He came into the bathroom with me. I slowed everything down, trying to take as long as possible. He twitched impatiently.

My dad wasn’t well. He had suffered a heart attack brought on, I told myself, by my refusal to leave this monster. Like my older sister, Leanne, and my younger brother, Jason, my parents had tried everything to prise me away from him, but they didn’t understand coercive control. They didn’t know how he had manipulated me, taken advantage of my extreme vulnerability. I might have been 17 when I met this 30-year-old, but I was effectively a child, which was the way he liked it.

Asperger syndrome had made me a prisoner of my childhood. When I finally ventured out into the real world I met a monster who wanted to keep me caged in his prison of darkness. He isolated me from the people I loved, convinced me he was good for me and then, when I realised the true extent of his evil, controlled me with violence and my fear that he would kill my family if I disobeyed his commands.

I had treated my family terribly, but now they were my only salvation. Luckily, they only lived a few streets away. It wasn’t long before I heard them back at the door. I was afraid of what he might do, but the delay had momentarily calmed him down. To my relief he opened the door to them. The shock and fear in their eyes were clear to see – but so too was the determination to get me out of there. I was still naked.

‘I need to go and get dressed,’ I told them.

He followed me upstairs. In the bedroom he came so close I could smell his rank, stale breath.

‘I could break your neck now and no one would know,’ he whispered. His hands made a snapping motion.

This was not over. I knew that. Even if I managed to slip past him and out of the house, this was not the end. Not by any stretch of the imagination.