The Monster Inside Me Ch. 03

When I got back from getting the tattoo, Dad was there, waiting on the steps to the door to my dark, shabby little apartment building. He looked haggard and rumpled, with subtle bags under his eyes that he never used to get when I was little, back when life was simple and perfect, and I had a mom and a dad and a family and a future.

I stopped, shocked into immobility.

Dad didn't smile or scowl. He didn't say hi. He looked at me under furrowed brows and rumpled hair, with an otherwise stony expression. My breath caught in my chest, and when I finally exhaled, I found myself panting as if I'd just run five miles. My heart raced.

My tit throbbed where I'd just gotten the tattoo.

My heart hurt beneath that.

Of all things, I blushed. I fucking blushed. My first reaction was that I was ashamed. I wanted to run and hide.

He must have sensed it, because he stood and came to me. He pulled up short, a step away, as if he'd run into a forcefield.

My dad, my own dad, was afraid to get too close to me. What was left of my heart shattered in my chest.

The next thing I knew, I was balling crying. Yet again. He stepped forward and gathered me into his arms, while I sobbed into his chest. His large hand brushed into the hair behind my head, and held it hard against him, locked in place. His other hand looped behind my back, locking me into place. The pressure on my tits hurt the fresh tattoo. I sobbed. Loudly. I don't know for how long I sobbed.

For that moment, at least, he was my dad again, just my dad, holding me while life screwed me over again, like it had so many times before.

When I regained my composure, he continued to hold me, but the hug got awkward. I started to become acutely aware of the pressure of his chest pressing on my tits, and I think my nipples started to harden. Again I felt ashamed. I stepped back, and he, I think gratefully, released me. I sort of bolted for the door. As I stepped around him, I glanced sidewise at his face, just quickly enough to try to read his still near blank expression. I shot past him toward the front door, bounding up the steps by twos. The pain, fear and uncertainty on his face hurt as much as anything else.

He didn't try to follow me. Of course he wouldn't. He drove all the way from Baltimore to see me, to talk, but if I didn't want to, he wasn't going to force me. He never, ever did. He only stood in place, only half turned in my direction, looking over his shoulder, and stared at me as I looked back at him. I turned completely away, fumbling for what felt like an hour with my keys, until I found the right one, turned it and opened the door. I stood there frozen in the half open door, my back to him, for another eternity, warring with my mind and my heart, before I decided what I wanted.

I looked back at him over my shoulder and waited. Recognizing the silent invitation, he strode forward, I think trying to hide his eagerness. He held the door for me as we entered. He followed me up the five flights of stairs, down the short, dark hallway, and into "my place."

It was a tiny, sucky hole, barely big enough for the small cot, small dresser, and small desk that filled it. It didn't even have a TV, but I don't watch TV. I read, and I write. Sometimes I sketch, too. That's it. I need a desk and chair for my laptop. Sitting on the desk was a small lamp that you had to fiddle just right to get it to turn on. Beneath that, at the base, were three very plain looking, smooth, flat stones. Each had a word clumsily etched into them; "strength", "harmony" and "change". The dresser had some tiny bluetooth speakers sitting on top. That was it. That was my room and all of my possessions, that and a closet of clothes that other girls tended to call odd, or embarrassing. The one narrow window looked out into a dank alley, and as I already mentioned, a dumpster. The air was perpetually musky and stuffy and either too hot or too cold, sometimes unavoidably so.

The walls were covered with posters of horses. I always loved horses as a kid. Dad once asked if I wanted to learn to ride, and I was horrified at the idea. Horses were strong and fast and graceful and free. God never intended anyone to ever ride a horse. That was just as wrong as anything could be.

I fell onto my bed, face down, breathing into the mattress. I could feel him standing there in the doorway, uncertain, having no obvious place to sit. Reluctant, I guess, to join me on the bed. I rolled over, flat on my back, to stare up at him. The pose, I imagined, was unsettling to him, unpleasantly similar to the pose I held when he last saw me. On his bed.

Before he fucked me. And after.

I finally started to get angry. It was the first moment in the whole affair when I felt like I wanted to hurt him, and also the first time I realized that I was angry at him as well as myself. I pulled out my phone and turned some music on, and the melody of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon" drifted softly out of the speakers on the dresser.

He stared into my eyes. I wanted to escape by rolling back over, onto my belly, but I didn't want him looking at my ass. After spending days and days in Baltimore trying to get him to look at my tits and my ass, look down my shirt, stare at my lips, I didn't want him looking at anything at all. I sat up instead, moving to the bed's edge, to stare at the dust accumulating in the crook where the floor met the wall.

When he stood there, still, I patted the bed beside me, and told him it was okay, even if it wasn't. Suddenly, I wasn't angry at him anymore. I'd gone back to feeling ashamed.

The moment he sat beside me, I leaned into his shoulder. I'm not one to beat around the bush. I don't shy away from a fight, or a loss, or a regret. I just blurted it out. I asked him if he was ashamed of me.

When he stiffened, I looked up into his face, surprised by the shock in his expression.

He started talking then, and I didn't get a word in for the next twenty minutes. For the first time in my entire life, I saw my father cry. Tears welled in his eyes as he apologized. He told me it was his fault. He told me I could never be to blame. He told me he loved me.

I screamed at him not to say that. I took it wrong, and it flipped a switch, and I turned into a frenzied animal. If I could have reached my stones, if I'd had anything else to throw, and room to throw it, I would have. I railed at him. I stood up and stomped. I kicked the wall. Don't say that!

He looked at me, shocked and hurt and lost. I could see that he wanted to hold me, but couldn't. That made me cry, because it was a reminder that we were broken. He couldn't hold his own daughter when she was hurting.

We were broken.

He held me anyway. I don't know where he found the courage or the strength, but he stood up and moved towards me. I backed away, bumping into the wall behind me in my confusion. He didn't stop. He swept me forward into his arms and wrapped me in them, while I buried my head in his chest to escape, received that he'd forced me to accept his embrace.

He told me he loved me, that he was my father, and no matter what he'd done, how it looked, he loved me.

What he'd done.

I knew then that he didn't understand me at all.

I could go on and on about this. We certainly did. We talked, fought, cried, stopped, and fucking started over. There were even a few laughs in there, hard won and short lived, when we'd made it far enough. We talked about every thought, feeling and nuance. Every gaping wound was shaved raw and bleeding. Every hideous detail of every horrific memory, from years and years past, and from just days ago, was stretched out on a dissection table and severed into dead, morbid, over-analyzed chunks.

There was one important moment, though, a turning point for me, and I think for him. That was when he started to cry. He tried to hide it, and he didn't blubber. He just has one tear well up, which he artlessly tried to clear away without my seeing it. The words caught in his throat. I felt bad, and reminded him that he had tried to stop me

The thing was, he had tried to stop me, the first night I started flirting. We were out drinking that first night, too, and I probably went a little too far, too fast, touching him and flashing him and rubbing up against him. At one point I was tracing the inside of one breast, when I saw his eyes sort of glaze over, and I knew he was actually thinking it, thinking of me as a woman instead of as his little girl. His eyes were staring straight at my fingers on my tit, and I was staring straight at him, enchanted by the idea that I was having that effect on him. He looked up, saw me looking at him, saw my expression, and I watched his eyes change as the fog of seduction was replaced by shame and anger.

He snapped at me to stop it, and to cover up. I sheepishly buttoned one more button, and things were awkward and quiet for a while. But then things settled out, and we went on with the night, and it wasn't very long before I started flirting and touching and flashing again, and he didn't complain a second time. I went pretty far, as far as I had before, and then I went even further.

We could have fucked that night. He could have fucked me. I could certainly have fucked him, right then, right there. It shouldn't have taken two nights, because we were ready then. We just had to subdue our better angels.

That's when I realized that it was all going to be, no matter what. Dad was always going to fuck me. I was always going to fuck Dad. If not that night, then the next. If not that trip, then the next. Sooner or later it was going to happen. It was just who we are. Fucked up, yes. Monsters? Maybe. Abnormal? Certainly. But we were always going to fuck each other. This was just when it actually happened.

So we were always going to wind up in this place, sitting here, feeling ashamed, talking it out, fighting and crying and hurting.

As soon as I realized that, it stopped hurting so much. Everything around us seemed to slow to a crawl. Time slowed down. I rested his head on my shoulder, waiting for him to compose himself. I watched my fingertips tickling his shoulder and chest. I watched his hand reach up to touch mine, not taking it away, just joining it in a very gentle, teasing caress.

This was supposed to happen. I didn't know what was supposed to happen next, but this was always something we were going to have to work through, and live with.

He left just before 4 AM. By then I had agreed to come visit him again, when I was ready. I told him I could never forgive him, which even then I knew wasn't true. He said he never expected me to, and wasn't sure he wanted me to, and I started to forgive him the moment he said that. I told him that I knew who he was, which I did, and that I understood, which I'm not sure I did. I let him think he'd convinced me that it wasn't my fault.

He hugged me, kissed the hair on the top of my head, held me for a long time, as if he couldn't bring himself to let go, as if maybe after tonight I wouldn't be his daughter again, so he had to hang on for as long as he could. Finally he let go, and left.

When I closed the door behind him, I wasn't at all sleepy, or even tired. I wanted to cry some more, but found I couldn't. The honest tears were all gone. Only the pain remained, with a meager glimmer of happiness to start to balance the scale. I started to write a poem.

I was so fucking glad he'd come to see me. I slept pretty well, and almost missed yet another day of work.

* * *

Before we go any further, I was not too drunk that first time to say no, or to know what I was doing. That wasn't it. I know it, and I know he knew it then and he knows it now.

It wasn't date rape.

I can't really explain it. I was just horny, too damned horny, and so was he. The drinks loosened us up, maybe too much. Okay, definitely too much. They made it too easy to flirt and play, to start a game we should never have finished.

The alcohol fueled the game, the idea of it and the theatre of pretending it could actually happen. But I'd sobered up enough, not a lot but enough, that I could easily have stopped it all if I'd wanted to.

I didn't want to stop. That's my ultimate shame.

As stupefyingly drunk as we were for some of the time, I knew what I was doing. I knew. I chose.

I'm a whore like none you've ever met.

* * *

After Dad went back home, we talked on the phone about my moving to Baltimore. I don't know how I found the courage to bring it up, and I wasn't even sure that was what I wanted anymore. But I'd already lost one of my jobs, so I had to do something. Dad wasn't sure it was a good thing to do, which hurt as much as I thought it might. I know it was because of what had happened, but that only made it hurt even more, because it was one more thing that was my own fault.

So I just quit the other job, and told Dad that they'd let me go, too. I forced his hand. I told him I didn't have much choice, because I was never going to be able to pay my rent, and I was already behind. I asked him to just let me try, to let me stay with him while I got back on my feet, with a new start in Baltimore.

He knew it was fucked up to say yes. Fuck. He'd fucked me. Now I was going to stay with him in his apartment? He might have been thinking that now that it had happened once, there was no way that shit could happen again, so it was safe.

I, on the other hand, had already decided that it was definitely going to happen again. It had to happen again, in fact. I mean, hell, we'd already done it, right? How much harm could there be in one more time? At least if we did it again, we'd have a better memory to replace the one that was poisoning us. Or it would really suck, and we'd laugh about it, and never do it again. Or it would be awkward, the way people think that incest should be, and then we wouldn't actually do it, and we'd realize we were just really drunk and horny that first time, it wasn't like we were sick people or anything, and it would just become something that had happened, and we'd move on. Except that's not how I wanted things to go.

I got to Baltimore, and he slept on the couch while I got the bed. I waited about a week before I brought it up with him. No, I wasn't going to fucking seduce him again. Even if I had the balls to try, and I don't, we had to talk about this. We had to agree. Thing was, it didn't take long for both of us to decide it was the right thing to do. Before too long we were laughing about the idea. I think he was as eager as I was. With the first time behind us, with the crying and the guilt and everything else in the past, it was just so easy to say, hell, yeah, let's fuck.

We sure as hell didn't want to just leave things as they were, with that one sickening memory dominating our whole fucked up relationship for the rest of our lives. I also, very honestly, didn't want him thinking I sucked that badly in bed, and I didn't want to think that he sucked either. And what was the worst that could happen? He'd have second thoughts and refuse at the last moment, and I'd be proud of him for that? He'd suck in bed, and I'd have to lie to protect his feelings? He'd be great in bed, and I'd start obsessing about doing it again? Okay, yeah, so that last one was probably pretty bad, and should have stopped me right there. But screw it. Good or bad, nothing could be worse than what had already happened.

I was going to fuck Dad. Again. As fucking good and fucking hard as I fucking could.

We didn't do it then and there, and we didn't plan when. He left that to me, for me to get comfortable with the idea and come to it in my own time. He said he wasn't going to push. I had to be sure it was what I wanted, and when I wanted it.

I only waited a few more days, and even waiting that long was killing me. I wanted to stretch out the anticipation, for him and for me, and to be a bit of a tease, but it was too hard. Damn, once we'd decided that it was going to happen, I became as continuously horny as I'd ever been in my life. I spent a few days repeating the game that got us into trouble in the first place, giving him peeks at my body, this time more brazenly walking around the place in a braless t-shirt and panties and socks, or walking past him soaking wet from a shower to get a drink from the kitchen, being as sexy as I could. He tried not to tell me how sexy I was, but he couldn't always stop himself. When he complimented me I had to fight from grinning. Sometimes I even scolded him for how inappropriate his comments were for a father to say to his daughter, while standing there naked, dripping wet, body still glistening with soap I hadn't bothered to rinse away.

I made a game of driving him nuts, making him wonder non-stop when it was going to finally happen. In my head that game was going to last a week, but I was so eager and so ready that it only took a couple of days. Two days to get us both ready to erase my memory of that night and replace it with something wonderful, or awkward, or comical, or all three, anything but what was already there.

* * *

So there's one night in particular I have to mention. It happened before he started fucking me, soon after I'd arrived to stay with him that week, to ask him to help me move. And it changed my life forever. It changed me, how I see him, everything. Maybe, in the end, it's why I fucked him, why I want to fuck him, and why I'll always let him fuck me.

You've probably guessed by now that I'm not the sort of person to take shit from anybody. I can be stupid that way, to a fault. Without even thinking, I'll throw away a budding friendship or romance, or an easy lay when I really, really badly need it. I just have a temper, and I live in the moment, you know? I'm pretty smart, but usually I'm too lazy or pissed to use my smarts, or to think too far ahead. I live in the moment.

Or maybe I'm too honest. I can't fake it when something pisses me off. I don't know. The point is, I don't take shit, even when maybe I should.

So we were out walking. It was maybe 2 AM. We'd been drinking and talking and joking. I hadn't started flirting with him, yet. It was pretty normal father-daughter stuff. We walked past an alley, and before I knew it three guys had surrounded us. It happened so fast, I didn't even know where they came from. I guess we were so wrapped up in how we'd ruined our lives that we forgot that the world could be a dangerous place. I was pissed, because I fucking know better. You don't walk past an alley without a glance, and you stay as close to the curb as you can. You just do. Maybe Dad doesn't need to worry about that shit, but a girl does. I should have known better.

I can't describe them. They were just big sort of nondescript shadows. Just big, ugly masses of unrestrained testosterone. One guy, the shortest one, had a gun, a big, ugly, mat-black pistol that should have scared the shit out if me, looking down its barrel. It scared the shit out of Dad. I could see it all over his face.

The gun waved back and forth, aiming at each of us in turn, but mostly at Dad.

Dad started to take his wallet out. They hadn't even asked yet, and the pussy was handing it over.

Not me. Forget that. I stepped forward, right up to the guy, with the barrel of his gun pressed against my belly, and I spat in his face and shoved him.

He barely moved when I pushed him, he shoved me back a half step, and then cuffed me across the head with his forearm. I went straight down to the cement, hitting hard right on my butt, more than a little dazed, struggling to get up, my ears ringing, as the guy pointed the gun right at my belly. He called me a fucking bitch and pulled the trigger.

Except it wasn't pointing at my belly anymore, because Dad had dropped down to cover me, shouting no, no, no. It happened so damned fast. One minute the barrel was pointing straight at me, and the next he was between us, and it was pointing at him. And he was looking at me with an expression I'll never forget, a look of fear and regret and apology. And goodbye. Fucking goodbye.