I didn't wake up.
I was dragged out of sleep by the first blow, a thick, deliberate thud against my shoulder blade that felt like the world had decided to punch me personally.
The pain was instant, bright, and intimate, like someone had poured boiling water straight into my bones.
My eyes snapped open to perfect darkness. No moon. No streetlight bleeding through the curtains. Just black so complete it felt like drowning.
Then the second blow came.
Harder.
Lower.
Across my spine this time.
A scream left my throat before I even knew I was making it raw, cracked, the sound of a child who still believed someone might come running
No one came.
I tried to roll away, to curl into myself the way I had learned to do when I was small, but the mattress was too narrow and the next strike caught me across the ribs.
Something inside me cracked like ice on a winter puddle.
The air rushed out of my lungs in one useless gasp.
"Daddy, please"
The word slipped out before I could stop it. A reflex. A prayer I already knew was wasted.
He didn't answer with words.
Only with the whistle of the stick cutting air before it landed again.
Thigh.
Hip.
The soft part of my stomach that had never done anything to anyone.
Each hit was slow.
Not frantic.
He was taking his time, the way a butcher studies meat before deciding where the next cut should go.
Between blows he breathed heavy, wet, almost satisfied.
I could smell my own blood on him even though I couldn't see his face.
I didn't need to see it. I had memorized every angry line of it years ago.
I tried to crawl.
Fingers scrabbling over the cold tile, nails splitting, searching for the door that was only three meters away but might as well have been another country.
My legs wouldn't listen.
Another swing this one precise, surgical found the bone in my left forearm.
It gave way with a sound I will never unhear: a dry snap, like stepping on a frozen branch.
The pain that followed was white. Pure blinding white. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
He paused.
I thought, for one stupid heartbeat, that it was over.
Then the stick came down on my face.
Cheekbone.
Temple.
The world tilted, blurred, and suddenly there were two of him breathing over me.
"Worthless," he said, calm now, almost tender. "You hear me, Tahila? Worthless little thing."
The door opened.
The hallway light sliced across the floor for one second long enough for me to see my own blood already pooling, black in that light and then the door shut again and the darkness swallowed everything.
I was alone with what was left of me.
I don't know how long I lay there.
Time had stopped making sense.
Every breath tasted like rust and salt.
My body was a map of new countries made entirely of pain (some sharp and screaming, some dull and throbbing, all of them on fire).
I tried to move my broken arm and the room spun so hard I gagged.
I tried to call for Mama and remembered she wasn't home.
She wasn't home yet
Tears came, but quietly.
I had learned long ago that loud crying only brought him back faster.
I stared into the black above me and waited for the mercy of passing out.
It didn't come quickly.
Pain is patient.
It wanted me awake for every second.
I whispered to the dark not prayers anymore, just facts
I am sixteen.
I am bleeding.
I am still breathing.
For now.
Then, finally, the edges of the world started to soften.
The pain rose like a wave, higher than I thought a body could survive, and when it crested it took me with it.
The last thing I felt was the tile against my cheek growing warm from my own blood.
Then nothing.
Black.
Fade to black.
My name is Tahila, and I am twenty-two years old.
What I'm about to tell you is real life… stitched with fiction, painted with pain, and told by someone who has tasted the kind of darkness people only whisper about.
I've wanted to write this book for years.
But I kept holding back out of fear, out of shame, out of the hope that silence could erase memories.
Now?
I'm done holding back.
If you are not strong-minded, you won't survive this journey.
My scars aren't beautiful.
My bruises aren't pretty.
And my truth is not gentle.
But if you're willing to walk through these pages with me
If you have the heart to witness the places I've been,
The things I've endured,
The girl I used to be,
Then…
Welcome to my world.
Don't forget to leave your comments and likes.
They may be the only light in this story for a long, long while.