Page 13 of Hush, Little Baby

He says, “I won’t hurt you,” so quietly it’s almost not there.

That should mean something. It should be a magic password that unfreezes my body and restores oxygen to my head and makes everything okay. Instead, it’s a curse because my body doesn’t believe him, but it wants to. It wants to so badly that my face presses harder into his coat, and my fingers clutch at his chest for anchorage. I can feel the thump of his heart, slow and unbothered, as mine whips itself to shreds.

I know I shouldn’t be doing this. You’re not supposed to seek comfort from the thing that’s scaring you. You’re not supposed to melt into the arms of a stranger, not after all the warnings drilled into you since preschool.

The big part of my brain is howling that this is wrong, that it’s dangerous, that I should fight, should scream, should break the spell before it’s too late. But the little part—the small, soft, neglected part that’s been starving in the dark for years—just wants to rest.

It just wants him to hold me and not let go.

I hear myself say, “I—” and stop, because the words are all tangled and too many and not enough. I try again. “I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s alright,” he soothes, his hand never pausing in its gentle stroke through my hair, back and forth, back and forth, as if he’s calming a trembling animal. “I do.”

For a split second, all the tension in my muscles releases at once, and I’m boneless. There’s a weird comfort to someone taking charge, to someone knowing what to do when I have nothing left.

But I know I can’t stay here. I have to go. It’s not safe. I have to get back to my apartment, triple-lock the door, and put all the furniture in front of it if I have to. I have to get away before things get worse—because they always do.

“I gotta go home,” I say, voice microscopic.

“Yes, you do,” he agrees, sounding like he’s granting my wish. There’s a ripple of hope through me until he adds, “And I’m taking you there.”

My head snaps up, and my eyes meet his for the first time. He’s smiling, but it’s not a mean smile; it’s not even particularly pleased. It’s more like inevitability. Like this has already been decided, and now it just needs to happen.

“W-what?” I stammer, but my jaw is already tensing, and I realize it’s hard to open my mouth more than a sliver.

“It’s time to go home, Charlie,” he says, and his arm pulls me in even tighter, not exactly hurting me but making it clear I’d have to really hurt myself to escape. The way he says my name makes my skin prickle. Like he owns it.

“No,” I say, louder, “No, I go my own home.”

He shakes his head, as if I’m a silly puppy. “You won’t be going back there.”

“Yes, I will!” My voice is high and shaky and the room is starting to tip sideways. “I go home now. Not with you.” I try to push away, but it’s like pressing against a steel beam.

His hand is so gentle, moving up and down my back, a sick contradiction to the clamp around my body.

“Shh, you’re okay. I’m going to take excellent care of you.” He says it like he means it, which is so much worse than if he were lying.

The words scrape out of me, “I don’t know you!” I push harder, but my arms are wet noodles. “I don’t go with strangers!”

He leans down, so close I can smell his aftershave and feel the warmth of his breath. “You’re not going with a stranger, sweetheart. You’re going home with your Daddy.”

The way he says “Daddy” makes it sound like a fact of nature, like gravity or death.

I want to tell him he’s wrong. I want to scream. But my chest is squeezing so tight that it takes everything I have not to just collapse in on myself.

“You can’t take me!” I whisper, but my voice breaks on the last syllable. “You’re not my Daddy!” I try to glare at him, but I can’t hold his gaze. I look down at my lap, and the shame hits me like a wave—I’m twenty-five goddamn years old, and I’m so scared I can’t even sit up straight.

His hand stops its petting for a second and instead cups the back of my head, thumb tracing a line from the base of my skull up into my hair. For a fraction of a second, I think he’s going to break my neck. But the touch is so delicate it almost makes me cry harder.

“Charlie,” he says, and now his voice is different—still soft, but with something hard and final underneath. “You have a choice right now.”

I swallow, but my throat is raw, and nothing moves. “I don’t want—”

He doesn’t wait for me to finish.

“You can come with me willingly,” he murmurs, “or you can make this more difficult.”

The words are simple, but my brain can’t process them. I’m so busy trying to stay upright and not throw up that I barely understand what he’s saying. None of this makes sense. This is a scene from a movie, not my life. People aren’t actually like this. This can’t be real.