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Silence Burns

Jordyn Klint

    I’ve been sitting on the shower floor for so long that my butt has gone numb and the hot water has run cold. The showerheads’ weak water pressure dumps droplets on me with no rhythm, random droplets splashing on my reddened skin. I scrunch my eyes tightly closed as I try to replay the night’s events in my head for the hundredth time. I pull my knees in close to my chest as I pretend I’m back in that house.
    I hadn’t planned on going out, and I sure as hell didn’t plan on getting that drunk. The night had already started to get hazy, even before I’d made the stupid decision to go upstairs. I was supposed to be waiting with my friend to get a ride home, that was it, not ruining my life again. We had gone upstairs and sat in the room with some other friends. Frat boys, I was at a frat house, though which one I couldn’t remember.
    He had come into the room to hang out with all of us, but he had seemed to set his sights on me right away. Through my beer goggles, he was cute, and seemed interested in getting to know me. He had taken my phone, added himself on snapchat for me, and took some selfies of us together, all cutesy. Looking back at the pictures this afternoon, I realized that I was propped up because I kept tipping over and my eyes were basically closed from the heaviness of the dozens of drinks I had guzzled down a half an hour prior.
    The person whose room we were all gathered in decided that it was time for everyone to leave. He had told my friend and I we could come to his room and wait for our ride there. I had started drinking water, but all of a sudden, my bottle had been replaced by a plastic cup full of red wine. I told him I was done drinking and didn’t want to continue drinking if neither him nor my friend were going to have any.
    “Just try it,” he had encouraged. “It’s new and I really think you’d like it.”
    I remembered spilling some of it down my white shirt. It was the first time I had worn that shirt and now it was ruined. He came over and held the cup so that I could take a sip.
     When I woke up, my eyes burned. Sandpaper had replaced my eyelids; the cold air of an autumn morning stung my skin. I was in an unfamiliar room with him. I tried to sit up, but my body wouldn’t listen. My head pounded, like someone was trying to break down the side of my skull with a battering ram. My entire body felt like it had been stretched out and was splitting at the seams. I still had my shoes on, which was weird because I always take my shoes off. They were always the first thing I removed, even when I shouldn’t take them off. I once walked through broken glass and cut myself because I had taken my shoes off for the walk home. They never stayed on. Now, my stained white high-top converse stared at me from the awkward angle my body is trapped in. As for the rest of my clothes, I had no idea where they went. I was naked and cold, except for my shoes. Almost as soon as I had come-to, I got dizzy and passed out.
    This time, I woke up in my own bed, no shoes on, and the clothes I had worn out. My phone was full of messages. I opened the ones from my friend first. She had yelled at me for being rude and not talking to her in the car when we had dropped her off last night. Another was from the friend whose room we were originally in. He saw me walk out of the house this morning but I didn’t seem right.
    I tore off my clothes and stood in front of my full-length mirror. The dark bruise of a hickey sat on my right breast, the area around it an angry red. There were bruises along the insides of my arms and thighs. I felt like I had sat in a pile of hot coals. And my skin, oh my skin, it crawled. It hurt so much that I ran straight into the shower and turned the water on as hot as it would go and I scrubbed. I scrubbed so hard that my skin was raw.
The scrape on my knee started bleeding and my fingernails were leaving deep indents in my skin as I tried to scrub the dirtiness of last night off my soul.
    And now I sit, the cold water dripping on me as my thoughts remember wine, nothing, only wearing my shoes, nothing, and home. I was in a car at some point, but the rest of the night was unaccounted for. And I knew who stole it.
    My body goes numb as my blood thickens, almost as if it could feel the remnants of the roofie coursing through by blood stream. It has happened before, my drunken idiocy gets the best of me and I don’t remember what took place. But I had never had it stolen from me, never had my memories ripped away from me. I’ve never had someone take away my abilities on purpose, use more than alcohol to render me helpless. He took what he wanted by taking away my power to stop him.
    That fucking wine. Those fucking shoes. It was all my fault. If I hadn’t drank that much, if I hadn’t gone upstairs, if I hadn’t let myself trust him. I scream as loud as I can, not caring that my roommates are home or that the door to my bathroom is open and my bedroom window is cracked to let in the cool air. I scream until my lungs and throat burn and the sobbing begins. My body wracks in pain as each wave of sobbing shakes me down to the core. I pull at my wet hair, wishing it would come out in clumps and I could wash it down the drain.
    I sit on the floor of the shower, my jaw slack and my eyes half open as the freezing water rolls over my raw, bruised skin. I don’t know how long I sat there, the memories replaying themselves over and over again, trying to fill the empty spots I had been robbed of.
    My phone dings, pulling me out of my trance. My brother texted, telling me he was 20 minutes away. I turn off the shower, take a few deep breaths, and dry off. I fold my ruined shirt and grab those stupid shoes and tuck them into the darkest corner of my closet before closing the door and painting on a happy face for the world to see.

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