No Way Out

As Joe lay in bed that night waiting he thought about that day three years ago that he became a man. The day he realized there was more to life than just what you could get out of people. The day he found out the truth about Jessi. For the 15 years prior to that day he had enjoyed bullying Jessi. Teasing her and her sister Silver mercilessly. Looking back now he wonders why no one thought to tell him to stop. Maybe because that is how the world worked. The weak people got shoved to the bottom and trampled on. And he viewed Jessi as a weak person. She never stood up to him, no matter how bad he got and it made him angry that such a weak person lived next door to him. If the power to the whole block hadn\'t gone out that day he\'s probably never have learned just how strong Jessi was.


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Flashback *Joe\'s Pov*
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It was hot that day. Almost 97 degrees and the strain on the power had blown the transformer. The power was out for the whole block. So I was in what used to be my room before Nancy was born and Michael and I had to share a room. It was on the second floor and had a view into Jessi\'s backyard. I was laying on my bed in my boxers with the window open reading a comic book. Now any other time I would have been blasting my music as loud as it could go but the power was out and I was S.O.L. or so my mom said.

I thought I heard a whistle it was a really strange sound, mind you, one I had never really heard before but yet, one I have heard too many times since. I was curious as to what the sound was so I went to the window to see if I could see where it was coming from. That\'s when I saw her. Jessi, naked from the waist up, kneeling before a tree with her hands resting on the sides of it as if she needed the tree to hold her up. It wasn\'t the fact that there was a naked woman in plain view of anyone that shocked me. I mean I do live in a very sexually liberal kind of world.

But this was Jessi. 14 year old Jessi who had been wearing long-sleeved turtlenecks for as long as I could remember. And man was she WELL endowed. I was 15 so yeah I admit I grabbed the binoculors to get a closer look. But when I focused them on her it wasn\'t her breasts I was looking at, it was her eyes. THEY WERE CHANGING! I thought that I was the only person whose eyes changed different colors. I had always been self-conscious about it but I couldn\'t stop them they did it on their own. As I watched her eyes they changed from the smoky gray for which we always made fun of her for to bright blue then to green and then turquoise and then to violet.

That\'s when I heard the whistling sound again. And I saw him, Dylan, her father, Standing about 6 feet from her with a whip in his hand. From my vantage point of being higher up than them, I also got a look at her back. It was black and blue with these strange red welts running through it. That\'s also when I noticed that from her chin down Jessi was the colors of the rainbow. In fact, if you hadn\'t seen her face you wouldn\'t know what her natural color was.

As I watched he whipped her again. She never moved, never flinched the only sign that she noticed at all was the changing of her eyes again. I glanced away for a second to think on this and when I looked back, I saw something so frightening that I dropped the binoculors and ran from the room. Her eyes were black. Black as night and filled with such a murderous hatred that I thought she could kill with those eyes. But that wasn\'t what frightened me so bad. No, what frightened me was that she was looking RIGHT AT ME.

So I ran. I ran straight into the arms of my mother. And to this day I do not feel a bit ashamed. But once my mother calmed me down, I realized something. That as soon as Jessi knew I was looking, her eyes changed. And in that split second before I ran I could tell that she was asking something of me. No, she was BEGGING something of me with her eyes. It wasn\'t until much, much later that I realized what it was. She was begging me not to see. To look away.

When I had settled down some time later, I wondered how nobody knew. Then I had an epiphany of sorts. I remembered all the times that Michael and I were making fun of Jessi and our mother looked at us with sad eyes and told us things. Like the time we made fun of Jessi because she walked with a strange gait. My mother looked at us and softly said that she got that in the car accident that her mother and sister died in. I remembered all the neighbors never looking at that house. Always avoiding seeing it.

My mother had been patting me on the back when I suddenly jumped up so fast that I knocked the chair over and pushed her hand away from me. I started screaming at her. I wanted to know how long she had known. Why did her and Dad just let it happen? Dad could take Dylan, no problem. Mom just looked at me as tears ran down her cheek and said that nothing could be done. And didn\'t I think that they had tried. But Jessi was protecting her family. She\'d told them that it was a sexual thing between her and her dad and it was alright. The courts frowned upon incest but as long as Jessi said that it was alright they weren\'t going to worry about it. There was no one to say that she was lying.

I was so angry I stormed out of the house and was gone for about 16 hours. When I came back it was almost noon the next day. As I walked up the block I saw Jamielynn, Jessi\'s step-mother and her daughter Silver out in the garden. And suddenly I needed answers. But I was so angry still that I couldn\'t get full sentences out. \"How long. With the turtlenecks.\" I demanded. She seemed to know exactly what I was talking about. Up until that point in time I had really liked Jamielynn. Now all I could think of was how betrayed Jessi must feel.

Then I began to think of all the things I had done to her over the years. I felt so ashamed. then I heard her say. Every day since January 11, 1987. \"NINE YEARS\" I screamed. Then I thought that I didn\'t need Dylan to come out right then, so I lowered my voice. Then I wanted to know why that date. Jamielynn told me that it was the date of the first and last time he ever hit her. She then proceeded to tell me the story.

Dylan had come home angry and was looking to fight. He couldn\'t find Jessi who was the one he usually slapped around when he got upset. Although until that date it wasn\'t very often. So he hit Jamielynn. Jamielynn said he actually knocked her out. Jessi came as soon as she heard her father screaming. She was scared for Jamielynn. But somehow her 5 year old brain came up with the plan to save her step-mom who was so nice to her and the baby that Jamielynn and her father had just told her was coming. She made a deal with her father that he could do what he wanted to her as long as he never touched Jamielynn or the baby. Something had snapped in her father upon hearing that and her father agreed. And so it had been for the last nine years.

That was when Jessi came out the front door. She froze when she saw me and I saw her eyes change color briefly. I wondered how I had never noticed before that her eyes did that. Silver, who was eight, ran up to her big sister and pulled her to Jamielynn. I saw Jamielynn take something out of the garden, rub it on her palm and slide her hand up Jessi\'s shirt to her back. I noticed Silver do it too. To anyone who might have glanced at that second it just looked like they were hugging her and rubbing her back. I was standing next to them but I saw her eyes close briefly. Then I understood. They were putting salve on her back. He had beat her again. They were doing it in a way that no one, not even Dylan, would ever notice they were doing it. And it was obviously something they were adept at doing.

I didn\'t know what to say or even think so I just took one look into Jessi\'s eyes and walked away without saying a word. Time passed quickly and nothing changed. I still teased and picked on Jessi I am ashamed to say but a part of me wanted her to fight back. She never did.

And then a year ago we had a really bad winter. Silver caught the flu and Jessi got punished. And although that was nothing new, the way that she got punished enraged everyone in the neighborhood including my parents. Dylan locked her out of the house in 30 degree weather. She sat on the porch like he told her to, drew her knees up to her chin and waited for him to let her back in.

Michael and I were out shoveling snow on our driveway when we saw Dylan and Jamielynn and Silver drive off. Jamielynn rolled down the window and asked us to shovel her walk while they were gone. they\'d be gone for a week, she said. She also said that she would pay us when we got back. There was a weird urgency in her voice and that is when I noticed that Jessi was not in the car. When they drove off I told Michael to go get mom. And I walked slowly to their porch. I was afraid. I knew how cold it was and had been last night. When I saw her I noticed that she didn\'t have any shoes on and she looked so stiff that I just knew she was dead. Then I heard a whimper and I rushed over to her. I picked her up and started to run to my house when my mom came out.

Jessi recovered then, although barely. I remember that I overheard my parents saying that they wished they could could help. But they could go for weeks at a time without seeing Jessi and there was no way to make sure that she was even alive everyday. And that was when I came up with the plan.

By that time, Michael and I shared a downstairs bedroom. I went over to what I knew was Jessi\'s room one night a few weeks later. I knocked on her window when she opened it I grabbed her. She never made a sound, not even a gasp of surprise. I led her back to the door to my room and pushed her in. I didn\'t mean to scare her and I\'m honestly not sure that the girl could even be scared anymore. She was 16 at that time, the same age as Michael. And She\'d been beaten daily for eleven years.

She stood waiting in the center of the room. Now that I had her here I had no idea what to do with her. I knew we couldn\'t talk because Jessi hadn\'t spoken a whole 10 sentences in all the years I knew her. Not even in class. So I led her to a chair and asked her to sit. Michael was asleep and he sleeps like the dead so I wasn\'t worried about him waking up. My whole plan was to make sure that one of my family saw her every day but then I got to thinking about how she must feel living like she did and I wanted to be able to give her some time to be able to relax.

Then I had an idea. Checkers. Everybody loved checkers. So I got my board and set it up on the floor so we could play. Then I looked at her. Now it\'s hard to explain how I know things sometimes. Because Jessi\'s facial expression never changes. It\'s always nuetral, no matter what. So I don\'t really know how I knew, but I did. She didn\'t know how to play. So I explained. To my surprise, she actually played a game with me. Afterwards she looked at me as if to say Thank you and left.

After a while she actually began to relax in my presence although nothing changed at school. And nothing changed in her house either. It was only on these nights I truly began to see the physical manifestations of her abuse. Jessi may have worn a turtleneck and black jeans and combat boots to school but when she went to bed she wore an over-sized t-shirt and a pair of boxers. The second night that I went and got her (for I always had to go get her) she came into my room and sat on the floor by the lamp. And I saw her neck. It was red and bruised and blistered. And the thought struck me. Maybe it wasn\'t that Jessi didn\'t talk maybe it was that most of the time she COULDN\'T talk.

And then about two months into this strange relationship Jessi smiled. And not only did she smile but she said my name. We were playing Checkers and she beat me. I was pretending to be upset and staring at the board. I think that she wanted to make sure that I saw her smile so she said my name. My head snapped up so fast that I swear I heard it snap. I was stunned and I felt like I had just been givan a gift. I wanted to give something back but I know she\'d never take it. So I offered a bet. 50 dollars on my side and the necklace she always wore on hers.

When Michael and I were little that necklace was an absolute mystery to us. It has two tiny little charms that hang on it with a stone set in both that was gray but would change in different lights. It wasn\'t until Nancy was born that we realized that it was baby rings hers and her sisters. And the stone was just like their eyes. If everyone is to be believed it was also the color of their mothers eyes. It was all she had left of them. On the day they died, Jessi\'s life went straight to hell.

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Joe broke off from his reverie and looked at the clock. It was time. He wondered how she was after what happened at school today and the beating she took when Silver came home wet. He had forced himself to listen. To listen to the pounding and the sounds of someone being thrown against a wall. He figured if she could feel it then he could listen. He hoped she was okay. God, how he wished he could kill Dylan.

Time to go get her he thought. But he had no way of knowing that tonight was different. Because tonight she wouldn\'t be there.




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Well I hope you all liked that. I admit that the chapter was long but the plot bunnies just wouldn\'t let me go. So there it is. Tell me what you think. Should I keep going? Any requests of what you want to see in the next chapters? Do you want to see more chapters? Anyway feedback please. Thank you.