Written by user theMadHatter16

Hot. There is a hot and heavy weight pressing down on my chest. My body is pressing against the bed stiffly. I shut my eyes tightly and whimper. A rough hand aggressively pins down my left arm. Another hand abrasively strokes against my bare right arm. Something warm and wet presses against my neck and travels around till it finds my chest.

I breathe wildly, absolutely no control. I feel as if I might pass out from the pain or the lack of oxygen. The warm and wet feeling repeats an up down motion on my bare chest. My throat burns acid as I rapidly swallow down air and cry out in agony. I strain muscles trying to move. Through a clenched jaw and bared teeth, painful shrieks escape. It grunts in annoyance and begins to move roughly over my small body. The hand that pins my arm strikes towards my face and squeezes my mouth aggressively.

Its head pulls up to meet my face. His eyes glare at me intensely. In the darkness of the bedroom, the only light is the moon through the single window. I see his face clearly. The sharp piercing blue eyes, the full golden hair, and the perfectly angled face that looks painfully similar to mine.

He hushes me harshly, leans his head in till we're nose to nose. Pain strikes my lungs as I tremble. As he got closer in, my heart threatens to burst and bleed out in my chest. With my pulse racing uncontrollably, an instinct to scream claws at my throat.

He devilishly smiles. His lips force themselves onto mine and his tongue thrusts itself down my throat. The kisses are wild and against my will. I lay there rigid and in intense pain. His right hand slides up and down my thigh. His large adult body overcomes my small childish one.

My eyes sting as tears fall in rivers. He pulls away and kneels on top of me. His wicked smile shines darkly at my terrified composure. His diabolically laugh echoes in the silence. He strokes my naked body with cold hands. I jump at their touch and whine doleful. He licks his lips like a hungry animal. His stare is like that of a predator looking down on his prey. Our eyes have contact for a second, then breaks away.

"Ple-Please, Please, stop..." Words came out in sobs. They felt like blocks lodged in my throat. He smirks then dives down. His lips press my chest and sloppily kiss me. From my chest, he moves lower and lower. Then from my stomach, he moves lower and lower.

"No! Not there! No! Stop it! Stop!"

My heart hammers in my chest. I hyperventilate in the shock. Shoulders tighten as I cry out and beg. My legs thrash around and struggle to remove him.

He grabs my legs in an iron hard grip and drags me down to him. Spreading my legs apart, he leans into my face. Spit rains as hushes me again, annoyed by my incompliant behavior.

His lips meet my neck again, his tongue caresses the skin. I sob wretchedly, but his moans drown me out. He grunts with pleasure and satisfaction.

"Don't ever say 'No' to me."

My mind becomes dizzy as anguish swallows me whole. Burning tears blur my vision. I feel my heart pound in my throat as I weep.

"Help me...please someone... help...me."

No one came.

Adrenaline possesses me. I wail and cry louder in defiance. I kick with the legs he grips in his hands. My body writhes in agony. Both arms flail violently against him. My kicks pound at his chest with. Fists bang on his head fiercely. He doesn't move as more strikes pour on him.

"Help! Someone help me, please!" I scream louder, louder, straining my voice till it runs dry and fiery.

The adrenaline discontinues. He rises on the bed and kneels over my shaking body. Eyes narrow down at me from his high position. An icy glare filled with a calm wrath freezes my body over. He inhales heavily. A rock sinks hard in my stomach. I stare wide eyed, half expecting him to spew fire and burn me alive.

A fist slams against my face. My vision distorts. Showers of more blows attack my body one after another. After the storm, my body lies fully beaten, half dead and bloodied on the small bed. I bleed onto the bed covers. The blood doesn't stop. I bleed and bleed some more until the bed and the mattress is saturated scarlet.

He turns me onto my stomach and compresses my head to the mattress.

My vision doesn't return normal. I see two windows in the darkness. Through those windows, two moons. They illuminated the room in a soft and ominous light. My eyes roll back lifelessly to face the man. There is also two of him.

They darken to oblivion black. Their figures glow blood red, their eyes roll into their skulls. Hands grow into jagged talons. Their size doubles. A smile curls on their lips and reveals shark teeth. They hiss in unison. Cold snake like tongues slide up my back. I almost black out as I lose my breath and shiver.

My body goes cold and limp. I am barely able breathe and become light headed. The room begins to spin. They grab at me, laughing as they pull me apart. My body continues to bleed, bleed all over. They yank my arms, my legs. They dig their nails into my naked chest and drag them down my stomach. Scarlet paints my body and spills onto the floor. They laugh, hiss, like demons, like devils.

"Be a good boy, Aiden."

"Don't tell anyone, Aiden."

"You can't say 'No', Aiden."

"This is how I show my love, Aiden."

"Accept it."

They chant, they touch, they scratch, they kiss, and they lick me all over. I'm tossed around like a doll. I am beaten, bitten all over. I bite down on my bottom lip as my lungs tighten into knots and hot tears fall from my eyes.

"Help...me."

No one came.

"Help...please."

Still no one came. Tears fall lifelessly. No one is coming to help me.

"Poor boy, I'm here. Daddy's here. And daddy will always be here....no matter what." One wraps me in his rough arms and strokes my hair. I look up at him mechanically. The man-devil smiles with his ferocious teeth. He gropes below my stomach. I'm too dead to react, too dead to move. I stare at him hopeless in despair and misery. No one is coming to help me...no one.

I look for the other one, but he is gone. I look to the window. It is single. The moon too stands alone.

The moon is painted an awful red color. Its light colors the room red. The floor is a sea of velvet. A sea filled with drowning people. Souls wailing, crying for help. I sit spiritless on the bed, in the arms of a monster, watching them. My arm robotically extends out to them, in hope that they would pull me away into the sea.

"Help...me...please...."

They moan and wail and cry in anguish. I continuously repeat.

"Please...please....please..." The monster rocks me back and forth, still stroking my hair.

"It's okay, Aiden, I'm here." The pleasantness of the voice chimes, breaking me from my horror spell. It's a loving and familiar voice of a woman. She hushes me and rocks me back and forth, her arms softly cradling me. She kisses my head tenderly.

"It's okay baby, he's gone...he's gone." I slowly turn my head to her. The devil is replaced by a heavenly angel with beautiful long dirt gold hair, soft light brown eyes, and gentle pink lips shaped in a loving smile. I reach to touch her face with trembling hands. I stop before contact. What if my savior fades away?

She grasps my hand kindly in hers and pulls it to her cheek.

"Mom..." I utter softly. She smiles and returns the gesture to my cheek.

"Yes?" She replies in a whisper. Tears well up in my eyes as I fold my arms around her and embrace her tightly. I break down in tears. I cry out and sob heavily on her shoulder.

"Mom...mom...mom...." I call her again and again. "I'm not okay....I'm not okay...." My voice trembles. She rubs my back and sways me side to side.

"No...you're okay, Aiden. It's okay," she whispers. I feel her warm tears begin to trickle on my shoulder.

"Look at me, Aiden," she pulls us apart and holds me in her hands. I scan every part of her round face. The plump cheeks, the small nose, the pink lips, the tender brown eyes, the small forehead. This is my mother.

My small childish body had grown bigger. I look around the moonlit bedroom. The floor, no longer a sea of red with miserable people drowning in it, is once again harmless carpet. The moon that shines outside the lone window is once again serene white. My room is much brighter than it was before. I can now see everything in its place, from the desk at the foot of the bed near the entrance, to the nightstand to the left of the bed.

The clock on top the nightstand exclaims the time "3:02 AM" in bright red numbers. I stare mindlessly at the clock until my mother calls me and breaks me from my trance.

"Aiden?" I look to her and smile kindly.

"I'm okay," I tell her in a low whisper. She smiles back at me and places both her hands soft on my cheeks. She pulls us in together and our forehead touch gently. Tears well up in her eyes as she loses her smile and bites her lips.

"I'm sorry," she cries, lowering her gaze. My smile also disappears. Her breath hitches as she sobs. Her eyes meet mine.

"I am so sorry...." Tears fall in streams.

"Mom, I just had a bad dream, that's all. No need to cry-"

"No...," she shakes her head heavily from side to side. "It's not that... I saw...I should've... I wasn't...it's all my fault." Mother pulls herself away and covers her mouth with her hands. Tears fall silently from her eyes, squeezing them shut as she shakes her head.

"Mom," I call to her. "I'm fine, I'm okay." I try to smile but it doesn't show. My mother begins to weep aloud.

"You didn't see yourself, Aiden. You looked so...so terrible... you didn't look like yourself...it frightened me..." She has the most pained look I've ever seen upon her face. My shoulders slouch as I hang my head. My eyes begin to water. I had scared her again.

"Mom...," I start. "I'm-"

"I'm sorry, Aiden." she bursts. "I'm sorry that you have an incompetent mother and that I couldn't read the signs. I'm sorry that I was so stupid and trusted him and that I was so careless and that I-" She held her breath. Before she can start again I embrace her.

"Mom, it was just a bad dream. No big deal." I comfort her.

"Aiden, you wouldn't be having bad dreams if I were just... just...more." Her arms wrap around me. She pulls herself in an buries her face in my shoulder.

"What more could you possibly be? Mom,...you're perfect just the way you are." My mother pulls herself away. She looks to me sternly with furrowed brows, seriousness in her eyes. I stiffen as her gaze meets mine directly.

"Aiden, do you understand that this is my fault?" She says sternly with a touch of pain in her voice. "Because of me you have restless nights. Because of me you get depressed."

"No-"

"Because of me, Aiden," her voice becomes soft. "Because of me, Aiden, you have such a difficult life always fighting fear and night terrors. Because of me. It's my fault."

It pains me dearly to think that my mother pins this all on herself, as if she is the one at fault. But she isn't, he is.

He took away an innocence I can never have back. He took my mother's love for him and shattered it like glass. He violated me. I'm always afraid of when he'll come back. When he'll want something more.... When he'll force himself on me again.

I keep all my genuine emotions and feelings inside to myself. I never allow anyone to know how frustrated and terrified I truly feel on the inside. No one knows, not even my mother. Sometimes I'm caught looking upset. If I just smile superficially and lie that everything's okay, they would believe me.

Lying became natural and almost second nature as years passed from my father's first molestation when I was seven. He came home one evening, and all my fears and nightmare I had dreamt about from his first attack became a reality.

He locked my mother out of the house. With her disposed, he forced himself on to me and defiled me. I was fourteen, which meant I could do more from when I was seven. My body was bigger and raging with hormones, he liked that and satisfied himself at my despair.

After several agonizing hours, he let my mother back into the house. She came upstairs to my room immediately and saw me lying naked on the bed, bruised, battered and injured. I didn't cry. For her sake I swallowed back my tears and instead smiled painfully at her. It had the opposite effect of what I was going for. She broke down in tears, fell to her knees and cried heartache on the floor. I wanted to protect her, not break her heart.

I continued to mask my emotions with false convenient ones. It gave others the false belief that my life was perfectly normal. It shielded my mother from how extensive my pain really was. It's because of him that I lie to my mother and to others. He made me into a liar.

My mother cries and pins heavy blame on herself because of him. He makes me hate myself and forces me to live in perpetual fear and distress. I can never look in a mirror without seeing him in it; we look too much alike, father and son. Always living in my shadow or my reflection and all the dark corners of my life. He always there to take away the tiniest shred of security I hold.

He's puts the mask on my face so that I don't show my internal distress, so that don't tell anyone what happens behind closed doors, and when my mother isn't watching. I can't tell which is more, my hatred or my fear. He's a monster, a devil. A sick and twisted predator and I'm his helpless prey.

He got away. He always got his way.

My face falls heavy at the thought of him and how he got away. Rich, famous, and successful, he has the power to get away. My mother was his toy, and I was his pastime hobby when he wasn't busy.

My mother looks at me with her eyebrows drawn together. Water fills her eyes as she starts to cry again. I avert eye contact and roll my head and eyes aimlessly around the bedroom. I don't want her to see them, my tears.

"Aiden...," she calls with her gentle, kind voice. When I finally meet her gaze again, she embraces me warmly. Hesitantly, I wrap my arms around her. Biting my bottom lip, I try to hold back the overwhelming tears. A big lump forms in my throat as my eyes sting. A sob escapes my lips.

"Aiden," she pauses. "You don't have to hold back." With that I let it all out. Tears trickle down our faces as we clutch each other tightly. I weep into my mother's pajama shirt, drenching her shoulder wet. In each other's arms we make promises to never leave the other alone, to always be there when they needed them most.

Our cries die down into the silence of the night. We stay holding each other in silence for what feels like forever. Whimpering and sniffling of a small child breaks the silence.

"M-Mommy, I'm scared." Jacob stands trembling in the opposite corner of the room in the doorway, holding his Superman plush toy close to his chest. He clasps his hands over his ears when the thunder roars. I don't notice the storm outside until that moment. The lightning cracks and the thunder roars once more.

Jacob comes running across the room and clutches onto our mother's waist. He shakes and whimpers in her arms. The lightning flashes again and he buries his face in our mother's shirt. She picks him up and sits him between me and her on my bed. Thunder roars in a clamor. He jumps and grips on to her waist again.

"Would you like to sleep in my room, Jacob?" She strokes his back softly.

He looks up at her, then turns his head to me. He hops up and stands on top of the bed and without warning falls into my arms. I catch him stiffly in my arms. He coils his small arms around me. I blink my eyes a couple of times before a smile sets in. I wrap one arm around him and pat his hair with the other.

His warm rosy cheek presses cozily against my t-shirt on my chest. Without turning his head, he answers mom's question.

"I want to sleep in Aiden's room." He quickly jumps off me and scampers to the ladder at the foot of the bed. Jacob begins climbing to the top bunk the bed. I slept in a bunk bed for the very purpose of when Jacob would want to sleep in my room with me.

Mom watches him climb with a smile on her face. Jacob reaches the top and giggles as he ruffles the blankets.

"Alright then, go to bed, mister." Jacob shoots a thumbs up from over the edge of his top bunk. Mom chuckles at him then faces me again. She picks up my hands and grasps them in her own. Leaning in, she speaks quietly in my ear.

"Aiden, I am so sorry," she takes one hand and starts stroking the back of my head. "What I did was so awful, I'll never let myself forget."

"Mom,-"

"I won't," she whispers harshly. "I won't forget, I can't forget. It's something that lives with you and troubles you so much now. If I forget, it's like saying I don't care about how you feel and how much you distress."

"Mom, It's not your fault." I tell her. She sighs.

"I'm so glad that you think that, Aiden. But you can't deny fact. I'm sorry." She draws away quietly and looks directly into my eyes guiltily with a sad smile.

"Aiden, can you do something for me?" I look to her curious.

"What?"

"It'll be extremely difficult, but I know you can do it. Fight your fear." I look down at my lap away from her gaze.

"Aiden, please. I did everything I could to give your security, to make you feel safe and happy again. I got us to move far away from that man. He's not here to hurt you anymore."

"I know." I reply to her softly. He isn't here physically, but he's here mentally, and that is enough to torture my daily life.

"Aiden, wear whatever face you want, but know that I will always know how tormented you really feel on the inside." I look up at her, my mouth falling open. My lips opened and closed, but I couldn't words out of my mouth. Water starts to refill my eyes. She knew all along.

A heavy lump forms uncomfortably in my throat and my voice cracks as I speak.

"Mom-"

"I know it hurts you more than it hurts me, but please, don't let him control your life like this, Aiden, please." I nod with tears sorrowfully falling down my cheeks and my lips pressing tightly together to keep in my cry.

"Remember, you said you would be a good older brother for Jacob, Aiden. You can't let him see you like this all the time. You need to protect him. You need to be there for him and give him what you never got... a normal childhood." I nod in understanding. She's right. Jacob wasn't there when that monster defiled me. He wasn't born. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he wasn't a part of the family.

Jacob was adopted after we moved away from California, the home of that demon. He's not related to me by blood, which is good. He doesn't carry filthy blood in his veins like I do. When I look at my little brother I don't see my face, I don't see his face, absolutely no resemblance,....which is good.

Jacob has the chance to grow up without knowing that man, unlike me. I had to protect that. Give him the life that was taken from me. The life I can never get back. My mother and Jacob, they're all I have, and they mean everything to me. I'll always protect that.

My mom rises from the bed and kisses my forehead. She leans over the top bunk and kisses Jacob as well. I lie flat on my back and slip the bed comforter over my body. My mother walks to the door and gives me one last apologetic look before she disappears from the room.

After she leaves, I turn my head forward and stare up at the bottom of my brother's bunk in the silence of the raging thunderstorm. Lightning flashes and thunder rumbles in close proximity.

"Aiden?" Jacob calls in a shaking voice.

"Yeah?"

"Are you- are you scared of the lightning sounds?" He asks in a frightened whisper. I chuckle.

"Jacob, it's going to be fine, okay?" I reassure him. "It's not the lightning that makes the sound, it's the thunder. Lightning just flashes, and it's really quick too. Blink and you miss it."

"Oh," he says in revelation. "Okay." Silence follows. Thunder roars again. I hear Jacob jump on his bed. I laugh quietly.

"Does the thunder scare you?" He speaks again.

"No," I laugh.

"Then... what are you afraid of?" My face flushes and something heavy lands in my stomach. The question echoes in my head. What are you afraid of?

My shoulders are tense and tightness fills my chest. My lips press together as I turn my body to the side and face the wall. I can't admit my fear, not verbally. It would be like giving in, and I don't want to yield, not to that man.

"Aiden?" Jacob calls again requesting an answer. I take a deep slow breath and close my eyes.

"Nothing." I answer him.

"Hmm?" He leans over the edge of his bed and looks down at me. I look to him and smile insincerely.

"I'm not afraid of anything," I lie flat to his face.

"Really? You're not afraid of anything?" He questions with his childlike innocence.

"Not a thing. As you get older, nothing scares you anymore," I look away from his face ashamed, and stare at the wall. "Nothing...." I whisper this to myself and my mouth tastes of a bitter poison.

I lied to the face of my brother, my younger brother, who I love so much. I'm a hypocrite. I've been afraid of the same fear since I was his age seven. I'm eighteen now, almost an adult, almost like my father. Pain strikes my chest and breathing turns into torture. I thought I could smile it off, but it hurts too much.

Eleven years of living in fear of one man, one monster. He permanently etched himself into my mind and onto my body. I can't forget him. I'm sorry mom, but I can't fight my fear.

My body trembles uncontrollably. I clutch myself tightly, hoping to stop the tremors. Jacob's voice freezes me in place.

"I want to be like that when I get older. Fearless, like you." He giggles. "That would be cool!" I turn and face him stupefied. He smiles back at me with bright eyes in a loving admiration.

"Jacob-" I whisper quietly. He doesn't hear and quickly disappears back to his bunk. I hide my face under the cover and mutter to myself.

"You don't want to be like me, Jacob. Please don't be like me. I'm an awful, dirty, lying, unclean person. Don't be like me."

The door swings open abruptly and light floods the room. I sit up and squint my eyes at the sudden change in lighting. My mother enters the bedroom nonchalantly. In one arm she holds a body pillow in the other, a blanket.

Jacob and I watch her confounded, as she throws the pillow onto the floor and lies on top of it. Our mother faces us with a smile, "Sleep tight, boys!" She pulls the blanket over herself and falls to the floor.

Jacob giggles, "Sleep tight, mom!" and does the same on his bed.

Once again in the silence of the dark room, I lay back down on my bed. I continue to stare blankly at the top bunk for several minutes until eventually sleep overtakes me like an irresistible spell.