It knew exactly how to freeze me. It knew exactly how to get into the parts of my mind I didn't want to touch and the things I didn't want to remember. 

Since I'm a stupid little bitch trapped in a perpetual cycle of anger and self-loathing, it worked perfectly on me. Like I was some sort of little puppet or porcelain doll in a china closet, I was trapped in another horrible moment in my past. Maybe it was disdain at my own anger at Ethan, or the way that parties make me feel, or the still-lingering effects of the earlier scuffle between Blanche and Rosie, but something made me feel like shit and like I would never get better.

I was trapped in a moment from a few months before. It was identical to something that happened months before that, and just last week, and three years ago, and when I was twelve.

In the memory, my father was yelling. He was screaming his thin lips off about some grade I got. That time, it was because of an eighty-seven percent on a history exam. Before, it was because of something stupid I had said at a church event. After, it was the same: taking a little too long in the bathroom at a youth group function. Every time, it was something little that embarrassed him.

He was screaming in my head about how I was a disappointment, about how he was surprised I even had friends because I was so stupid, so annoying, so unlovable. His face was red like he was about to have a heart attack. Mom was no help. She just sat on the couch, looking at something on her computer. Her face was made up and composed like nothing was happening near her. Thank goodness Cash and Naomi weren't home yet, right? Thank god they couldn't hear anything that was happening, right?

I was stuck in this moment of weakness, of watching myself watch myself watch my father screaming, of the reflection of my own blank face in his glistening, perfectly white-teeth. I knew where the memory went next. That time, he didn't stop at yelling, or at putting his fingers in my face, or at getting mad when I flinched at every gesticulation. He didn't stop at punching the wall or the side of his big black recliner in the middle of the fucking living room. I could remember the feeling of his palm across my face, of my nose cracking, of blood flowing freely down my face, gathering in my philtrum, breaching my lips and my teeth. I remember the taste of blood on my tongue as I bit down on it and he hit me again, from the opposite direction. I remember the way my neck popped, and how that made him angrier.

It didn't leave marks, so it wasn't abuse, right? Right? So, in theory, I was fine. I turned out okay. It didn't affect me, not in any lasting way. Right? And he was correct about everything. I was worthless. I was unlovable. Even in real life, in the middle of the fight with the Eye For An Eye, I could feel and understand that. Rationally, I knew it wasn't true, but it was hard not to feel it.

Rationally, I also knew that the memory didn't end there. After all of Dad's yelling was over, I was hunched over the bathroom sink, trying pinch the bridge of my nose and get it to stop bleeding without using up Mom's precious fucking toilet paper. Apparently, I made the mistake of leaving the door open, and Cash came home and saw the state of me. He saw the tears and knew it wasn't just, in his words, "a normal stupid nosebleed because you don't drink enough water when you're not marching." After shooing away Naomi (who has never had to bear the brunt of Dad's anger or Mom's coldness, thank god), he helped me out. He didn't reassure me with words, but with his presence and with a point-by-point recollection of someone's playthrough of one of those Five Nights At Freddy's games. He used to watch that bullshit on the computers in the school library back when we were in junior high together, back when it was easier to be alive, back when things were fucked up but we didn't know they were fucked up. It's stupid, that that was what made me happier.

But it was. It was a hand on my shoulder and a sorrowful grin. It was the knowledge that someone knew exactly what was happening to me and, while he couldn't make it better, he could make it easier just by knowing about it. The bond of a shared shattered childhood was hard to break. (And, yet, somehow, I had broken it. Just a little, I had broken it.)

The Eye For An Eye very clearly didn't want me to remember the good and bittersweet parts of anything, because I was stuck in the endless feeling of my fathers palm on my face.

In real life, in the reality where I was supposed to be fighting a monster instead of whatever bullshit emotions live inside of me, I could still see what was happening around me. It was like the memory that was paralyzing me was playing in the back half of my brain. I was still capable of watching everything in front of me and on the periphery of my vision. If my own body was doing anything, I wasn't aware of it. All I knew was my memory, my quick, shallow breathing, and everything happening outside of me.

I could still see Ethan frantically flipping through the pages of his book, trying to find the relevant pages. I could still see Blanche, glowing hands and all, swipe at the neck of America's least favorite monster, and I could see her hands connecting with it, burning the dead flesh; I could see the Eye For An Eye kick her, sending her crashing into a tree. I could see the torn skin on the back of her forearms, open and bloodless.

Despite everything happening in my mind, I could still see Willa, in all her acrobatic glory, charging at the Eye For An Eye with a glass bottle in hand. The Eye For An Eye dwarfed her, and it struck me just how small Willa really was. She was shorter than me, after all. I had seen Cash carrying her on his back in the halls. It just hadn't sunk in until now, when I could see this green-gray thing looming over her, with her hands and a glass bottle in one of the few tender parts of its body.

I snapped myself out of it. My mind was absolutely cluttered with rage and fear, but I was cognizant of the fact that my left hand was holding a shard of glass just over my right wrist, as if that would do anything to hurt me. That wasn't my fault. It was just a side effect of existing with this stupid bitch-ass monster on the earth.

I tossed the glass to the side and took off running toward the Eye For An Eye. Somehow, I was able to vault myself onto its back, where I wrapped my legs around its torso and my hands around its neck. With my hands getting tighter around it, I screamed, "You fucking bitch! Don't remind me of my stupid dad! We all know he doesn't like me! It's not a fucking secret!"

I was surprised both by how bony it was and by how close Willa was to me. The fear was evident in her eyes as I choked this thing out and she pulled the bottle out of it. Black blood, thick and warm and pungent, spilled and splashed onto both of us. She seemed taken aback. I tried not to seem fazed, and to seem like I was pure anger. That was better than admitting I had any actual feelings.

Sandy, who was awake and standing up in the bush now, seemed confused about what to do. "What-- What's going on?" she asked, fear warbling in her voice like a bird in a cage.

Willa seems to catch her drift. She whirls around, taking black blood with her as she does. "We'll explain later, I promise. Either start running or fight!"

So Sandy started running faster than anyone had ever seen her go before. She was the kind of girl who would walk laps in her pajama pants rather than running the mile or playing basketball in gym class. Now, though, she was running like her life depended on it. (It did.)

I swung around the Eye For An Eye's neck like I was lowering myself from the monkey bars and landed on the ground between it and Willa. I'm not sure how I had that in me. I hate the monkey bars. They always give me blisters. I used to hang upside down from them, though, with one hand holding my shirt to my torso and the other hanging free.

My getting in the way wasn't enough to deter it from attacking Willa. With some level of determination, I was able to block its hands with my own, giving Willa enough room to run under and try to escape after Sandy. Since Willa was out of the picture. It still tried to get at her, but I blocked that, too. I was getting better at this whole fighting thing, I decided. There was no sense in being humble.

One moment, it was there. The next, it wasn't. It melted into the ground, falling into a pile of parts and loose skin that the earth swallowed and spat back out right next to Sandy as she kept running. It looked back at me (or, at least, what I assumed was me), then at Sandy. She didn't have time to look it in the eyes. She just kept running.

To be fair, it didn't exactly have eyes. It had one eye, which was bloody, detached, slightly deflated, and leaking vitreous humor all over the place. The idea was still there, though.

I looked round to try to get a sense of what to do next. That was when I saw Willa, standing there, frozen like I had been just moments before. I considered staying there with her, trying to snap her out of it, but I decided that it was better to go after the thing that killed me. Maybe it was selfish of me not to stay and help. Maybe it wasn't. All I knew was that I had my mind on a million things, and this one thing was something I could actually do.

And, because I'm extra-selfish, compared to a normal person, I took the broken brown glass bottle from Willa's hands. While shoving its neck, finish, and shoulder into my back pocket, I whirled around and locked eyes with Ethan. "Hey, Ethan? Give me the way to kill this thing right the fuck now."

"I don't have it yet!" The panic in his voice was evident.

"Find it, then! Hurry it the fuck up!"

And I took off running, filled with anger, malice, and the intent to kill.