Seren's Story

I sat in the staff lounge on a snowy Wednesday afternoon in mid March, sipping gingerly at my tea. I gently touched my split bottom lip to see if it was bleeding again. It wasn’t, it just hurt. The freezing weather didn’t make it feel any better, but that’s not what it was from. “Life” had been hitting me harder lately. I tried to convince myself that it was from the quickly approaching mating season, but I also knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, hidden in the buried parts of my common sense synapses, that it simply wasn’t true.

Nearly one month ago I had passed my state boards and was proud to be a licensed nurse in the ER. I felt I had really accomplished something and maybe, just maybe, someday I would be free again.

I rested my chin on the table and stared sideways at my coffee mug. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I wanted to hope, the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach would not subside. My life would never change. I just needed to accept it.


I had been a typical and ideal teenager. I earned good grades in my classes. I was on the cheer and dance teams, participated in student government, was junior homecoming queen, and was a month shy of becoming a nurse’s aide. My peers liked and respected me, my teachers held me in high regard, and I tutored for English after class on Tuesdays.

My family was also well rounded. My father worked as Chief Financial Officer for a large construction company in the city, my mother worked part time as an editorial secretary for a local newspaper. She liked to be home for me when I got out of school. We were all pretty happy. I’d had my future planned out since my 13th birthday. I planned to go to medical school and dreamed of becoming an obstetrician, but not before I backpacked through Europe for a year. The money was all saved up, and just waiting for me to graduate high school. We lived in a large house in an affluent neighborhood and two weeks after my 16th birthday, my parents surprised me with a brand new car. Not long after that, my life turned upside down.

The New Year was just a few days old the first time it happened. School would be resuming after the winter break in just a few days.

I lay in my own soft bed one night, my head sunken deep into my fluffy down pillow, my mind drifting far away in dreams of dance, and trees, and friends. I awoke with a start. It seemed, at first, for no apparent reason. My eyes opened briefly and then snapped wide open as a large hand sealed itself firmly over my mouth to stop me from screaming.

“Shhh, baby bird.” My father said with an unfamiliar look in his eyes. “We don’t want to wake your mother. This is just between you and me.”

I didn’t realize what he was talking about until he started to remove my pajamas. I started to squirm and push him off me, but he easily pinned both my arms over my head with his one free hand.
Tears raced down my cheeks and I whimpered helplessly as I lay there, unable to fight back, and he had his way with me. When he left my bed, I was too paralyzed by shock and fear to move or make a sound.

“Remember, baby bird,” he said when he reached the door. “This is just between you and me.”

I crawled out of bed in the morning, my entire body aching, my head throbbing particularly hard, and my eyes burning from the tears. My hands shook as I pulled on a pair of jeans and my cheer sweatshirt. I looked at myself in the mirror as I headed downstairs for breakfast and stopped for a moment.

‘I still look like me.’ I thought. ‘Maybe it didn’t really happen… maybe it was just a dream.’ I heard my parents laughing in the dining room downstairs. They sounded like everything was normal. ‘It must have been a dream.’ I convinced myself. ‘He wouldn’t do that to me.’

With a final resolve that it had just been a bad dream, I washed my face, pulled my hair back into a ponytail, and headed downstairs for breakfast with the usual bounce in my step and peppy attitude.

The more nights that passed without a visit from my father just helped to reassure me that it had, in fact, all been a dream. Life was good. Life was normal.

A week after school started, however, my world came crashing down again. Sunday afternoon, after church, mum went to have tea at the spa with her girlfriends, and I was particularly tired from studying all night, so I took a nap. I had barely fallen asleep when I felt someone lift the sheets and climb on top of me. I figured I was just in that state between sleep and wake when sensations don’t make much sense anyway, so I ignored it. Then I felt a cold hand slide up my belly towards my chest.

I shot upright and was immediately forced back down by my fathers’ strong hand against my ribcage. “Shhh.” He hushed me with a finger to my lips and that same odd look in his eyes. I tried to pull away and gasped in pain as he entered me. My eyes filled with tears, which spilled over in seconds. The more he pushed, the more it hurt, and I started to sob. He thrust his tongue in my mouth as he kept going. I let out a little painful cry as he pushed one last time and I felt sick to feel and hear his pleasure.

“Not a word…” He said as he left.

I sat on the edge of my bed for a moment, and then crumbled to the floor in a sobbing, tearful heap.

I don’t remember how long I lay there. I may have fallen asleep, but I eventually ran out of tears. I gathered myself up off the floor and tore all the sheets off my bed and threw them out on the balcony.

Quietly and cautiously, I opened my bedroom door, looking and listening for any signs of my parents, and upon detecting no trace of them, I stepped out into the hallway and ran for the front door. I left the door open and just ran. I had to get away from what had happened!

I stopped running when I reached the local central park. I found a tree to hide under for the moment and I lay under it on the snow, wearing only my sweatpants and a fitted tee. I didn’t feel the cold that surely sunk deep into my bones. I simply stared up at the bare branches, pushing all thoughts from my mind. I didn’t want to know what thought might bring to me.

Eventually, as the sun started to fade over the horizon, I stood up and walked home.

“Seren, where were you? Do you want some supper?” My mum offered.

I simply shook my head and walked up to my bedroom and closed the door quietly behind me. I sat on my bare mattress for maybe an hour before the doorknob turned.

My father walked in, and once again, I couldn’t recognize the look in his eyes. It wasn’t even the look he’d had when he’d raped me. It was much, much worse. “Where were you?” He hissed.

“I was at the park.” I said, seeing the fury multiply behind his powder blue eyes.

“Where were you?” He hissed a little harder, grabbing me hard by the arm.

“I told you, I was at the park.” I tried not to let the fear get me.

He grabbed me by both arms, I could feel his fingertips digging into my flesh, and lifted me slightly off the bed. “If you EVER tell ANYONE” he spat. “I will make you wish you’d never been born!” He dropped me back onto the bed, threw his hand across my face, leaving a painful stinging behind, and stormed out of the room.

I buried myself under my covers that night, a bit of a chill having taken hold of me. I lay under a mass of comforters and quilts and blankets, both to keep me warm and to try to hide myself. I peered out the window from a small gap in my covers. It was windy, and it was cold. A storm was threatening to approach and snow us in.

My father stood at the side of the bed for maybe five minutes. I knew he had been standing there, I just ignored him. I didn’t want to recognize him; I just wanted to immerse myself in the blowing trees outside. I pictured myself sitting on one of the higher branches, the wind blowing through my hair, and I imagined how it would look to see the very first snowflake of the storm fall past my feet onto the ground, starting a new snowdrift in my mum’s garden. He crawled in bed with me and touched me how no father should ever touch his daughter. I concentrated on the movement of the last few brown leaves clinging desperately onto their branches. He rubbed himself up my legs, in between without entering, across my belly, and in between my breasts. The wind started blowing harder and several of the dead leaves lost their grip and flew away. The snow fell lightly at first, but gradually picked up until it nearly erased the lightly glowing gray clouds. He entered me and thrust repeatedly. I closed my eyes, tears stinging and spilling over. I tried to drown out his moans and focus on the howling wind. I concentrated on the amount of snow that had built up on my balcony. 1 inch, two inches… Just before he finished, I heard a cracking sound, and he stifled his pleasure as he came and I watched the fractured branch fall to the ground.

I went to school the next day without a word to either of my parents. I was oddly quiet in my classes, but nobody asked me what was wrong. Maybe I didn’t look upset; maybe they just dismissed my silence as a varied form of PMS. I don’t know.

I started to feel feverish around 2.00pm and went to the school nurse. I had a temperature, so she called my home; let me know that my parents were expecting me, and that I would be excused from cheer practice for the afternoon.

I got home and started to feel sicker. I went up to my bedroom and closed my door. I had grabbed the newspaper from the coffee table on my way upstairs. I felt the need to spend less time at home, so I started looking for a job. A month later, I had one.

County Hospital, downtown, hired me as a nurse’s aide in the ER. I became very dedicated to my job. The staff got to know me, and to like me. I worked hard, partly because I didn’t want to spend any more time at home than I had to, and I didn’t mind working late. The doctors and nurses recognized that I had a talent for calming people, and frequently would bring me in as a third party to help diffuse difficult or tense situations.

My duties mostly consisted of keeping the trauma and exam rooms well stocked; and cleaning beds as they came available after patients were admitted. Outwardly I seemed a cheerful, normal, peppy teenager. Inside I felt very dark, and I longed to scream out my frustrations. I didn’t understand why I felt I couldn’t tell anybody about my life. Maybe they would think that I was bad, or dirty, or they wouldn’t like me because of what I did. Whatever it was, I held it all inside.

In late April, when the trees were finally starting to fill with green leaves and colorful flowers again, I got home after dance rehearsal, before I had to go to work, simply to change. Something felt very wrong in the house. Silence filled my ears where I expected to hear my mum playing music in the kitchen.

“Mum?” I called out.

There was no answer.

“Mum? Are you here?” I called again.

Still no answer.

I took my dance bag and set it upstairs in my bedroom and went to look around.

I heard a slight trickle of water as I stood in the hallway, looking in either direction. I turned towards my parent’s bedroom. Perhaps mum was in the bath. “Mum?” I called out a bit quieter as I pushed open the bedroom door. The carpet squished wetly beneath my shoes as I stepped in. I glanced towards the master bathroom, which separated my parents bedroom from my own, and slowly approached.

The door was open only about an inch and I pushed it open the rest of the way. I fell to my knees and put my hands to my mouth. The water in the tub was stained red with blood, and my mother laid in there, lifeless and pale, a small trickle of blood still wafting gently from the vertical slices in her wrists. A kitchen razor stared at me from the tile floor below her right hand.

I forced myself to crawl over to her and I touched her hair gently. “Mummy…” I whispered between sobs. “Don’t leave me…” I sat on the edge of the tub and laid her head in my lap. I stroked her hair for a long time, crying, begging her to come back, but I knew she was long gone.
her to come back, but I knew she was long gone.