LIQUID FIRE

My trick worked, but I'm no magician, and this wasn't magic.

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*** CONTENT WARNING: ***

depictions of child abuse, physical & psychological trauma, mentions of N.D.E

READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

• • •

The heat came first. Prolonged exposure to sweltering heat. That's the only time my father was proud.

My pores dilated, puffed up, then ruptured into hives, blisters, and rashes that consumed me. Even simple movements were unbearable. Like an angry swarm of hornets stitching my flesh with threads of liquid fire.

It was hard to look at myself. To see the conditions of my father's love. The ugly price I paid for it.

My wounds defined his idea of praise. The worse they became, the more he'd smile. Like my suffering was the only reward system he knew.

From a young age, he taught me that approval was measured in pain. Or maybe by the endurance of that pain… It was all a game to him. Something he could control without having to offer an explanation.

He made it into a contest I had no choice but to compete in. To earn my place at his side. To become his protégé.

So, I followed my father's lead.

• • •

Summer was his favorite season. He always said that man could never match nature's ability to produce heat. Not without over complicating the process.

Summer never seemed to end. He’d drag me into the shed at the hottest parts of the day, strip me down to bare flesh, and force me to stand with my back pressed against the metal wall. The sun would bake right through and he’d roast me in sections.

He’d use scorching hot metal tools to outline skeletons of his dishonorable power onto my skin. To trace outlines of the shape he wanted me to become. He'd order me to hold still, like it was some kind of lesson in patience.

If I pulled away, he’d mock me and say I “wasn’t ready.” That I didn’t want it bad enough. If I didn’t improve, he’d spray vinegar into my open wounds that burned like flames seeping deep under my skin.

I’ve tried resisting the urge to pull away. I’ve tried breaking the need to flinch. I'd focus on the heat inside my body, imagining the temperature was cooler than the tools. That the sting of them was just heat escaping through these channels in my skin.

But it never worked.

I couldn’t pretend like I didn't know what was happening. Even when my head spun, even when my heart fluttered, I couldn't escape my own blatant awareness.

Not on my own.

So, I strove for heat exhaustion.

I always knew when it was near. My body would start shutting down, functions seizing, and my mind would slip away. My skin would turn clammy and my ears would fill with an awful static. Like a thousand fingernails clacking on keyboards. Faster. Louder. All around me. Clacking. Clacking.

Until, all at once, a bomb made of silence detonates.

Explosions expand into muffled tunnels that clog my ear canals. And finally, a faint ringing would begin, gathering up my attention little by little, until it felt like it became a part of me. Like it was a prize that even I knew my father wouldn't approve of. A prize I somehow knew meant freedom. Release. Escape.

Countless times I'd gotten so close, but Dad always stepped in right before I'd collapse. He was a master at timing.

That's when the cooling came.

He'd lift me from my daze and toss me like I was nothing, straight into these tubs of ice. Frothy, freezing cold water. The shock of going from boiling to arctic in seconds wrecked me. My skin, my head, nerves, everything.

Sometimes my body would lock up and my lungs wouldn't know how to respond. Other times I'd fly into a panic, kicking myself off the bottom and straight to the surface, gasping in air as quickly and quietly as possible.

I still remember a time when the surfacing would bring me comfort. While my body temperature slid within normal range, leveling between hot and cold, I'd wrap my arms around myself, tight, like how Mom did to me on the day she disappeared…

I'd squeeze my eyes shut, holding onto that singular moment of peace. I’d protect it for just enough time to prove to myself that pleasure can and does exist in more ways than just the ways that please my father. My secret moment of relief before it got too cold to stand.

But that was before dad caught on.

I'd made the mistake of lifting my eyelids, only for a peak, instead of keeping them shut like I usually did. Dad noticed and I immediately snapped them shut again, but it was too late.

The look of rage on his face is forever branded into my memory. His glare was a rattlesnake’s venom, already running its course, condemning a body long before the mind has time to catch up with the bite.

I stood motionless, begging for a redo, silently praying for forgiveness, but God wasn’t on my side that day.

Without warning, the grip of dad’s hand pressed firm against the top of my head and forced me under the water. My lungs constricted, until it felt like sea urchins lived in them. Like a match lit inside the small enclosure of my chest, flames swelling from the inside.

That was the first time I felt hatred for my father. The first time I felt hatred at all.

I clawed at his hand, foolishly, believing, if only for a second, that I could break free, that I could compete with his strength. That I could assert my own control.

But I knew I was no match, even after he’d finally pulled me up…

I drank in the air so violently, I couldn’t recognize the noises coming out of me.

Dad shouted louder, with laughter well on his lips, “Not so quiet now, are you?”

And I was right back under. No chance to fully catch my breath. Not until he was satisfied.

Then came the freezer vents.

Dad had scored himself one of the city’s finest: A fully-equipped refrigerator van. One with a walk-in cooler large enough to sleep six. He’d load me in through the back, still dripping wet, and lock me inside.

My bare feet would glue to the floor on contact. Icicles formed on my nose and my hair bricked in sheets of ice.

He’d man the vehicle and take it for a spin around the yard. With every bump, he’d rejoiced at the sound of me screeching out in pain. With every dip and every bow, dad celebrated my flesh ripping away from the grip of ice that had stuck me to the walls and floors. Like confetti, he’d toss grounded shards of glass, fine enough to be inhaled, into oscillating fans directed towards me, until the air was filled and my skin was coated.

When the party was over, I'd be pulled out, lain flat, and rolled against ice blocks. My skin, glass embedded, would adhere in parts, snag in others, and tear away as I moved along.

I used to scream, to beg dad for mercy, but he never had any to give. It was a waste of my own vital energy, so, I'd given up trying long ago.

It taught me that survival is a scary instinct. It's unpredictable and violent, with an incredible amount of strength. My body knew more about staying alive than I did. It gave me lessons on death, trained me to avoid it, and convinced me that my life mattered. That it was important.

I wanted to believe that was true, but what I believed wouldn’t make a difference either way. Survival possessed a strength even more powerful than my father‘s. It offered no real plans to give me a choice in the matter. I didn’t even think I could have one.

Until one day, I did…

• • •

It happened right after dad had tossed me in the ice water. It was like my instincts went silent and I was given full control over my own decisions. Like everything else inside of me shorted out and left me with a choice to make: Life or death? Acceptance or rejection? Endurance or indolence?

I could choose my father, the way I’d always done, or I could finally keep the promise I’d made to my mother: To choose myself. To protect myself. To always be strong, no matter what.

But bravery wasn’t my ally, and so, I decided to give up. I decided not to kick to the surface for air. I decided to stop fighting. To stop trying to understand, trying to hold onto something that was never going to be waiting for me on the other side.

I decided to let myself go. Completely. That I would no longer allow my father to have control, to benefit from my suffering in his twisted game of self need just so he could feel powerful.

His validation resided within me, and I wanted to take it from him. To steal it. To rip it out of his wretched grip, to be sure that he’d never have it again. Even if that meant sacrificing my own life.

And so, I let go.

I let it all go. Let it float up and away from my body as I fell away and entered a state of mental relaxation. Like a cognitive dissociation. I envisioned my consciousness as a specter having retreated inward, imagining my body as a house standing alone at the end of a street and my forehead the door.

I peaked out through my eye like it was a tiny window, and I gazed up at the sun. The light rays dimmed in and out, like an interrupted flow of electricity to a light source. Sparks flew, energy surged and then, without skipping a beat, the sun sank into the sky, vanishing into oblivion. And in its place, the moon appeared. A thin, curved crescent shaped into a smile. Its light spilled out and over the land, revealing the proof a man, a visitor, standing across the yard by the mailbox.

I didn’t see his face. Although, I wasn't looking for it. I was too fixated on how he kept buttoning and unbuttoning his sleeves. Flipping them open, snapping them shut, over and over. His hands didn’t slow, they just kept moving with some kind of meaning. Intention. Purpose.

My eyes followed him as he approached the house, disappeared around the corner, and up the steps towards the front door.

And then came a knock.

One single knock that shook the walls and floors. A buzzing vibration that blurred everything together until it all washed away.

Until I was back in that tub, looking at myself from outside my body, watching this kid suspended in ice water. He had a thin, ardent smile that shined like fire. It was clear that it didn’t belong to me, but I wanted it so.

That knock wasn’t just in my head, it was real. My real escape. Bone splitting clean from the inside. No penetration meant nothing leaking out, nothing getting in. The rapid cycle of boiling and freezing finally did it. My skull compressed and expanded over and over, until POP! Like a seam giving way, an opening formed and I was finally able to slip out.

That was my trick. My secret. My rebellion.

• • •

I watched as an arm wrapped around his body and pulled him to the surface. His skin was blue. Dad’s was red.

The boy's smile flickered and faded away. It was in that same instance, I was pulled right back inside and forced behind his eyes, again.

My senses were immediately overloaded with pain. Like freezer burn from head to toe. My skin flayed in jagged spider vines across my chest, my back, and my scalp.

I wanted to smolder into oblivion. To melt into lava. I wanted to erase myself in order to escape the pain. But even more than that, I wanted to fight. To lunge out of my mind and rip dad’s body into tiny pieces. To scatter his filthy guts miles apart and grind his worthless bones into dust.

I gave every ounce of strength I had left in me only to realize that all I’d done is nothing more than lay completely still, giving no reaction.

It didn’t take long before Dad completely lost it. He shouted, kicked, burned me, did anything he could to get a reaction. I never even flinched. My eyes were peeled wide open, fixed in place, but never truly seeing.

Clean air cycled in and out of my lungs with a rhythm familiar to my body but set on a journey without me. One that didn’t actually include me.

He starved me, used food as an incentive to bribe me to express anything. He’d hold it out in front of my face like a dangling carrot, or like a leash he thought he could use to drag me back. But there was nothing left for him to pull.

Not anymore.

I’d already gone under, sank deeper than water could ever seep, deeper than heat could ever reach. I drifted further down until I reached a depth he could never touch. To the point of no return. To a place I could call my own. A place I wasn’t ever coming back from.

Because I didn’t need to anymore.

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