Chapter 6

"It's okay Elle... It's okay, you're safe, I'm right here," Jeff whispered in her ear, holding her tightly. "I'll be here as long as you need me to." He sat, with her arms wrapped around him and listening to her slowly decreasing sobs, for a long few minutes. In his mind he was trying to work out what to do; this situation was way over his head. He didn't even know what was really going on, but already he knew it was well past anything he knew how to handle.

After some time her sobs had subsided and her crying tapered off to just steady tears. She loosened her grip on Jeff, but didn't let go of him entirely, taking a deep breath and looking up into his face. "Thank you," she said, so softly that he almost had to read her lips to understand what she was trying to say. Jeff nodded slightly,

Jeff held her tightly, trying to get her to calm down. After a while her long, wracking sobs eased, to where she was just crying softly and she looked up at him with an unreadable expression on her face. Jeff gave her what he hoped was a caring smile.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, expecting her answer to be no, and knowing that if it were yes he wouldn't want to hear it, but he knew he had to.

"Want to? No, not at all... I think the only thing I want to do right now is drop dead... My entire world is about to fall apart, and I don't know what I'm going to do..." she said, beginning to get worked up again. She felt Jeff's hand on hers and he squeezed it gently. "But I guess I need to, since they're going to find out at the hospital anyways. I just don't know what I'm going to do..."

"Well, what you're going to do right now is take a few deep breaths and try to relax a little bit if you can."

Elle laughed at that, which made Jeff smile to himself. "I don't know what's going on Elle, but I'm not going to run away, I promise. I'll be here for you as long as you need me to be."

She smiled -- a real smile that time, albeit a haunted looking one, and wiped a tear from her eyes again, getting a little choked up. "I... I don't even know what to say to that Jeff... I don't know why you're still sitting here even trying, but it means more than you can imagine that you still are. I just don't know if you still will be when I get done telling you everything."

"I'm not going anywhere Elle, no matter what it is."

She signed and prayed that he was telling the truth. "What I started to say this morning was that I'm okay for the most part, at least Randy was alone last night... he isn't always." she started explaining, looking into his eyes to see if Jeff understood. All she saw was the same confusion that'd been there this morning.

She took another deep breath and continued, "My stepfather and I never got along all that well, he always seemed kind of distant for some reason, but I never could figure out why. After mom got sick he came close to just shutting down... When he wasn't taking care of her or spending time with her he was sitting in the dark crying, or watching sports on TV and seeming totally tuned out. I went up to him once when he was like that, to ask for some help on some schoolwork, and it was like he didn't even realize I was there. I talked to him for a couple of minutes before I realized that he wasn't hearing a word I was saying. It wasn't until I touched started pulling on his arm that he seemed to wake up and realize I was there. As mom got sicker and sicker, he spent more and more time like that. After the appointment when they found out that she was dying he spent most of the time that he wasn't sitting next to mom either zoned out or crying. It got to the point that I almost never talked to him unless mom was right there, because he wasn't home, even if he was sitting next to me. When she died I think he held himself together for me for the first year or so... we got through the funeral barely, and spent most of the next year clinging to each other like vines. He was my daddy, he was all I had, and I guess I reminded him of mom, so we just pulled closer together.

"It was a just after my twelfth birthday that he started drinking. I'd get home from school and he'd be sitting in the kitchen with a bottle, and when I'd try to talk to him he'd slur his words, or he'd stand up to put me to bed and be bumping into things. He was drunk of course, I know that now, but back then I didn't have a clue... I just knew that all of a sudden he went from being the daddy that had kept me going for over a year to being more like the one that spent so much time off in his own world when mom was sick again. I went crying to him about it a couple of times and things got better for a while, but then he'd start drinking more again and go into another 'out there' spell. For a while it went back and forth like that, maybe 6 months. Even when he wasn't drinking and all he seemed to be drifting away from me. We wouldn't talk like we had for years, he stopped reading me stories, just little things like that. I guess if I'd known what was going to happen in the end I probably would've just let him keep drifting, but I was 12, I didn't know anything. I just knew that I missed my daddy.

"After 6 months or so it got harder and harder to get him back. He'd get me off to school and usually make dinner, and sometimes he'd even still put me to bed, but other than that we'd almost never talk. He'd spend all kinds of time sitting in the kitchen with a bottle, or watching TV with that look in his eyes like he wasn't really there. It was about that time that I started growing up, too. Mom had talked to me about puberty and all before she died, so I'd known what to expect, but I'd never worried about it any. Then I noticed my chest starting to grow, and hair sprouting places that I'd never had any... By the time I turned 13 and got my period dad had totally changed... I told him, he gave me some money to go to the store and buy whatever I needed and then locked himself in his bedroom for the night. When I got home from school the next day and saw in there I saw more empty beer bottles than I'd ever seen in one place.

"A couple of days after that I said something to him about trying to stop drinking, or at least cut back, because he was starting to scare me... It seemed like there wasn't any of the daddy I remembered anymore. Not only didn't we really talk, but when he did say something to me he was always angry. He didn't talk to any of his old friends anymore, he seemed to have a new group of 'buddies' now, and I never felt comfortable around them. When I brought it up and tried to talk to him about it I got smacked in the face and tossed across the room, and told never to talk to him about his friends again, he was the adult, he could hang around with whoever he wanted. I went into my bedroom, curled up with a doll that mom had given me, and cried myself to sleep..." She continued, tears starting to pool in the corners of her eyes again.

Jeff shuddered visibly, taking a deep breath and trying to prepare himself for what by now he was almost certain would be coming next. He might have been a fairly sheltered teenager, but he wasn't totally clueless. He was well read, and didn't limit his reading to lighthearted children's books, and the story Elle was painting didn't take a psychic to guess where it was going. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, rubbing her shoulder and arm tenderly. "It's okay Elle, you don't have to go on..."

"Yes, I do... I have to get this out, I have to tell you... I have to tell someone, especially since I'm sure it's all going to come out at the hospital anyways, and I really need someone who won't freak out then..." she said, taking a deep breath and settling herself back into his hug. She continued, "after that he started hitting me more often. If I didn't do something he wanted, or I did something he didn't like instead of getting yelled at I'd get slapped, or punched, or whatnot. One night I got really fed up and said something back to him after he finished hitting me... I don't even remember what it was anymore, but I mouthed off, and it really pissed him off. He threw me across the room and told me to get my ass to bed. I remember being surprised at the time, because he'd beat me a lot worse than that before and here he was just sending me to bed... I guess I should've been more worried than surprised, all things considered. I woke up in the middle of the night when he grabbed my hands and tied them over my head... He knocked me in the face a couple of times and proceeded to tell me that since I kept mouthing off to him and costing him money he'd teach me a better way to use my mouth, and let me start earning my keep..." She started crying in earnest again then, hard enough that it was almost hard to understand what she was saying. "then he ripped my nightshirt off, pinned me to the bed, and told me that if I didn't do what he said he'd make sure that I wouldn't be able to talk, walk, or see. Then he got undressed and showed me what he meant about a better way to use my mouth... and that was just the start. For the next few days I wasn't allowed to wear clothes. I wasn't allowed to do anything really except use my mouth... and then my hands... and then other parts of myself. By the time he was worn out and I was allowed to go back to school it took me three days to stop bleeding, and things have just gotten worse since then... After a while I guess I just sort of got used to dealing with him, but then he'd do something new... He'd get bored with the regular sex and decide he wanted my ass, or his friends would come over to get drunk and party and he'd decide that I was going to be the entertainment... It was always something new."