â warning: might be triggering. I repeat, there's violence here.
There was a calm atmosphere around the dinner table as they ate away; with Logan and ma chatting causally with the occasional laughs.
Eva let herself relax from the worried state she'd been in ever since her mum told her that they were leaving and that it was to be kept a secret. Seeing that Logan was in fact in a good mood eased her mind a bit and she found herself actually enjoying her meal.
"Do any of you want to go on a holiday perhaps?" Logan asked casually as his conversation with ma came to a halt. "A sort of vacation or something?"
"Of course not darling," ma replied, reaching out across the table and enveloping Logan's hand with her own. "We're happy here, aren't we?" She turned towards Eva, as if urging her to agree.
"Y-yeah," Eva swallowed, her hand toying with the fork now.
Logan let out a low, short laugh, causing Eva to look at him. "That's uh, that's funny, see..." he gave out another low laugh and then laid his spoon down, using his hand to dig into his back pocket. "Because, I, uh, I found â" he finally pulled out two neatly folded rectangular slips, clutching onto them tightly, "â I found two airplane tickets under the name of Caroline Carter and Evelyn Monroe hidden behind the oats can in the pantry cabinet last night." His eyes fall onto the slip and snap back up again. "It's to Texas," he announces amusedly, "we in the mood for some famous Texas barbecue are we?"
Eva's wide eyes fell on her mum and the frozen posture of the older woman set off the panic waves in little Eva's mind.
Was this the secret trip ma was only talking about earlier? The one that Logan wasn't supposed to know about? The one that mum said would let them get away somewhere else?
Was it bad that Logan seemed to know about it now then?
The silence was suffocating, it was as if all the time in the world had stopped, the entire universe waiting for Eva's mother to respond.
Logan's patience however, seemed to be timed and not frozen. He crushed the tickets into balls, his knuckles turning dangerously white as his fist clenched even tighter around what had been Caroline Monroe's escape route â her path to freedom.
He tossed the crumpled pieces of paper to the side and they rolled across the panelled flooring, coming to a stop by the wall below the mantelpiece. "Well what a waste of my money, darling," he sighed but Eva could hear his voice shaking with barely contained anger. "Did you really not think I'd find out if you used my very own credit card? Tip to keep in mind: cash is harder to trace."
He rose, kicking his chair back and it went crashing to the ground. Eva instinctively looked around frantically as if help was going to fall from the sky above. She should know better though â why was she even looking for help? This was mum's fault. She'd angered Logan just like she used to anger pa. And now she was going to have to watch history repeat itself.
She'd witnessed the scene countless times back at her old home when pa was still alive but... but it has been almost a year since Logan came into their lives and that meant it has also been almost a year since she'd actually watched such a scene unfold in front of her eyes.
But it all came back now like a train at full speed, crashing into her mind; the memories of her mum being punished at the merciless hands of pa flooding her head until everything around her seemed to be swimming.
"Don't bother looking for anyone, kid," he told Eva in a steely voice when he caught her looking around frantically. And Eva remembered how just this morning she'd noticed how far apart each house was. Logan was right.
There was no help coming.
"Well, I am waiting," he stretched his arms to the side, turning his attention towards ma again, "wanna let me in on what your big plan was?" and this somehow scared Eva even more. The calm, slow tone he was using instead of just yelling like pa.
"Lo-Logan, li-listen... I -I didn't...I â" Ma seemed to be struggling for words, her mouth opening and shutting rapidly like she was gasping for air. Eva could feel the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up. She'd finally learnt what the prickly sensation was called â goosebumps.
She'd always got them whenever she sat at the dining table with pa back at home. Was it a good thing? It didn't feel so nice at the moment though.
"You didn't what, love?" Logan asked softly, but his eyes were hard. The skin around his eyes were slits, and there was no trace of the previous relaxed atmosphere.
There was a huge, tight ball of sheer terror building in Eva's stomach and a rock seemed to be stuck in her throat, making her unable to utter a single word. She could feel a rushing sensation to her head and blood seemed to pound in her ears.
Her heart raced and as much as she fought against it, she couldn't help but hold her breath.
"I just âI'm so, so sorry, Logan!" Ma slid off her chair immediately and dropped to her knees as Logan's hard gaze lowered to her level, his lips curling into a wild, barbaric snarl. "It was a mistake â one that won't happen again, I swear! I swear!"
Eva shut her eyes tight, her heart beating so violently she genuinely believed it was going to leap out her chest. Her mother's cries and pleas seemed to pierce through her skin, her heart-wrenching screams hitting Eva in her chest and stomach and finally her knees which were starting to become wobbly that she was afraid she would drop to the floor any minute now.
She wouldn't dare open her eyes.
She knew Logan hadn't yet raised his hand on her mum tonight â she knew the sound of skin against skin all too well to not recognise it â but the delay, the way Logan was dragging out the moments before he would actually begin the beating made Eva feel sick to the stomach.
"Open your eyes, Evelyn." Logan's voice was smooth, but the commanding nature of it couldn't be mistaken. He was in no mood for games tonight; that much was abundantly clear.
"Don't," her mum whimpered weakly. "P-please Logan, I'm b-begging you... please leave her out of this. She's... she's only eight, she's just a little girl, Logan... Logan! Please! Please! I'm begging you, I'm begging you â!" Ma's screams turned frantic towards the end, her hysteria and fear seeming to choke Eva's throat like ironclad claws.
"She needs to learn," Logan reasoned out and Eva could hear him beginning to move further away from her, which could mean only one thing â he was moving closer to ma. "She needs to watch what happens when you defy the man of the house. She needs to learn to grow up to be a better woman than you."
Then there was the sound of something cracking and then an ear-splitting scream shook the entire household.
Eva could feel the bile rising up her throat. The scream belonged to her mother, she knew it â she knew it down to her very bones.
What had he done that made her scream in such a way? Eva didn't want to know. She never wanted to find out.
"Wanna hear your mum scream like that again, Eva?" Logan was asking, and all traces of pretence calmness was now gone. His voice was made of nothing but fury and raw rage. "Want me to break another bone in mummy's body?"
It didn't matter that her eyes were shut-it didn't matter that Eva could see absolutely nothing. Somehow it felt worse. Because instead of seeing, she was hearing all that was happening around her. She was feeling it dig into her skin and crawl over her bones.
Tears were building behind Eva's firmly shut eyes until it was too much to hold in, and they leaked through the corners, streaming down her cheeks in torrents. One huge heart-breaking teardrop after another, taking with them pieces of whatever hope she had stored somewhere deep, deep down within her.
The happy feeling she thought she could store in a jar in the far corner of her mind seemed to shatter into a million pieces, the shards crumbling to nothing but dust inside her.
There's no help coming Eva, she told herself, there's no help coming.
Not tonight, not this time.
"GODAMMIT, OPEN YOUR EYES EVELYN!" He roared and Eva heard her mum choke out a sob before proceeding to completely break into convulsive weeping.
Grinding her teeth together, Eva gingerly opened them and the water that was stored there instantly fled her eyes until her blurry vision eventually found focus again, the blended colours becoming more distinguishable as wobbly objects seemed to take back their solid forms.
"WHY DOES IT TAKE ME LASHING OUT TO MAKE EVERYONE UNDER THIS GODFORSAKEN ROOF OBEY A SIMPLE ORDER?" His voice was thunder and Eva watched, horrified beyond possible, as he grabbed a ceramic plate and smashed it against her mother's skull.
Eva opened her mouth to let out the bloodcurdling scream. But no sound came. Her mouth was hanging open, her throat burning like she'd just spent all her life yelling... but no sound came. All she was aware of was that her breathing seemed to falter and her chest was rising up and down too fast to be normal.
Something was happening to her. Something â something was... was happening â she couldn't... her breathing... why was her head feeling so heavy?
She watched little streams of red run down the side of her mother's head, towards her neck until they met the light blue shirt she was wearing and soaked the fabric, staining the cloth like this man had done Eva's state of mind.
Eva's eyes fell on the left arm of her mother's which was twisted in an odd manner and it hit her where the cracking sound had come from. She realised what it was that Logan had broken.
Eva wanted to throw up whatever she had since breakfast today â she wanted to throw up everything that she could ever recall witnessing growing up.
And that's exactly what happened âunable to hold it back, she threw up on the coffee brown rug that was thrown across the intersecting area where the dining and the living room met.
"Oh for the love of god," Logan hissed, his face looking nothing close to human. "Clean that shit up. Clean this entire goddamned mess up, the both of you! When I come back down in the morning, I want the place spotless as it was before dinner." He straightened up and grabbed his tie from where he'd hung it on the dining chair he had been seated on. "Don't disappoint me, or I'm going to have to drill it into you the hard way."
He grabbed his phone from the mantelpiece but before heading up the staircase, he stopped by ma. "I hope tonight was a lesson for you," he murmured so softly, it was crazy to think he'd been a raging lunatic only minutes ago. "No one, and I mean, no one â especially my wife â leaves me. Not without my permission."
Eva stood there, shivering and shaking violently while her mother sat on the floor as sobs wracked her body, leaving the ground beneath Eva's small feet shaking. As if Eva's entire world just gave away and everything came tumbling down without a speck of mercy.
Help didn't come. And Eva wondered â really wondered â did it ever?
-------------------------------------------------------
Written on; 01st August 2016
-------------------------------------------------------
Two more chapters guys, two more chapters and then we get to witness Eva as a teenager :)
Xoxo