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Lucy is on the beach.
Now, if she opens her eyes, that illusion will be shattered.
But that doesn't matter right now.
In this moment, she is five years old, lying on her towel. If she opens her eyes and looks to the left, she will see happy white-and purple cartoon unicorns dancing on the soft pastel pink of her favourite beach towel. If she looks to the right, she will see her mother relaxing on a fancy beach chair with a book in her hand; and close by, her father who will be building the epitome of sandcastles.
It will have started off as the two of them, of course, but in time she will have absconded to her towel with the sunglasses her mother bought her father for their fifth wedding anniversary. If she is to look forward, she will see the ocean waves falling softly against the sand. This is her favourite child memory, and she will see it when she opens her eyes.
So vivid is this memory in Lucy's mind that when she feels the hands on her shoulders, hoisting her from where she is lain in his trunk, she is almost able to convince herself that the hands belong to her father, and he is carrying her into the house from the car.
She is being carried into a house from a car, but it is all happening the wrong way. This man is not her father, and she is not being carried against her father's chest. She is draped across this man's right shoulder, held there by his right arm as it pins her thighs to his upper abdomen. She is milliseconds away from falling, though Lucy knows that he will not let her fall. It is so violating, yet simultaneously so intimate that she almost forgets to feel fear. She almost lets her guard down.
When he places her with heartbreaking care on a bed adorned by a granny-square quilt, she hardly thinks anything of it. To a third-person objective narrator, all they would see amongst this casual domesticity is a man—not a monster, a man—helping his partner with an evening routine of sorts, like relieving herself and brushing her teeth; interrupted by the obvious fact that she is unable to perform these tasks herself because he drugged her. This is Lucy's gift to her future self: whether she is forced to relive this series of events in her dreams or recall with disturbingly clear memory any one exhale, touch, or flexing of a hand, she will not do it objectively. She will not look in and see a kind man making love to the woman he adores, no matter how much she wants to. She will count every blink of his eyes, make note of every hyper-visible vein on the undersides of his wrists, calculate the intent behind every press of his lips and see all of it for what it is when stripped down to the most fundamental, most primal of actions: violence.
Lucy has already lied: she did not almost let her guard down. She did let her guard down, and she is not sure she will ever be able to forgive herself for this.
After, on a day far in the future when she believes herself to be healed, she will remember that she never wanted to kill him.
In time, she will make peace with it; her deviation from the response expected both of and by her, but she has not yet done so. In all the stories Lucy has heard, the perpetrators and victims she has encountered, one thing she has never been able to make sense of is why so many survivors never fight back, never even attempt to defend themselves. She is ashamed of how easily she is letting him damage her. She is infuriated by her lack of fury, however oxymoronic that may be. She does not want to kill him. She wants him to stop, desperately holds out hope that he will realize the magnitude of his actions and willingly cease them. Unfortunately, as Lucy has learned tonight, what she wants has nothing to do with what will inevitably take place.
But could she learn to want it?
Could she learn how to find pleasure in it?
It is extremely difficult to find pleasure in an action not intended to provide it.
The night does not pass quickly, but Lucy does not dissociate through any of it. She is there for every touch, every sound, every point of contact between skin and flesh. She may take no pleasure in his actions, but she refuses to close her eyes. If she closes her eyes, she knows that she will find some way to misconstrue the spirit of events. At least if she is present, at least if she is aware, she will remember him for what he is and who he is to her.
Lucy is on the beach.
Now, if she lets herself feel, that falsehood will be dismantled.
But that doesn't matter right now.
In this moment, she is five years old, lying on her towel. If she opens her clenched fists, fine white sand will pour out onto her stomach. If she shifts her feet ever so slightly forward, her toes will slip off the towel and find purchase in the sand. If she allows herself to feel, the warmth of the midday sun will soothe her and make her feel safe.
Of course, if she remains within full gaze of the sun, her skin will burn. She trusts her mother to call her back into the shade before this happens. If Lucy is not careful making sandcastles, her classmate said she will get sand somewhere she shouldn't and her skin will fall off. She trusts her father and mother to ensure she plays safely, to make her wash off if she gets too invested.
Lucy is so sure of this that when she first feels the warm cloth under her left breast, she is almost able to convince herself that the person holding it is one of her parents.
This fabrication crumbles when she feels the stinging scratch of the needle against her skin over, and over, and over again.
She considers giving up when she is forced to admit the meaning of the date freshly tattooed on her ribs.
She comes dangerously close to losing hope when the darkness closes in all around her, a continuous wall of metal discontent to make a sound.
And when it becomes an impossible ask to continue the relentless contraction and expansion of her lungs, she hears her grandmother singing to her.
With her very last breaths, she sings along.
ــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ
With her very first breaths, she inhales in a way that makes her feel as though she has just witnessed the birth of a star.
When she opens her eyes, she begins to cry.
Lucy is being held by a pair of arms, held against another person's body. This time, though, she doesn't feel violated or disturbed— nor does she want to lie to herself about what is really happening. This is how she knows she is safe.
As the adrenaline of coming back to life wears off and she regains clarity of vision, Lucy finds herself surrounded by the life she lived before, of the things she thought she knew in the form of people. Every last one of them is silent, perhaps waiting for her to speak.
Lucy looks up at the man holding her, a man she trusts, and says only seven words:
"I want to go to the beach."