Too Late to Say You're Sorry - Excerpt from She's not there

She’s Not There - Book Title

January 2003, Diablo’s BBQ Party, WLA

Chapter:  Too Late to Say you’re Sorry

            Diablo was drunk.  He was hosting a barbecue during the Sunday football game, as was the norm.  The party was predominantly his friends and some she’d known before him, but always they’d been his friends.   Sarah had no friends at this point, she’d either abandoned them for Diablo or they’d abandoned her due to her relationship with Diablo.

            Earlier that afternoon, Sarah was frustrated because everyone who attended the party was doing coke in and out of what she considered their bedroom.  Diablo dismissed her complaints, accusing her of being jealous.  She let it go.  He was drunk there was no reasoning with him. 

 At one point during the party, she’d gone into the restroom, the door didn’t lock because he often babysat his sister’s kids and removed the lock for safety precaution.  While Sarah was sitting  on the toilet he barged in to see if she was doing any lines.  His friends were always trying to her high.  He reviewed the room, opened the drawers to make sure she wasn’t hiding any coke, gave her a look of disgust and hatred.  She glared back at him and he walked out, leaving the bathroom door wide open, completing his mission to humiliate he, in front of everyone. 

Diablo had been monitoring Sarah all day, following her from room to room, embarrassing her, stopping conversations in mid-air with anyone who spoke to her.  He was covering something up and Sarah had no idea what.  His customers and friends were too talkative and she was too manipulative, he didn’t know how she always managed to find out where he’d been, with whom and then she would fight with him for lying to her.  It was none of her business.  He wanted her to go home.

            She knew, if she left, it’d be hell.  If she stayed, it’d be hell.  She just had no idea how much either way.

            Sarah generally occupied herself during barbecues by staying the kitchen.  Too many arguments stemmed from Sarah being too friendly or for that matter, being a good host to any of his guests.  Diablo was very specific about not mixing his clients and/or friends with her.   Sarah had never been separated from the crowd and in the past was quite use to being the center of attention and this docile role was not easy for her to maintain.

            Sarah stood at the sink and began doing dishes.  Diablo was insistent that whenever any cooking was done, they immediately cleaned up.   If she didn’t clean up he’d accuse her of being a disgusting slob with no manners.   She’d  come to learn that not only was keeping the party in order and the kitchen moving, it helped her keep out of trouble.

             Jewels came over to her and offered help at the sink. Initially Sarah said she was fine, but she was also drunk and frankly she just wanted the dishes to be done and for someone to suggest the Lost & Found bar for a drink so she could pass out and be done with the whole scene.   Jewel’s was a typical dumb blond with a runners body and boyfriend who was fairly free spirited and Sarah had walked in on Jewel’s dry humping Diablo once, she threw Jewel’s out that day and ended up smashing his brand new 60” flatscreen, breaking his window, demolishing his phone and crashing her car into his truck.  She and Jewel’s got along fine, but Jewel’s always slipped and said something that would haunt him later.               Diablo approached the sink enraged when he heard the girls laughing.

            “How many times have I told you not to talk to my fucking friends?”  He said.

 Sarah responded by ignoring  him. 

“Sarah, you should go home.”  He imparted. 

          “Diablo, enough.”  She said impatiently.  He walked away scowling. 

Sarah would have left but she was drunk.  Too drunk to drive and no one could save her anymore.  Seth and Elijah had been picking her up for months in the middle of the night, in the middle of the street, in the alley at all costs to save her, but even they had lives of their own and couldn’t keep rescuing her from herself.  Furthermore, Diablo would forget that he’d told her to go home and then call her later and ask her where she went, did she go meet someone for drugs, who’d she sleep with, why did she leave…It was usually safer to stay and wait for him to wake up somewhat sober and hear the apology.

            She left the kitchen.  Everyone was chatting in the living room.  Outside his family brought home groceries passing by the stoop, keeping their blinders on to the activities that went on in his home.  Sarah decided to sleep off some of the alcohol and lay down on top of the bed.  For the first time, she felt the need to lock the door.    He unlocked the door shortly after she was falling asleep. 

            “Why aren’t you gone yet?” He yelled at her. 

            “I’m too drunk to drive, Diablo.  Go away.”  She said.  He picked her up from the bed and dropped her onto the floor, she was facing downward. 

            “I want you to get the fuck out!”  He told her. 

            “Fuck you Diablo.” She replied coldly, trying to gather her bearings, eyeing the room for her keys, purse, and the easiest route away from him without giving him an opportunity to hurt her on her way out of the bedroom.  Diablo grabbed Sarah’s hair holding it hand while pinning her face to the floor. 

            “Don’t tell me fuck you, Sarah.”  He said.   

He’d complained a dozen times about her foul mouth and the disregard in which she would flippantly say fuck you or fuck off at the drop of a hat.   She’d tamed her tongue to keep peace with him, but tonight, it was too loose. 

He knew he had the power and surely she’d shut the fuck up.  He’d told her not to talk to his friends.  He knew he couldn’t trust that bitch to do anything he said.  Making him think she might do coke earlier had really pissed him off.   He knew that his friends were more than happy to give her drugs, but she’d quit doing them, unless he wasn’t looking and so, he had to constantly look.   She should have just gone home.

            “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”  Sarah chanted. 

The chances of her getting out the door unharmed became very slim.  He yanked her head up and shoved it down into the floor.  She saw an opportunity bite his finger and in doing so could almost feel her teeth touch, instead of letting go, he was only provoked.  He began to bash her head into the wooden bed frame.  She listened acutely to hear anything crack; her teeth tightly grit in between the fuck you’s she continued to chant.  She would try to get up but he’d kick her down. 

            Fear began to consume her and she was fighting to keep reason within. 

            No more fuck you’s she thought, bad idea. 

            Scream, better idea, the living room is full of people.  These are friends, they will help you, they won’t let you get hurt.  His parents will hear, they live upstairs, his cousins will come, they live next door, someone will rescue you. 

            He continued to smash her face into the bed frame.  She got up and lunged for the phone to dial 911, and with stealth he grabbed the phone and ripped it out of the wall. 

            She screamed bloody murder for help, tearful sobs, for help, anyone help.  No one helped. 

            He grabbed her by the mouth, placing his nails on the inside of her cheeks, scraping her from the inside of her cheeks out of her mouth.  It burned and she could taste the barbecue, the soot, and her blood.  She’d watched enough forensic files to know, this is how girls die at the hands of their boyfriends.  This was it.  She was going to die. 

            She couldn’t faint, she couldn’t stop thinking or the logic would run out.  She tried to cry out again, and he repeated digging his fingers into her mouth and scraping the insides of her cheeks – pulling her cheeks away from her face in a way that she thought he was able to rip her mouth open.  Could someone rip a face off?  She  became incredibly silent,  telling herself if she kept her mouth shut, he couldn’t tear it open.   He threw her off the bed.

            She tried to scream again because silence was not stopping the thuds, smacks, shoves, or the times he’d pick her up and drop her to the floor with the ease of a wrestler, tossing her around like a play doll.   The new blouse she bought, torn.  The belt loops from her  jeans ripped from him repeatedly picking her up and dropping her.  She couldn’t gain the strength stand, her legs were shaking so badly.  When she looked around the room to keep her berrings, she recognized that there was blood everywhere. 

            If she died, she wanted to make sure that that she left blood spatter everywhere, he’d try to cover her death up and she knew his family would help.  She’d learned that from Forensic Files as well.  She would leave evidence for the luminol. 

            When she tried to run out of the room, he pinned her down and pulled her arms so far behind her back she waited to feel them snap as his knee shoved her into the carpet like a cigarette butt,  she could feel the pulled muscles and ripped tendons as he stretched and shoved her further into the ground.  He bashed her head into the carpet, he turned her over to see if she’d had enough, and she spit blood into his face.

            “You’re spitting on me?”  He said, amazed she had the nerve to challenge him. 

She spit again.  She was not going out like this. 

He hawked up phlegm and spit a ball of it in her face.  Tears, blood, and saliva everywhere.  She was starting to go into shock.  All she wanted to do now was get out and go home, she needed her mother, that’s all she knew.  It was true what they said about torture victims, soldiers, they don’t cry for God.   They cry for their mother.

            “I just want my mommy.  I just want my mommy, I want to go home, I won’t call the cops, I just want my mom, please let me go. Please, I just want to go.” 

He didn’t hear her. 

She started screaming again, and he tried to suffocate her.  He put his hand over her mouth and held her nose – she couldn’t breathe.  He wasn’t stopping.  She decided to lie limply and maybe it would make him stop, maybe he’d think she was passing out and he’d stop.   The pain was starting to settle into her stomach, she couldn’t move her right arm.  Her head was swelling her mouth tasted like blood, everything was sore and it was so painful to move.

            “I just want my mom.  I want to go home.  I think you really hurt me, I think I need to go to the hospital.”  She started to say in a hurried and frightened voice.  Clumps of hair were everywhere, her clothes were torn, blood was sprayed all around the room, and the sheet she was lying on was drenched in her blood. 

            “You’re too drunk to drive.” Diablo said. 

            “No, I’m sober, I have been for the last twenty minutes.  You beat all the alcohol out of me.  Let me go home.”  She begged. 

He asked to hold her, she said no. 

He tried to embrace her and she screamed again.  She couldn’t move, she was in so much pain.

            She just wanted out. 

Diablo began to cry.  “All you wanted to do was lie down and sleep.  Just give me a few more minutes, then you never have to talk to me again.”

            She was sure she’d go directly to the cops, yes, that’d make her a rat but no one liked Diablo anyway, he deserved it and she didn’t give a fuck if no one ever served her coke, speed, weed, or a drink again.  Diablo talked, apologized, cajoled, and begged her not to leave.   

She’d managed to put on her back pack to notice that he was gathering his things. 

            “Whatever you do, I will deserve it but I have to go.”  He grabbed his coke stash, the back pack he carried, hurrying. 

            “I won’t do anything, I’m just going to go home.”  She said softly.  But she was lying, she wanted vengeance she just couldn’t move yet.

            Eventually, she regained strength enough to walk, after sitting in the room listless.  She couldn’t move her right arm, no matter how hard she tried. 

She wanted to see herself.  She walked to the bathroom and flicked the light on.  When she stared in the mirror, she didn’t recognize herself.   She was so swollen that she resembled the character in the movie MASK with Cher.  There was no Sarah to be seen on this clotted, swollen, and bruising face. 

She started to cry and scream why over and over again.  “Why?”  She screamed.  

            “Please stop, Sarah.  Please.”  She couldn’t believe what happened.  Why didn’t anyone help her?  There was no one in the living room.  No one came running from upstairs or next door.   They’d abandoned her to die.   Why was she still here?  She was terrified to leave.  She was so ashamed, hadn’t her father just rescued her from him the week before?  And what about before that? 

            No one could see her like this, she was so ashamed. 

            “Sarah, I’ll help you.”  Diablo had tangled her hair so badly it could not be brushed.  He cut off strands in mass.  He undressed her and showered her gently.  She stood naked, quietly crying, the water stung.   She couldn’t move her arms to clean herself, she was already bruised, broken, had two swollen lips, what she later realized were broken ribs, the  insides of her cheeks were mush from being scraped, she had pain in her sinuses from a broken nose, throbbing in her stomach, and two black eyes that were starting to swell her eyes shut.

            She cried through the night, even when she was sleeping.  Even with her eyes swollen shut, could still release tear after tear. 

While she was laying on the floor in the second bedroom (because she refused to sleep in the bed where he’d harmed her), he’d adjusted pillows all around her as best as he could because she wasn’t able to move, it hurt to lie down. 

In her paralyzed state he made love to her bruised and broken body. Tears slid down the sides of her face into her hair, stinging her scratches and areas of scalp that was exposed.  He cried and when he came, telling her he wanted to make babies with her and start anew.  She didn’t care. 

She didn’t care about anything anymore. 

            “Sarah, I had a science teacher once and she told us, that the most amazing healing machine is our bodies.  It looks bad now, but baby, it’s not that bad.  The bruises will go.  I hurt my arm like that once playing baseball, it’s not broken, you’ll gain movement back in a couple of weeks.  The fat lip will go away, there’s no scars.”

            “Diablo, the inside of my mouth is so swollen I can’t even close it and I can’t eat.  I can’t even suck water through a straw.”  She started to cry again.   

            The next day she heard his mother knock on the door. 

“Is she alive?”  She asked, he didn’t answer and eventually she heard his mother walk down the pathway to the alley. 

            He locked her in the house for two weeks while she healed, just enough to get her back to her house looking normal, he never gave her the opportunity to leave and turn him in, virtually kidnapping her while playing nurse.  He’d hidden her phone and all the cameras in the house so she couldn’t document her wounds.  He brought her shakes to drink because she couldn’t chew food, the first three days she couldn’t use a straw and she slept a lot.  While she was resting, he would lock her in, taking the deadbolt key with him and leaving her to sleep in the spare room or living room.

            The day he let her go home to gather some clothes, he was driving her car.  She opened the door to get out and he said “Don’t you need the keys?”

            Sarah said no, she had a spare upstairs in the potted plant.

            He insisted she take the keys from him and she dismissed him, she carefully walked up the stairs to her apartment and pulled the spare keys out – they didn’t work.   She couldn’t figure out why.  Diablo gallantly ran up behind her and opened the door.  She gathered clothing and some toiletries.  When she looked in her own bathroom mirror, the bruises were yellowing and her swelling had gone down.  Her legs were still marked with dark bruise and she couldn’t lift her arm and continually felt a pain in her side.

            She cried for a moment in privacy and let her anger pull her back together.  She was going to handle this and now was not the time to fall a part.