Purgatory

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She curled up into a ball between the sink and the tub as she drew her knees to her chest and covered her eyes with them. Tears of sorrow poured right out of her eyes and onto her knees like a steady stream over rocks. The bruises and cuts on her body quivered with pain with every sob she had and with every breath she took. Her boyfriend had just finished beating her for making dinner a touch too hot, and so she retreated to the bathroom for solace.

For some reason, she figured that moving in with her boyfriend would keep her from having to deal with the “abuse her parents gave her, but she soon found out that they both served out the same kind of punishment . . . just in different ways.

Her parents wanted and demanded her respect and obedience, and when she refuse to give it or forgot to obey or respect them, they had some kind of punishment waiting for her. Sometimes, though, they waited for her sins to build up and then they would slap her with something close to a lifetime sentence in jail.

Their punishments ranged from grounding for God knows how long to a good spanking and sometimes they even lectured her for hours on end. Honestly, sometimes she did not know what she preferred: the main forms of punishment, like spanking, or the little odd ones they came up with, like duck-walking. But her parents were not all bad and punishment-giving lovers.

When they finally realized her good behavior, they rewarded her by leaving her alone or by letting her do what she wanted—within their rules and regulations of course—and being with Jake was not one of them. But she did it anyway in secrecy because she got tired of having to deny her heart of its deepest desires.

So, in wanting to be with him without having to be on the look out for her parents all the time, she decided to run away with him.

Jake was the greatest boyfriend you can imagine, in her opinion. Handsome with his muscular body and his brown hair and grey eyes, sweet with his romantic evenings and compliments, generous in showering her with gift, and great in bed. But once she ran away with him and all of that wore off . . . he was just like her parents.

His punishment was a quick beating followed by a ton of “I’m sorry”s for all of the things she did that he did not like. Sure the abuse was few and far between because she was constantly on her tippy-toes, just like she was around her parents, but still, she was getting tired of both her parents and her boyfriend.

Jake’s rewards were much more passionate and she held those moments close to her heart. He was actually himself when she was not aggravating him in some sort of way, and his rewards were much more intimate both physically and otherwise which was something her parents could never do.

She felt as if she was in purgatory and on either side of her was the same exact situation—she was under someone’s thumb, and if she angered them, she was nearly squished. She was very close to just giving up and bouncing between the two places.

As she continued to sit and weep, she thought of a second option: what if she just ran away from both of them? Sure she was only fifteen and it would be sort of hard to find a job, but she could still get one. Her friends Casey’s mom would probably rent her the room above their garage until she could find a room. She knew she would find a way to survive, just not under Jake’s or her parents’ roof.

She tended to her wounds and walked out into the dimly lit apartment. Jake was asleep on the couch with the TV football game going on in the background. Next, she crept into their bedroom, packed all her belongings into a medium sized knapsack, and then she snuck out of the back doorway and into the fall night air.

I guess you could say she was running away because she could not decide which was better—living with her parents or living with her boyfriend—or you could say that she was going to explore the realm of her living purgatory. Whatever her reason, Jane Lox swung her knapsack over her shoulder and started walking down the street, letting her feet guide her to where she should be.