Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen
Its midnight when I’m woken up by loud banging on the front door. I check my phone again. A total of fifty missed calls.
I know by the way he is knocking that it’s going to be a long night. I think about not opening but I know he won ’t leave, besides I won’t be that neighbour with a crazy boyfriend.
I open the door and he walks past me. He checks every inch of the house and sniffs the air. I frown. Did he think I was here with another guy?
“Why are you here?” I ask him, fuming. “You think I’m some whore, just because I slept with you?”
His eyes are filled with rage. “Where were you? I got to work and they told me you’d left with a man.”
Is he serious?
“Get out of my house?” I say as I open the door. “Get the fuck out.”
“You smell just like him,” he say taking off his leather jacket. “Did you enjoy his company?”
“Fuck off,” I say. “Out, I said.”
He come straight at me. My eyes are wide with fear – I can see him approaching with blind rage.
He slaps me very, very hard and then grips my jaw roughly and says “You don’t speak to me like that.”
I try to away from the argument but he grabs my hair and yanked me back. He starts punching me. I fall to the ground where he continues hitting me.
I fight back. Kicking him. Fighting back like an animal.
He’s so much more powerful and so he keeps slamming my head into the floor and I have to choose if I want to be the girl that fought back or the one who lives. I choose life.
He puts his hands around my neck and begins strangling me. It’s like he’s possessed.
“I will kill you if you ever think of leaving me,” he whispers angrily. “No one can have you.”
I can see myself dying at his hands.
And so I know there’s only one thing I can do to make this go away. “I love you. I am yours. I’m sorry.”
He takes my chin again and makes me look at him. “I love you,” he says. “I would rather die than live without you.”
I don’t doubt him one bit.
I’m curled up on the floor as he leaves. I feel the blood dripping from my ears, my nose. I know I have to shift to make me heal faster but I can’t move. The pain. The shame.
This can’t be happening.
I can’t be one of those women.
The battered mate.
I know. I know I should’ve recognized it, that the wining and dining will come with a price, but when you’re inside a situation its hard to get perspective.
I fall asleep right there on the floor, in the pool of my own blood.


See, my brother has never laid a hand on me, let alone a man I don’t even know. Even my father, the one man that hates me the most.
I know girls who get beaten up by their boyfriends and I know that the physical pain is nothing compared to the feeling of being degraded, exposed, unworthy that comes with it.
I’ve seen beautiful, smart and strong girls like me turning into bitter ticking time bombs not because of the hate they have for the men who beat them, but the hate they have for themselves for allowing it to happen.
That is exactly how I feel right now. I have given a man I hardly know every bit of me in just two months. There were signs, yes there were a lot of signs. They were all over, the way he kept coming back even after I was clear that I wasn’t interested, the way he reacted on my first night at his house, that time I found that bag housing a dead witches head … maybe I should go to the police. But who am I kidding? His family runs the quarter. In fact they run the whole city.
It’s dawn and I haven’t moved one bit. I haven’t spoken to anyone. My phone keeps ringing. I don’t bother to check the caller ID even if it’s Scott I can’t face him, even of I hear his voice I’m afraid I’ll have a break down.
Im so confused.
I thought he loved me.
I’m afraid to get up, to go to the mirror. I must be a horrible sight.
Maybe I’m confused because if I’d slept with someone else he’d have felt it. Our mating bond would’ve alerted him. The mark I left on his neck would’ve glowed purple, announcing my deceit. It would’ve throbbed.
So did he hit me just because he wanted to?
It doesn’t make any sense.
Why?
I cry myself to sleep again. Everything seemed so perfect. I was happy. How could he do this to us? To me? Maybe it’ll make sense when I wake up again. Maybe I’ll wake up and find I was dreaming.
I’m woken by a knock on the door, I know it’s him. Tears start pouring down my cheeks as everything that happened on my lounge just hours ago starts coming back in wave speed.
I can ’t.
I lay back down on the cold, hard floor and I’m going to stay here until the knocking stops.
I have three hours left before I have to leave for work. At least by the time I get there everybody will be getting ready to knock off so I won’t have to deal with “are you okay?”s that I ’m too emotional and angry to deal with.
He leaves.
Scott must be worried about me now. We last spoke yesterday midday and I was suppose to return his call. I don’t want him to come home early and find me in a battered mess.
Well, at some point I’m going to have to deal with reality, might as well start now.

I have seven voice messages, most of them from this man(I can’t even say his name), from yesterday. The first one is sweet. “Babe, I got your missed calls I couldn’t talk, call me back please”. The two after that are almost similar but on the fourth one, his voice and words begin to be tense.
There’s one from Scott blabbing about having drinks with a friend in some restaurant and some shit I don’t even understand. He says it’s Vampire cocktail, whatever that means. I smile but then cry. He’s the only man I feel safe with. The only man who’s never hurt me.
I listen to fifteen more voice messages from that man. Each more aggressive and fuelled with rage than the on before it.
“Fuck,” he screams in rage in the last one.
These are all from yesterday.

There’s a few more from two a.m this morning. All I hear is shallow breathing and crying but the caller keeps quiet. I know it’s him. He’d called after beating me to a pup.
To hell with him.
I send my brother a text. “Call me when you’re on your way home. I love you.”
My phone rings again. I shrink away from it in fear. It’s him.
He sends a text.
“Please answer the phone, Natalie, please babe.” It reads.
I delete it.
I could sleep for another three hours but I decide to shower and get ready to go. My body is aching all over and I groan with each step I take. I stand in front of the mirror thinking ‘is this really me?’ There are marks on my neck from his long fingers draining the life out of me. My left eye is swollen shut. My nose is crooked. I cracked it back to back. Daggers of pain shut through me. My right check has a reddish blue patch on it. This is from his knee pressing me down. My body protests with each step I take. My thighs are black and blue. My stomach feels heavy.
I order myself some vampire blood. I need something to make me high. To make the pain go away. Alcohol wouldn’t do shit to me.
I burst out crying. I’ve become that woman, that woman I never understood. The same woman I’ve always judged.
I manage to finish the bottle of blood although it takes me forever. I don’t know if it’s because my body is in too much pain that even the simple task of swallowing seems like torture.

I’m ready to go work by five p.m. But wait! I’ll have to go outside to get there and I’ll have to go past tbe bus station. His bus.
I can’t.
I call a cab instead. It will cost me a lot of money but what choice do I have.
I peep through the window just to check if the dragon is not waiting outside before I go out and jump on the back seat of the cab.
I give Mrs. Jones a reserved wave as the cab drives out the lawn. I don’t even look up at her, she’ll know something is wrong the moment I open my mouth.
I’ll be too early for work and that can’t be good for my mood right now but I tell the driver to take me there anyway. He tries to make small talk but all I can do is look out the closed tinted window and I see it, the dragon, flying in the opposite direction, going to my house. Tears roll down my cheeks, it all seems so different, like is not the guy I knew yesterday morning, it ’s all so different now.