Tank, page 5
I’m invincible.
I’m the girl who can’t be hurt.
Because I don’t feel a thing.
The sounds of the party filter down through the floorboards to my room. As much as my father tried to soundproof this space, it didn’t really work. I still hear him treading the boards above my head, and the dreaded thud of his boots on the stairs like a warning, not that it does me much good. These days I don’t even bother to put up a fight. It’s just easier now and done with much quicker if I let him finish and wait until he’s left the room before I break down.
This isn’t a regular party. It’s just him and a handful of “friends”, likely other sick fucks he met online. I can’t imagine he’d let anyone else in. This isn’t the first time he’s had other men over. Once there was even a woman here, but she just watched and took pictures while the others raped and hurt and touched me as though they had a right to. Some nights, my father doesn’t come home until early morning. And when he stumbles in, reeking of gin and sex, I think that maybe these people do the vile things that he does, offering up their children to monsters who abuse and punish and revel in their sickness as if it were something to be revelled in. I hate those nights—not because I’m left alone, but because I think of others—girls and boys my age and younger—having to live through the things that I do, and I want to die. Or I want to die more than usual.
I long for death. I fantasise about it the way other girls my age dream of kissing boys and magical first times, and what they’ll be when they grow up, and who they’ll be married to. I don’t dream of those things.
I don’t have nightmares, or terrors so vivid and real that I wake drenched in sweat and cry out for the comfort of some parental figure who isn’t there. My life is the nightmare, and when I sleep, I escape. I’m free. I dream soundly of Lochie, the boy who used to live across the road. I dream of the days we used to play in his tree house. I dream of big, faceless men who kill my father and dance with me in the ashes of his bones. Or I dream of nothing at all.
Waking is when the horror sets in. When my body aches and my insides crawl with the sharp stab of knowledge at being invaded yet again, of being taken and made the plaything for a sick dog who spreads his vitriol and leaves behind the stench of his particular kind of death on everything his mangy muzzle touches. That’s when the hate sets in. It floods through me until I’m consumed with it, until it settles inside my belly like a cold and heavy stone. That’s when I long to peel the skin from my body, to slough it like a snake, to be nothing more than rotting meat and flesh and bone, so putrid that no one would ever want to touch me. No one would want to hurt.
When he leaves for work, I scream. Sometimes for hours, but no one ever comes.
Where are the faceless men of my dreams? The ones who slay beasts and dance in the ashes of the fallen? They’re not here. They’ll never come because they don’t exist. Maybe that’s the real nightmare—that I’ll always be down here in this room, alone, save for visits by monsters offering meals, and schoolwork, and wicked touches that punish and bruise.
Maybe this is all there is. Hell on earth. Suffering and pain, and sick twisted guilt that turns my stomach like a rotting carcass left in the sun. And if that’s the case, I have to wonder where God and the angels went. Because surely this makes my father the devil.
Even though those men have been here for close to an hour and my hands have been trembling the entire time, it’s not until I hear the footsteps on the stairs that I start to shake from head to toe. My door is open; it’s rare, but I wasn’t fool enough to question it. He came down two hours earlier and collected me for bath time, as if I were seven years old still and not seventeen, as if I needed him to preside over my washing.
He’d washed my hair and carefully combed through the tangles, and then he’d begun dressing me in a pale pink baby-doll style dress, and all the while he’d peppered my skin here and there with kisses that felt like the burn of a brand.
I knew what that meant. I’d ridden his sick merry-go-round enough times before to know that the snacks and the bottles of booze I saw on the scarred wooden coffee table weren’t for him or me—they were for them. And so was I. A warm, compliant—for the most part—little girl, all wrapped up in pink bows.
Now, I steel my courage, and open my eyes as I hear that last footfall on the bottom step. My father fills the doorway, his large silhouette so commanding. “You comin’, or are you gonna hide down here all night?”
I don’t answer, because I’d really rather hide here waiting for the rest of my life than walk those stairs, with my leaden feet falling, like a traitor walking to the gallows. If I thought there was any hope of escaping, I’d follow him up the stairs and I’d just keep walking right out the door. But as my steps land heavy on the last stair, all daydreams of running flee when my father turns to me and snakes his arm around my waist, leading me over to the couch.
All the usual faces are here. I don’t know their names; they never use any, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t remember them even if they did tell me, by the time they’re done with me. And who would I tell? I never have a chance to leave, and outside of the man who raised me, these animals are the only other beings I see.
The one with the greasy shoulder-length hair licks the edge of the cigarette paper he’s holding. There’s a creepy smile on his face as he does this, as though he’s imagining licking my skin. The other man, the one with the horn-rimmed glasses, heavy pant pleats and the just as carefully pressed shirt, scares me more than Greasy-Hair-Guy, though. His touch is so much worse, so much more reverent than the others, and more frightening still is that he never says a word.
My father’s voice, chilling and devoid of feeling, breaks the silence. “We have a present for you, Ivy.”
I don’t want it. Take it back and let me go to my room.
Of course he doesn’t. He just tilts his head to the other man. The one I try not to look at, because if the other three men in this room are animals then this guy is the very worst of them. Built like a bear, with tanned pockmarked skin—as if he works outside and suffers adult acne—shorn hair, and the most horrifying soulless black eyes I’ve ever seen.
He grins, a gap-filled crocodile grin, as though he’s both proud to be the bearer of whatever horrible gift they have in mind for me and covetous of it. He produces a tiny clear packet. Inside, gathered at the bottom is an off-white granulated powder. He flicks the bag back and forth with his finger, shaking all the loose dust back down and then he opens it and tips a little out onto a spoon that rests on the coffee table. There’s a lit candle nearby, adding to the dimness and the morbid intimacy of the room, as if they were trying to soften the things they do to me by not using the overhead florescent lighting.
I watch on with dread as he mixes the powder with a liquid and holds the spoon over a flame, and for a brief moment I think he’s going to brand me with the metal, but then my blood turns cold in my veins as I see him lift a needle and suction up all of the cloudy fluid.
He stands, and my whole body screams at me to run, but I’m too late. My father is there holding me down while the other man, the one who never speaks, ties his belt tight around my skinny arm until my flesh is pinched between the leather, and I can feel the terrible strength in his hands. I kick and fight, and I glare up at the silent one, because somehow this betrayal is made that much worse by his cold stoic face looming over me. I wonder how many girls he’s done this too, how many children he’s strangled the life out of while his face remained unmoved. There’s not even the barest hint of pleasure or pride in what he’s doing, just a nothingness and a void of humanity reflected back at me from his ice blue eyes. That’s what I stare at—the nothingness in his gaze as the needle pricks my skin. The jab is hard, and I feel the smallest trickle of blood escape and run down my arm, and then the room spins. The pain is gone. I itch, but I don’t scratch. I’m buzzing. I’m weightless. I’m free.
When I wake, I’m no longer weightless. My limbs are leaden and every muscle in my body aches. There’s a tightness in my chest, as though a great weight has been placed upon it.
I open and shut my eyes several times before I’m able to focus, and I find myself not in my room like I first expected, but in the lounge room. Alone. My legs tremble as I stand. The ache in my lower abdomen throbs, and when I glance down I see not just a little blood smeared between my legs, but I’m covered in it, ankle to upper thigh.
My head spins and a myriad of images slam into me from the previous night, but only one resounds in my skull like the clanging of church bells. The one with black eyes had a knife. Not a big hunting knife; he was more careful than that. A black-handled Swiss Army knife, and he knew how to use it well. He’d waited until last, until the others had had their fill. He told them he was “ensuring that I didn’t run out of juice”, but I doubt any of them cared enough to pay either of us much attention.
My father had shot up in front of me before hitting me again with the same needle. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours after the first. And just like the first time, all my worries had faded, ripped away by the pull of the drug as it flowed through my veins once more.
Each step I take now is heavy. The ache becomes an all-out throbbing pain, and there is fresh blood between my legs. When I reach the front door, I’m barely standing. It’s not locked, which surprises me, and I’m blinded by light as I pull it back and step naked out onto the front porch. Everything is gleaming and shiny: green grass and shrubs shot through with blue sky, and a bright yellow sun lighting the world on fire before me. At the house across the street, a neighbour waters his hedges. His back is to me, and I lift my arm to get his attention as I step off the ledge. My legs give out. The last thing I see before I fall is my father’s face as he blocks my body from view of the neighbour. I throw up my hands to ward him away. They’re covered in blood. He bundles me up in his arms and I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. And then my brief glimpse of the outside world is ripped away with the slamming of our front door. The pain finally becomes too much for my tired body to bear.
I slip away, and when I wake again, fevered and writhing in agony, screaming and calling out for death, the jab of the needle in my arm and the liquid injected into my veins is the only solace I find.
When I wake, my cock is rock hard and my whole body throbs with the need to come. Ivy isn’t around, but her scent is on my pillow because she’s spent the last two nights in my bed, and she smells so fuckin’ good. I didn’t have time to buy her any of that girly shit, so she’s been using my generic shampoo and sandalwood soap. She smells like me and that prospect excites me a little too much. I hear her out in the kitchen, bangin’ pots and pans, and I smile, thinkin’ about her out there cookin’ up breakfast for the two of us. It’s nice havin’ a woman in my kitchen, in my bed. Even a fuckin’ detoxing junkie.
I slide my hands over my chest and down my stomach. Gripping my dick in one hand, I stroke it, hard, and I close my eyes. I think about propping her up on the kitchen bench and eating her out for breakfast. Spitting in my palm, I slide it over the head, mixing the fluid with the pre-cum and relishing in the wetness of my calloused hand. I tug at my balls in an effort to stop the fuckers from shrinking up inside my abdomen. I quicken the pace, milking my cock, imagining it’s her sweet cunt sliding up and down the length of me.
My orgasm smacks into me. Cum shoots out of my cock and lands on my stomach, running over the side of my oblique and staining the bed sheet.
I glance over at the door. Ivy’s cheeks are pink. Her eyes are hungry, her mouth forms a cherry-lipped “O” and her gaze follows the line of cum dripping off my side onto the bed.
“You wanna come lick it up, darlin’?”
She scowls and narrows her eyes on my face. “We’re out of coffee,” she snaps and saunters away, her hips swaying rhythmically. Fuckin’ tease.
Her words sink in. Fuck. I’m gonna have to make a run to the store, which means dragging her with me. That or leaving her here by herself, but I don’t know for certain that she won’t try and make a run for it. And I sure as shit ain’t going to take her back to the clubhouse until I have a few more things sorted with the boys, and I know that she’s in a better place. I throw back the covers and stalk across the room, running the shower and stepping beneath the spray. Hot water needles my back, and I let it wash away the sticky cum covering my stomach. I’d like to coat her in it, mark her body as mine and carry on with all that alpha bullshit that most men get fuckin’ hard-ons for, but that would lead us right back to square one.
Life was so much fuckin’ easier when Ivy was high, moonin’ over Kick, and came to my bed when she wanted to be used. Now it’s all twisted as fuck.
I dry myself off and throw on a pair of jeans, running my hands over my hair to shake off the moisture, and then I head down the hall. Ivy’s sitting on my couch dressed only in the T-shirt and panties she wore to bed last night as she spoons cereal into her mouth. I glance over at the kitchen island and notice she’s left out the cereal and the milk, and that breakfast I thought she was cooking for us hasn’t happened.
“Where the fuck’s breakfast?” I say, because apparently I appreciate the idea of having my balls cut off by an angry junkie. She just glares at me. And I roll my eyes, because I know breakfast isn’t going to make itself, and Ivy sure as fuck isn’t going to make it either. I glance at the shitty cereal box and turn my nose up at the fruity rings of fuck knows what. I can’t handle that much sugar this early in the morning.
Ivy stands, draining the rest of the milk from her bowl, and my cock goes from flaccid to rock hard in zero-point-five.
“You gotta put some fuckin’ clothes on, darlin’! You can’t be walkin’ around my house in next to nothin’.”
“I thought you preferred me in next to nothing,” she snidely whispers, and I grab her hand as she passes and pull her into me, sending her bowl clattering to the floor with a dull thud where it shatters at our feet. I ignore the mess and yank her back against my body, grinding my erection against her arse.
“I prefer you bent over with my dick balls’ deep inside your hot little snatch, darlin’,” I hiss. “And all this pretendin’ you’re doin’ is gonna go south real fuckin’ fast if you keep testin’ my patience, you little prick tease.”
She tries to shrug out of my grasp but I hold her firmly. I slide one hand over those sweet little cotton panties and feel the wetness soaking through the fabric. I smile against her skin and groan, licking and sucking my way up her neck to her earlobe, snagging it between my teeth. Shoving her panties aside, I push my fingers into her. She lets out a small cry and I thrust them deeper. Her moans become more vocal as I stroke her and she demands more, harder, faster. I pause, wanting to try something I never have with her.
I don’t know much about her past. I don’t know the man she called Daddy, the man who was supposed to protect her and didn’t. The man who broke her before anyone else ever had a chance to show her that what he did isn’t how it had to be.
Ivy likes control. She pushes herself to the limit; she likes to be used up. She wants to be hurt, and we’ve all just been happy to go along with it, because that’s the way she controls what happens to her—that’s the way she deals with what that sick fuck of a father did to her, and how it affected her. But what if someone showed her another side? What if she could get off without being hurt?
She’s not struggling anymore, and with my free hand I slide her panties down over her hips, and slowly remove my fingers from inside her.
“What are you doing?” she hisses. “I said harder.”
“See, here’s the thing, Warrior Princess. I don’t like bitches tellin’ me what to do,” I say, and I glide my fingertips over her clit, so softly she tries to squeeze her legs closed.
“Don’t.”
“There you go again, runnin’ that pretty mouth. You’re in my house now, Warrior Princess, and I rule here.”
“Fuck you, Tank. Misogynistic bastard.”
“No, Ivy, fuck you,” I say, gently rubbing her clit. I slide my fingers through her slick flesh, and circle that sweet little nub of nerve endings. She gasps and tries to twist away, but I wrap one arm firmly around her waist and crush her to me.
“Let me go.”
“Do you know how fucking beautiful you are? How hot you make me?” I demand, and she thrashes.
“Shut up. Let me go.”
“Honestly, I’m thinkin’ I might just keep you here. You look good in my kitchen not wearing panties. You look good in my bed, Ivy. I thought of you this morning when I fucked my hand. I thought of you, of taking you slowly in my bed, in this kitchen, on that couch. I thought of laying you down on the rug in front of the fireplace. Your bare body stretched beneath me while I drive slowly into you.” I’m still seated firmly inside my jeans but that doesn’t mean shit when I thrust against her arse. Her flesh is soft and pliable, and rubbing my jean-clad cock against it feels just as good as my hand did half an hour ago.
“Stop it. You’re hurting me.”
“No. I’m not. I’m doing just the opposite, but you don’t know how to deal with that.”
Her legs quake and her whole body trembles. She lashes out at me, elbowing me in the ribs as she screams, and her slick pussy submits to the demands placed upon it. She comes hard and fast against my hands and I rub her clit long after the last of her orgasm rocks through her, forcing her to come again.
“It doesn’t have to hurt to feel good, darlin’,” I whisper into her ear.
She sobs and doubles over, yanking my hand from between her legs as she crouches down onto the floor. Her head is bent low and her tears decorate my floorboards. I stand and watch for a minute, mesmerised by the broken woman before me. Crying isn’t a new thing for Ivy after she comes, and usually I can’t stomach that shit, because I know she’s thinking about all the fucked up things her father did to her. I know that’s all she sees when anyone fucks her, but this is different. This feels right in a way. I reach out and stroke her hair, but she flinches and bats at my hands.
