30

Grace

Hours must have passed since I read Sarge’s book but I have no idea what time it is or what day. I’m not even sure who I am. I only know I’m alive because I can feel my lungs rising and falling and I can keep this pen moving, keep it translating my thoughts from my head to the page.

If anyone finds this they will see blood splattered on the pages. Don’t let that scare you. It’s not my blood. I’ve just been doing what he taught me to do. Killing. As soon as I read his book and found out the truth I had to take out my anger on something, something that couldn’t fight back. I had my paring knife with me in case of emergencies and I took it out of my bag and went looking. It was easy, so easy I wish, in a warped way, that he had been here to see me do it. What would you say to that, mister, eh? Would you say I passed the test? Would you give me a badge, a medal? Or would you lock me in a room and try to turn me mad?

It wasn’t a good kill. I knew that the moment I set eyes on her. She was lying under an old oak tree, one leg jutting out at an odd angle: a young deer with large, frightened eyes. She saw me as I approached, made to run off, but her leg was so mangled she couldn’t move. She was trapped. I should have put her out of her misery. Made a quick cut, not let her suffer. But I was in such pain myself, a deep pain right down in my heart like I had never felt before.

When the deer stopped struggling I sat up and wiped my eyes. The sun disappeared behind a cloud and the light faded but I knew, despite the horror of what I’d done, that something had changed. Something fundamental. And I realized that I hadn’t just killed the deer, I had killed Grace too.

I know, as I write this now with the blood of the deer staining my hands, that if Grace is dead then everything she was is dead too. The soldier, the skivvy, the prisoner, the person he could control. It’s over. The nightmare is over and I am free.

I feel like the person I’ve always been: a girl. And that’s what terrified him, that’s what he could never let me be. If I had been allowed to be a girl then I would have done what girls do. I would have used my brain. I would have grown strong, questioned things. I would have made friends and laughed and loved. I would have painted my face with make-up if I’d wanted to, worn nice clothes if I’d wanted to, and then I might have discovered that all that was a bit daft so I’d bin them and try something new. But that wouldn’t matter because it would all have been part of growing, naturally, into whoever I was meant to be. He tried to stop that. He tried to interfere with nature. And that is something I can never forgive because I’ve lost so many years of being who I am, being a girl.