Jake raised his hands in a feeble attempt to protect his head as Stacy let her fists rain down upon him. Blood already was dripping from the corner of his lips, the result of a tooth being stabbed into the soft, fleshy part inside his mouth. He did not scream, or cry out, or even sob, though his body was protesting to the abuse being hurled upon him. It hurt- oh GOD it hurt. Mental screams ripped though his body even as Stacy did. Finally, just when he thought he would break, the beating eased, and he was alone.

He covered his eyes, breathing heavily, leaning against his bed. He hated it when Stacy beat him in his own room. It took him a while to get the bloodstains out of the covers. He didn’t move until he heard the TV downstairs click on, and loud voices streamed down the stairwell. Stacy was watching the TV. Good. That meant she was done with him for the night.

Jake crawled onto the bed, groping blindly for the towel he always kept nearby for just these occasions. It was mottled with blood, old blood from days and months and years ago. He rubbed the blood from his mouth and then hid the towel again. Stacy would be furious if she learned that he didn’t stay bloodied up. If only he could get some ice. But that would require creeping past Stacy, and that would make him risk another beating. He just wouldn’t go to school tomorrow. Then the teachers wouldn’t ask him embarrassing questions about where all the bruises came from. He wouldn’t have to make up the excuses- how many times could a person run into a door, anyway?

He lay in silence for a bit, letting his body throb and moan in agony. He, though, never made a sound. He didn’t want to provoke Stacy into coming downstairs again. His pillow was cool and soft under his boiling face. It felt so nice. He considered just sleeping the pain off, but he knew he would never fall asleep. And when he did fall asleep, his dreams were full of nightmares. Dreams of a dark creature chasing him, and he couldn’t get away, no matter how fast he ran. Dreams of beautiful women holding his hands, and then ripping his eyes out. The dreams... were terrifying.

Jake listened to his heartbeat. As a child, he had been fascinated with his heartbeat. Everyone had been sure he would become a doctor. He had been sure too. His father was a top-rate physician, after all, and Jake was an intelligent boy. He had been all set to pick up the scalpel when he was old enough, and then his mother had died. Brain tumor. His father, that top rate brain surgeon, had been the one operating on her when she died. Everything had fallen apart, but his father still had Stacy. Stacy, a pretty blond secretary his father had been fucking for years. They married. Jake had to wonder if his father hadn’t just let his mother die so he could marry that bitch.

Not like it mattered anymore. His father, that jackass, didn’t stay with Stacy very long. When he found out she was off screwing some other guy on the side, he had divorced her and left Jake to live with her. Probably a good thing too, since his father got killed in a car accident later that day. Jake found it pretty ironic. Still, he sometimes wished his father had taken him along on that car ride. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with Stacy.

Rubbing his good eye, Jake rolled off his bed and carefully slid the window open. He slipped out often after Stacy was through with him. Silently, he slid out the window and onto the grass beneath him. And then, he walked away from his house.

******

After Felicity’s father was through using her, he usually left her alone until the early hours before dawn. That always gave her time to do whatever she wanted. Usually she did homework. She was flunking two or three classes right now. The teachers never understood why. “Such a bright student”, they would say, “but she never does her homework, and she never raises her hand in class...”

She snorted as she pulled her pants on. If the teachers in her school really gave a damn about her, they’d maybe come over to her house and see what was wrong. Maybe they’d realize what a slimeball her father really was, instead of this great politician who was really concerned about how people felt. Maybe they’d realize that ever since Felicity’s mom had stopped sleeping with him, he’d turned to her for his sexual needs. Ever since she was eight. A ripple of disgust slid up her spine. She hated that damn man.

No homework, she decided. She couldn’t do math equations now, not after... not after. Still, being idle frustrated Felicity. She couldn’t bear just lying on her bed. When she was younger, she had loved books. She had enjoyed slipping away into their make believe world and pretending she was the heroine. The heroine had all these problems and dilemmas, but by the end of the book, you could always tell things would work out for her. And then Felicity had read a book where the heroine ended up shooting herself. That was not a fairy tale ending. The problems weren’t resolved. It left a sense of incompletion. It wasn’t fair. Felicity stopped reading after that.

When she was eleven, her favorite form of entertainment was to draw. She wasn’t the greatest artist in the world, but she knew what she was doing, part of the time. Her mother was thrilled that she had gotten a new hobby and signed her up for all these art classes. Felicity had loved them, and her artworks had been big and beautiful. For a while, her father had stopped using her. And then one night, he came home and tried to kiss his wife, and she had backed away. The abuse had started all over again. Felicity’s paintings became skewed, disorderly, full of dark colors and anger. Her mom withdrew her from the classes under her father’s insistence. “No girl should paint about things like that,” her father had raged. The lessons stopped, the inspiration stopped, and so, Felicity stopped. Her father, though, did not stop. It became a ritual. He would come home, try to kiss his wife, and his wife would draw away from him. They would have a nice, normal dinner, and then daddy dearest would go upstairs with his darling daughter to “help her with her homework”. Mommy never knew that homework involved clothes off time. Mommy never checked in on her daughter. Mommy would go off to her friend’s house and gossip about what the other ladies in town were doing.

Felicity despised her mom.

She opened her window and slipped out. The room smelled of sex. She didn’t want to be reminded of what her father had done to her. Again.

***

Jake wandered aimless through the quiet town. It was a quiet town, and things got around. He found it amazing that he had never heard the rumors about his life. The people in the town liked to pay attention to made up stories that would “simply scandalize the neighbors!”, but would turn their eyes from the realities around them. They couldn’t take the truth. That was why they needed their gossip. It was all fictional, anyway. Most of it. It was all about sordid affairs between this neighbor and that neighbor, and who was suing who, and did you hear that so-and-so was stealing cable? It was so boring, and so fake.

Jake supposed that they needed it, though. The women who spread the rumors had no lives of their own, or at least, no lives that they wanted to recognize. They would ignore the rumors about their own husbands and continue to cook dinner for them, acting as though nothing was wrong in their lives. They would make up excuses for their husband’s frequent business trips- even though their husbands had been unemployed for years. When they found another woman’s bra in the car, they’d laugh and say that their husband had obviously forgotten to bring in their new present. And when they were alone, they’d cry and rave at the heaven’s. Why couldn’t he love her and only her? Why did he feel this need to love the other women in the way that he had never loved them. In the light of day, though, in front of the people of town, they’d smile and laugh, while screaming inside.

The men weren’t much better. As their wives went through twelve packs everyday, they’d just laugh and say that... it was for their knitting circle, that was all. Boy, those women sure loved a cold one! And then they’d laugh, a sort of forced laugh that no one really believed, because how many laughs sounded as though they were choking on their tears? Their wives would turn yellow and spend days in front of the TV. They watched soaps, or sometimes the home shopping network. The men would run around trying to get more and more jobs, just so they could pay off their credit card bills each month. They’d silently curse their wives habits, but deep down, they were cursing themselves for not having the balls to try to help their wives. They’d just stand by and watch as the woman they loved wasted away and drank herself into an early grave.

Jake hated it. He hated the way that people never tried to help each other out. They were a selfish community, to concerned about social appearances to realize that they needed help. What was worse, they were hurting their children more than they were hurting themselves. Their children suffered under the hands of their parents who grew angry at their spouse, and couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to them. So they were screamed at, punished, and- in the case of some households- hit into submission. The parents were creating another generation of themselves. It was wrong.

He wandered aimlessly before reaching the place he really wanted to go. The park had always been his favorite place to be when he was young. The grass always seemed more lush there, and the swings were more fun than the one he had in his backyard. The stars were more beautiful from the park. Everything was more beautiful at the park. Life seemed all right, and normal, and so perfect when he was at the park. He especially liked the lake. You couldn’t reach it from the park, but their was this little overhang bridge, and if you stood on it, you could look down and see the dark, ebony waters swirling away in their intricate patterns, undisturbed by the pain of others.

He headed straight for the bridge.

***

Felicity didn’t quite know where she was going. She had never snuck out before. She had always been the good girl, unlike her older sister. Her older sister, Molly, had gotten involved with drugs when she was about twelve, and Felicity was eight. It made sense. Felicity was pretty sure she wasn’t the only one in the family that was raped each night. Her father had to spend those couple of hours somewhere. She had never listened to the sounds coming from Molly’s room, but now that she was older, she understood the small screams of pain. Molly hadn’t done what Felicity had done, by just pretending it wasn’t happening and that it was all a bad dream. No, she had tried to run from the pain by burying it under other things, and for Molly, the other things had been drugs.

At first it was only one joint. One stupid, insignificant joint. Molly had vowed she would never try drugs again, because the joint hadn’t done much for her. But a month later, Felicity had found more than just one joint. She found, under her sister’s mattress, marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, and some stuff that Felicity didn’t even know about. She never told anyone. Like her, Molly needed some way to escape the pain. Apparently, if she got high before their father came in for his... pleasures... it would let her not even feel like she was truly there.

Molly ran away from home when Felicity was twelve. She didn’t know what had happened to her sister.

She wondered if the people in town realized what a problem drugs were becoming in their town. A few years ago, you could have said marijuana and people would have asked if that was the newest band. Now, if you said it, people would start digging through their backpacks and purses and pull out bags full and offer you some. Dealing drugs was how a lot of people got money. They’d tell their parents they had a job at the local 7-11, and then package up all their drugs and go out to some street corner. It was a small town, sure, but it had a lot of street corners.

Felicity never took drugs. She didn’t drink, or smoke, or sell herself. She was your classic good girl type. Other than the fact that she probably going to flunk her senior year, she never did anything wrong. She cleaned the house whenever she had a chance to escape from her father long enough. She made her own lunch, and she had held a steady job at the mall until her father had decided that she didn’t need a job, that she would never have to work a day in her life. And Felicity cooked.

Her and her mom would spend hours on weekends just cooking away, making cakes and difficult dinners and generally just enjoying themselves. They got in flour fights and then would have to go get the vacuum cleaner to get rid of the excess flour that was on the floor. They would have small contests to see who could crack an egg the cleanest. When Felicity was young, she heard the term “white of the egg” in a recipe book, and instead of putting the actual white of the egg into the bowl, had put in the eggshell. In her mind, at that time, the only part of the egg that was white was the eggshell, and that had to be what the book meant. Thankfully, her mom had realized what she had been trying to do before the mixture went into the oven, and they just threw it out and no one ever ate it. Felicity had been in tears, and her mom had bent down, given her a hug, and promised it could be their little secret. Felicity had never loved her mom more than in that moment.

Felicity realized that she was near the park. The park had never been her favorite place when she was young, though she imagined it was just because she hated the kids. They picked on her just because she was the mayor’s daughter. As if it was her fault. Felicity would have given anything to be someone else’s daughter, anyone else’s if it would just get her away from the house. Her friend, Christina, had offered once to let her stay at their house, but she hadn’t the nerve to accept. If she had gone, she would have had to explain why she had left her house.

Felicity wanted to see the water. So she headed for the bridge.

***

Jake looked up when he heard someone approaching, terrified that it was Stacy come to take him home and beat him again. He nearly ran when he saw it was a female, but even in the darkness he could tell that the person approaching was not a blond and not tall enough to be Stacy. He remained still, watching the person approaching. He hoped they would go away- the questions about why his face was so beat up would just embarrass him. Lying to a teacher was very straightforward, because he knew they would never ask anything other than where he got the bruises. It was their job, and they only had to ask that one question. A stranger, though, might go further. Though, Jake thought cynically, a stranger in this town might not even ask. It wasn’t their business, so why should they care?

Upon closer inspection, he realized it was a girl, probably about his age. She was a few inches shorter than him, maybe only standing at 5’5 or something. She had a pretty face, though she didn’t wear it with confidence. She walked as though she was ashamed of her beauty, like it was a terrible curse she had been burdened with. Jake wondered why. If he was as handsome as she was beautiful, he would walk tall and proud and flaunt his face to the world. The girl looked wounded, like a lovely doe that had been hit by a car and dragged itself off the highway. Jake had once hit a doe. He had cried for hours. He hoped that whoever hit this doe was suffering.

“Hey,” he said softly. The doe jumped and stared at him. She really was a doe- she looked just like she had been caught in his highbeams. He saw her shift slightly, and realized she was about to run. “Hey, hey there. I don’t bite.”

The doe stared at him for a few moments, and an unearthly silence descended over them. Jake hoped he hadn’t scared her too badly. Finally, she spoke, in a pretty little voice so meek it was hard to hear her over the silence. “It’s not your bite I’m worried about.”

Jake laughed, gently so he didn’t scare her. “I don’t do anything other than sit anyway, so you don’t have anything to worry about. What are you doing out here so late?” he questioned. The doe twitched again. He hadn’t won her trust yet. That was ok, he supposed. Winning trust from wounded animals was hard. You had to let them learn that you weren’t going to hit them. Jake wondered if somebody hit this girl, but banished the thought. She was too pretty. Jake would have recognized the signs of physical abuse.

The doe stopped twitching, but she still looked a bit uneasy in his presence. Jake studied her. Big eyes that reflected the moonlight in them, making them look like vast pools of sorrow. He didn’t even need to ask what she was doing out. She was escaping whatever hell she lived in.

***

Felicity hadn’t even noticed the boy sitting on the railing until he called out to her. She looked up at him, terrified. Was he a drug dealer? Some drunk stumbling about town? Or was he some guy who thought she was a prostitute? She didn’t want to have to deal with yet another sex addict on that night. She had left home to escape the sex, not to run into more of it. The boy must have sensed her discomfort, because he raised two big hands out, as though showing he had no gun, and told her that he did not bite. Felicity barely noticed his words, she was busy staring past him, at the lake that was below him. She wanted to climb onto that bridge’s railing and rest there, underneath the blanket of stars and just dream the world away. A night without responsibility to her father was all she wanted. She didn’t want to have to spread her legs that night and accept him. She wanted to rest, have a rest without worrying about the next day- or rather, the next night. She stared past the boy, but realized slowly that he was talking to her.

“It’s not your bite I’m worried about,” she replied quietly, truthfully. The boy laughed. He had a nice laugh, pleasant to listen to. There were no undertones of cruelty in it. It wasn’t a laugh she was used to hearing. Her mom’s laugh was so incredibly fake nowadays that it sounded like she was coughing, and her father’s laugh told Felicity exactly what he intended to do to her later that night. The boy’s laugh was beautiful and different.

Though the boy was different, too... upon closer inspection, she realized that he had bruises all over his face and where his arms poked out of the T-shirt he wore, he had bruises too. Instantaneously she realized that he probably didn’t have the greatest life at home either. He looked to be her age, roughly. They probably went to the same school. They probably had the same teacher’s. They had probably used the same excuses at one point in time. They probably associated with the same group of people, probably sat in the same lunch room. And yet, Felicity had never seen this boy before in all her life. He was like her. He suffered in silence. He passed through the crowds without attracting attention. He drifted by, a silent specter, a shadow of what he once had been. A ghost.

The ghost asked her why she was out late. She merely looked at him, and she saw the understanding pass over his face. He recognized hell in another person when he saw it.

“May I sit?” she asked the ghost. The ghost smiled a crooked smile and gestured for her to come over. He dropped off the railing, a pair of old, falling apart sneakers whispering over the concrete as he spread a thin, ragged coat over the ground. He sat down on it, pressing his thin back up against the bars that prevented him from falling over the edge. Felicity took a hesitant step towards him, knowing that she probably shouldn’t trust him, even though he was scarily like her. A sharp chill blew over the park, and her doubts froze along with her flesh. She moved and sat down next to the ghost, and looked at him for permission to share body warmth. It was late autumn, and winter was moving in. She was cold.

***

Jake watched as the doe began to accept him. She remained silent, for the most part, but he understood. Sometimes, words weren’t what you needed to communicate. She asked, in the same meek voice, if she could sit. Jake didn’t really need her to ask. He knew she would come and join him, in her own time. He took off his coat, the same one he had been wearing since he was fourteen, and spread it out on the concrete. It would not cushion the ground, but it was a comforting gesture, he supposed. One that she might recognize as an act of kindness, not a threat. He sat down, still remaining curled up against the bars of the bridge. He could still hear the lake thrash all those feet below, screaming out to him, asking him to come down. The lake always asked him to join it, to join the unending song it sang. Jake wasn’t ready to sing it’s tune yet, though. Not yet. It was a complicated melody to learn, and Jake suspected that he would be singing the harmony. After all, Jake could never become the lake itself. It was natural that his tenor voice would have to add the harmony of sorrow to it.

The doe didn’t sit until a cold breeze flew over them. The winter winds were moving in. She darted over, her lithe frame curled up on his coat mere seconds after the cold wind. She looked at him, a question in her moonlit eyes, and Jake knew that she needed warmth. He welcomed her, and she curled up against him. She seemed a little reluctant to touch him, but her desire to be warm overcame whatever doubts she had in her mind. Her breathing was steady. Shallow, but steady. He could feel her heartbeat echoing through his skin. If he adjusted his hearing, he could practically hear the screaming in her mind. She was not a quiet thinker. Her scars were not visible, like his, but he could feel them through her shivering body. For the first time in years, Jake felt sympathy for someone other than himself. The doe did not disgust him. She was an innocent in the world, someone who never deserved whatever her hell was. She didn’t bring it upon herself, like so many of the men and women in town. She was a victim.

The children were always victims, he thought angrily. This was the byproduct of self-delusions. You had children being harmed by the adults, but nobody ever wanted to admit it. So you ended up getting some poor doe curled up in your lap, quivering, trying to pretend it’s only the cold that makes them shiver. And when they cried, they would say it was merely a speck of dust that had made it’s home it their eye. When they bled, it was only red paint that they spilled down their shirts or pants or faces. A constant lie to make sure that the people didn’t have to live outside their own little world. A lie to protect minds that shouldn’t be protected. It disgusted him.

The girl shifted, and he took a deep breath from pain. His ribs hurt, Stacy had hit him there one too many times. He probably had broken something. The girl glanced up at him, her crystalline eyes tense with fear. Had she hurt him? Yes, but she had not been the one to inflict the injuries in the first place. He gave her a pained smile, and she withdrew from him slightly. One of her hands reached up and touched his face, one of the scars that remained there, a long, white one. Her finger ran over it, and he saw tears form in her eyes. A shiver raced up his spine. When she pulled her hand away, crimson stained her ivory hands. He took her hand in his gently, and using his T-shirt, wiped it away. She looked at him questioningly, and he shook his head, the same crooked smile on his face as before.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed at him, as though scared to shatter the silence. Jake was glad she had not spoken. He preferred the silence. If the silence broke, the questions might come, and Jake didn’t want to have to explain. He had a feeling, though, that the girl didn’t want to hear the questions either. So the silence would remain.

***

The ghost had welcomed her, and she had pressed her body into him. Not the way that she did with her father. No, she did not give him her body, but rather, she gave him her soul. The ghost was merely a stranger, and she would never see him again. There was no point in withholding herself, especially when he probably understood the same pain. Perhaps not the same, she reflected, but pain nonetheless. Pain was universal. Everyone recognized it, everyone experienced it. She had once heard someone say that music was the universal language. Another time, she had heard someone say that math was the universal language. She disagreed with both. Music and math were not something that everyone recognized and were involved in. But pain, the unquenchable agony that drenched the soul, that was something that everyone recognized. Everyone experienced pain, had survived through pain, or had not. Even the happiest person in the world suffered. Pain was the universal language. You merely had to suffer to be human.

Felicity would have preferred to remain inhuman, if it would get rid of the pain. She would have preferred detachment from the world. She would have preferred to be a tree, or a rock, or even to have not existed at all, if only it would remove her from hurt. She longed for oblivion. A darkness so unending that you couldn’t even imagine it. It would cover her completely, a jacket, a barrier. Protection.

She shifted slightly, trying to get more comfortable, but the ghost, the boy gasped in pain under her movements. She looked up at him, startled and afraid she had hurt him. Had she hit a tender spot? Or was he just sensitive? He smiled that crooked smile at her, and shook his head slightly. An injury, then, but not one she had caused. She was almost relieved, but she removed her weight from him somewhat. She didn’t want to harm him. The ghost had been gracious to her. Repayment through pain didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

In the cool moonlight she saw white streaks on his face. Hesitantly, she reached up a hand and touched one such white streak. It was a scar. Was he hit? Beaten at home? Or was this the result of some school bully? Or even a car accident? Felicity didn’t know the circumstances. She had never met the ghost before, she did not know if he was picked on at school. She doubted it, though, just because he seemed like the unnoticed type. At home, then. It made sense. Fresh blood remained on his face. When she drew back her hand, blood stained her fingertips. She stared at it, horrified. Who would do that to a child? Before she could focus on it much longer, the ghost had taken her hand in his. His hands were gentle, loving. Not the rough, excruciating “love” her father gave her, but rather, a love she had never experienced before. He cared about her, she could feel it. It was amazing, really, since they had known each other for only five minutes, if that. It was love shared through mutual suffering. He wiped the blood off her hands and returned his hands to himself.

Sorrow rose in her, a billowing cloud from the pit of her stomach. Nobody deserved what the ghost had gotten. She felt tears pricking her eyes, and realized they had been there since she had touched his face. They were ready to pool over, but she held them in.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed, and her soul wept.

***

Jake stared at her, through her, deep into her. He never wanted to return home. Stacy would just beat him again, and he would bleed. It was a never ending cycle. He didn’t even know why Stacy beat him. She had no reason. Was it because he was his father’s boy? Was she still bitter because his father had left her? He would much rather have spent his time with the girl sitting next to him. He wanted to learn about her, help her, and possibly even learn to love her. But he didn’t need to learn that. He already did.

Stacy, though, would be coming up to his room soon. If he wasn’t home, he would probably get twice the beating the next day. He regretted having to leave, but he stood up. The girl watched him, her eyes wide, tears still gleaming there. He smiled gently at her, and then knelt before her. Her pretty face stared back at his own scarred one. Beauty and the Beast, he reflected wryly. He hesitated, and then leaned over and kissed her cheek. The girl’s eyes widened even further, and he felt sure that her eyes would fall out of her face if she made them any wider. He began to walk away from her, but the girl caught his hand.

“Don’t go,” she whispered. His heart broke to hear the fear in her voice. But he had to, or more than his heart would be broken.

“If I don’t...” he trailed off. The girl glanced away, and then nodded. She stood and picked his coat up off the ground, holding it out to him.

“Here.”

Jake reached out his hand to take it, but stopped. No. He didn’t need it. He didn’t want it. The girl deserved it more than he did.

“Keep it. Remember. Dream,” he said. He walked away. He didn’t even know her name.

Felicity curled up on her bed, tears streaming down her face. Damn her father. It wasn’t enough anymore that he got what he wanted after school. He had to take her out of school early and use her. Rape her. Take what was hers to give. And a month ago, he had forgotten to use his damn condoms, and now she was pregnant. Fucking pregnant with her father’s child. It was sick. Disgusting. She wasn’t going to bring any child into the world that was her father’s. She would rather shoot herself first. Pick up the damn guns he kept locked away and shoot every single last bullet into her stomach, just to make sure that creature didn’t live. But she couldn’t. Felicity had a morbid fear of guns, ever since four months ago, when some kid had taken a gun into school and shot three kids and then killed himself. According to the note he left, it was because he couldn’t take it anymore, and that anyone who knew him would understand. Felicity didn’t understand, but she hadn’t known him. She had checked. It wasn’t the ghost. But she had looked around the school and had never seen him. She still wore his coat, though, a reminder.

She buried her face into her pillow and screamed as loud as she could. Tears bled over, pouring into the pillow. She was so sick of it. She was sick of life, she was sick of pretending everything was all right. She had told her mom that she screwed around with some jock on the football team, and that was why she was pregnant. She didn’t know why she had lied. But yes, she did. Because her mom would never believe that the mayor, good upstanding citizen that he was, would fuck his own daughter. Her mom would slap her for telling lies. Felicity didn’t trust herself enough to not hit her back. Her mom was furious at her. Demanded she carry through with the pregnancy, rather than get the abortion Felicity so desperately wanted. “It’s your fault you had sex with someone without protection. You can live with the consequences,” was what her mom had said.

She heard her father coming up the stairs for his nightly routine, and she realized she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t wish herself into another world, like she had done for so many years. She couldn’t pretend that she was just sleeping and it was a grotesque dream. Because it wasn’t. It was reality, and she had been escaping it for too long. She couldn’t fight him, but she could run. She could run away. Like Molly had done.

Felicity through a chair in front of her door, locked it, and dead bolted it. Her father wouldn’t be able to get in for at least ten minutes. He didn’t have the keys on him. Her mom did, though, so she had to be swift. Running over to her closet, she pulled out the ghost’s coat and threw it on. She needed his presence. She threw open the window and then crawled out, running as fast as her weak legs would carry her.

***

Jake couldn’t help it. He screamed, and tears of immense agony pooled over and trickled down his scarred cheeks. Stacy raised the chair again and slammed it down onto his arm. He screamed again, and Stacy kicked him in the gut. He curled up into a ball, praying that it would end soon, praying that God would make her stop, make her realize that Survivor was coming on in five minutes, and she needed to run to the store and get some more beer. She kicked him again, this time in the face, and his mouth bled. Her white boots were covered in warm, red velvet now, and this just pissed her off more.

“You stop your screaming!” Stacy screamed. He clamped a bloody hand over his mouth. He had pierced through the flesh on his hands with his nails. He kept curled in around himself, and Stacy paused. She was breathing heavily, her blond hair in mats around her face. She hadn’t been to work in months, so she had felt no great need to groom herself properly. Jake had dropped out of school just so he could get a full-time job to pay the bills. Why he helped her, he didn’t know. Because it was his house, the place he had grown up in. Because he loved his real mother very much, and the house still carried part of her spirit, and he could feel it sometimes. He didn’t want to leave that behind. He didn’t want to leave his mother. She had been his strength for so many years.

Stacy aimed one last kick at him, this one catching him between the legs. He whimpered slightly, but didn’t scream. He heard her panting fade as she disappeared up the stairs to her room, where the TV was kept now. All was silent in the room for a while, and all was still as Jake tried to catch his breath. He was in so much pain. It felt as though someone had dismembered him, ripped him apart and left him to die. Which was basically what Stacy had been doing. She wanted him dead. Jake wanted to die, too. If he was dead, he wouldn’t hurt so much, and the beatings would stop. He knew Stacy carried a gun, and he could slip it off of her, but he didn’t want to die by gun. Ever since the shooting at the school four months ago, he had a strange aversion to guns. He had been worried that the doe was one of the people killed in the shooting, but he had seen the pictures in the newspaper, and she wasn’t one of them. Killing himself with a knife wasn’t the way, either. If he was going to die, it had to be in such a way that we would welcome his death.

It took a second, but then he remembered that the lake had been wishing for him to join it’s song. He dragged himself up off the ground, and flew to the window, despite all the pain. Stacy had latched it shut after his last excursion. It was practically unbreakable. He couldn’t break it without making a lot of noise, which Stacy would notice. He was contemplating his dilemma, but then he heard the door slam. He glanced up, which caused him pain, and then heard the car start. Jake nearly shouted with joy. Stacy had realized she had no beer, and was going to get some. That gave him some time. He waited until the car drove away, and then grabbed the remains of the chair that Stacy had been hitting him with. With the little bit of strength he had, he slammed it through the glass. It shattered loudly, scattering the ground, some bits flying into his hands and arms. He barely registered the pain. Without a second thought, he scrambled out the window and loped away from the house, headed for the park.

***

Felicity had reached the park without her father following her, but she knew it was only a matter of time before he found her and dragged her back home. She would be grounded, and the rape would become full-time, not just whenever she was home. She needed to end it, and swiftly. She walked past the swings, though her soul was begging her to have some fun for even a moment before she died. She ignored it, and instead headed straight for the bridge. If she was going to die, she wanted to go to the one place where she had felt safe, the one place where she hadn’t felt like someone was going to hurt her and rip her to shreds and use her body for their own pleasure. She needed to die with that comforting feeling.

She laughed, a hollow sound. She wanted to die safe. God, that was ridiculous. She was going to kill herself, and she wanted to be safe. If she wanted to be safe, she should have left her household a long time ago, but she hadn’t. What had she been thinking? That her father would stop just because she hated it? Just because she hated him? No, she didn’t know what she had been thinking. And now it was too late. She had maybe ten minutes before her father found her and punished her in his own way. She needed to be dead by then. Or at least, beyond repair. She never wanted to have to give herself to him ever again. Even a coma would be better than the living hell she was in.

She reached the bridge and placed her hands on the railing. It was high up, she had forgotten. The lake hit the shore below her. The waves were welcoming her. Felicity put her foot on the first rung and boosted herself up. Before she could make the final plunge, though, she heard someone behind her. She whirled around, terrified that she might see her father’s grim face staring back at her.

But no, it was the ghost.

“Hey,” she whispered, tears brimming in her eyes.

***

Jake had not expected his suicide to be a audience thing, but he was pleasantly surprised to see the doe. A lurch ripped through him, though, when he saw she was climbing the railing. No. No, that wasn’t right. The doe couldn’t die. He wouldn’t let her. Despite all the pain that was curling around his spine, he raced over to the bridge, intent on stopping her. He would not let her die.

She heard him coming, and turned around, terror in the eyes he had been so fond of. Who was she scared of, his mind whispered, but he forced the thoughts away. It didn’t matter who she was scared of. The fact was that she was afraid. But she relaxed when she saw it was him. Before he could say anything, she smiled at him, tears filling her eyes.

“Hey.”

Jake smirked at her. “That’s my line,” he teased. He held out his arms to her, and the doe darted in. To his surprise, she was careful to not lean on him. She was trying to be careful and not harm him. He smiled. She was so beautiful. Not just her face, but her soul. She was a loving person, something that town hadn’t seen in years. They stood in silence for a bit, him stroking her hair and letting her cry softly onto his worn T-shirt, and she rubbing his back soothingly. After a moment, the doe pulled away and looked up at him.

“Why are you here?” she asked. Jake sighed.

“Same reason as you, I suspect.”

“Don’t.”

It was a simple word, but it carried so much weight behind it. So much pain and fear. He was touched. She didn’t want him to die. Jake thought, if I died and she lived, she would be the only one that missed me. No one knew his name, his face, or even really cared about him. Stacy certainly wouldn’t have missed him. In the town, unless you were a prominent figure, no one would notice your death. No one would mourn it. Your funeral would be empty, and pointless, and no one would pay for it. Your life was pointless. Most of the inhabitants of the town lived pointless lives. They had no purpose in life, and just drifted by, pretending that life mattered, when really, they didn’t care. No one cared anymore. The town was empty of life.

“Only if you don’t,” he replied. The girl stared at him, and then looked away. Dark brown hair covered her large eyes, hiding the dark expression in her eyes.

“I have to,” she muttered. Jake reached out a hand and tilted her chin up towards him so he could see her eyes. Her eyes spoke only the truth, and he didn’t want to risk missing something embedded there. She was mysterious enough, he didn’t need even more mysteries.

“Why?”

***

“Why?”

It was so simple a question, but it ripped through Felicity, stinging her and making her want to cry yet again. She couldn’t explain it to him. She couldn’t explain it to anyone, not even her own mother. Why should she tell a complete stranger, someone who probably would laugh at her and yell at her for telling “such a ridiculous lie”? She couldn’t even convince herself that it was the truth, sometimes. At one point she had herself convinced that she really had slept with some jock, and it really was his child she was carrying. But it wasn’t, and she knew it. She didn’t want to believe the truth. She wanted to ignore it, and name the kid after the father and cradle it in her arms, and give it love.

But she could never love her father’s child.

She tried to look away again, but he held firm to her. She looked up at him, staring into his honey eyes. He looked at her with an open-mind and readiness to understand. She nearly cried again, but kept a reign on her emotions.

“Because... because I’m carrying my father’s child,” she whispered, so soft that it seemed like the wind would snatch her words away and make them disappear forever. She wished it would. She didn’t want to have to watch the ghost stare at her with pity and offer her comforting words and tell her it still wasn’t worth suicide. She looked away as soon as the ghost let go of her. She covered her face with her hands, taking steadying breaths. The laughter was coming. She knew it was coming. She had told Christina the truth. Her best friend. And Christina had laughed at her. Laughed, laughed, laughed. She could still hear the steady streams. Rumors had been around the school within a day, and she was pushed around by the kids. Boys had come up to her, asking if she would screw them too. It was disgusting. Now, the ghost would laugh, and she would truly be alone.

“That’s a pretty good reason to kill yourself,” she heard him say. Felicity jerked her head up and stared at him. He did look sympathetic, but there was no pity there. She relaxed. “But don’t.”

She tensed, and glared at him. “Well, Mr. High and Mighty, why were you going to kill yourself?” she snapped. The ghost looked at her wordlessly, and then laughed.

“Can’t you see?” he asked. “As if you can’t see the scars and the blood.”

Felicity could, but... but it hurt to look at them. It hurt to acknowledge the pain he had been through. She wondered who it was that hit him. She wouldn’t ask, though. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to understand his pain. She understood hers enough, and she didn’t know if she could bear another’s anguish. But still, she didn’t want him to bear it alone.

“I see it. Who?” she asked. The ghost studied his hands in silence. He seemed reluctant to name someone.

“My stepmother. She gets drunk a lot. I remind her of my father, and he ran out on her,” he explained. Her heart broke. His stepmother was taking out her own anger on a boy who couldn’t be much older than her. He was probably only seventeen, maybe eighteen. She reached over and gave him a hug.

“Don’t kill yourself. Please,” she whispered into his ear.

***

Jake held her in his arms. Her heart beat with his, a silent plea for acceptance, understanding, and even love. No one had ever listened to her plea before, just as no one had listened to his. No one cared about them. They were two teenagers, after all. No one would ever care about them. Teenagers had to rely on each other, but so often, you couldn’t. Teenagers were untrustworthy. They laughed at you, mocked you, hurt you, all because they were hurting too, and someone had laughed and mocked them. It was a vicious cycle, one that hadn’t ever been broken. It never would be, because no one was willing to set aside their own pain for a moment and help someone else. It seemed like people wanted their pain.

Her gentle breath seeped into his ear, and the voiced plea was painful to listen to. He wanted to die. He wanted to end it all and never go home again. He never wanted to feel Stacy hit him again. He never wanted to feel a chair, or a beer bottle, or even his own belt dig into him again. He wanted the sweet oblivion that the lake promised. He wanted to resist her and tell her that he would kill himself if he damn well pleased. But that would be hypocrisy, since he had been asking her not to kill herself only moments earlier. He couldn’t, however, agree to return to his house.

“We should run away together,” he said. The doe looked at him, her gentle eyes surprised. It looked as though she had never even considered the idea of just running away. It was obvious that she just wanted to stop the pain for good. Jake understood. He wanted to end it all, too, but since she would kill herself if he did, he was willing to live with some pain. As long as it was with her.

“Run away together?” she asked. He nodded enthusiastically.

“We could move to another city, a bigger one. We could get our own apartment, and get jobs, and live together. Support ourselves, and never see our families again. Get away from them,” he explained. She blinked a few times, and then nodded slowly, and then quicker. She seemed excited by the idea, and she beamed at him.

“Yes. Yes, I would like that.”

He let out a sigh of relief and hugged her again. She clung to him, but was careful to not agitate his injuries. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. She stared at him, and he knew what she wanted. Hesitantly, not wanting to hurt her and terrified that he would scare the doe away, he planted a gentle kiss on her lips.

***

The electricity spun through her, making her nerves scream in pleasure. This wasn’t like when her father forced her to kiss him, his rough lip sucking the air out of her, his tongue digging into her and harming her, making her lips bleed from his aggressiveness. His kiss was sweet, gentle, and full of love she had never experienced before in her life. His lips were soft, caressing her own chapped, broken ones. He didn’t force her into doing anything she didn’t want, he just kissed her. He seemed foreign to kissing, as though he had never kissed before. The thought made her smile, though it was a smile full of pain. She was all to familiar with the techniques of kissing, though she had never had a boyfriend to practice on. Just her father. But she didn’t want anything more. The simple kiss was more than enough. It communicated everything.

They drew away, the ghost looking less ghost-like now and more like a boy. A teenager. She grasped his hand in hers, holding it gently. She loved him. She never wanted to leave him. He kept her safe and protected her and was accepting and gentle. He made her happy. She realized slowly that she did not know his name.

“Now that I’m running away with you, don’t you think I should know your name?” she asked playfully. The teenager laughed a bit, and smiled at her. Before he could reply, though, there was a terrible scream. It sounded oddly metallic. Felicity looked up, only to be blinded by bright white lights. The boy reached over and grabbed her, pulling her close to him. She screamed, and felt something strike her. Pain coursed through her body, blood poured from her. And suddenly, she was weightless, drifting down towards the singing lake. Her mind screamed in terror, but all the air seemed to have left her, and she shut her eyes. The boy was still there, she could feel him. She didn’t know what was happening. All she knew was agony. And then, cold. And finally, dark.

Felicity Redding, age 17, and Jake Bishop, age 18, were both hit by a drunk driver on May 3rd...

The driver, Stacy Bishop, was Jake Bishop’s stepmother...

The passenger was George Redding, mayor and father of Felicity Redding...

Redding and Bishop arrested on charges of abuse...

“The loss to our community is stunning. Civil action will be taking place to rid our town of criminal activities,” says Michael Andretti, new mayor...