It will always tickle that unreachable spot on her back.

JUST GO AWAY!

The thought roils, bouncing back and forth in her skull like a violent echo.

JUST GO AWAY! JUST GO AWAY!

Without looking up, only wanting to hurt what hurts her, she grabs her stuffed blue dog and chucks it into the air. She hears a woosh, a bang, and then the pitch of glass exploding. Shards fall, cutting at her skin, and she screams from the shock—a scream so uncaringly tortured, it scorches her lungs.

Footsteps approach. The lock snaps and the door is thrown open. She can hear him, but she can’t see him. She refuses to open her eyes.

“Vanilla? My sweet? What happened?” His voice exudes worry but tamps down on a hint of undirected rage. Caring yet predatorial.

She doesn’t move nor answer, her pain leeching on her insides, rendering her a nonsensical screaming machine.

She feels him scoop her up and cradle her convulsing body in his arms. He bounces her up and down with soft shushes, attempting to quiet her. But she does not stop. She does not know how to. She couldn’t control the light, and now she has forgotten how to control herself.

What makes her finally stop is a shriek. A shriek that bursts into the room with the intensity of a light burning your eyes or your daddy’s worried rage. She instantly quiets to listen, making sure it’s not herself she’s mistakenly hearing. But though she stops, the shriek does not. Her ears perk and she opens her eyes to look toward the sound, the afterimage distorting her vision. In his haste, her daddy had forgotten to shut the metal door behind him and now a strange cry has entered the room with them. A high-pitched shriek so emotionally familiar yet so distant. Her daddy grunts and marches over to the door, kicking it shut with a fierce snap. The shriek asphyxiates into silence.

It will be many years until she hears that shriek again.

Her daddy growls under his breath.

She whimpers at the closed door, then buries her head back into her daddy’s chest, fatigued from her tantrum and too tired to wonder. He presses his hand against the base of her skull so that she remains blinded by his body. When she tries to lift her head, he keeps her forced against him.

“There, there, my sweet,” he sings, the sour tang of his anger only just dissolving from his voice. “I am here. I will protect you. You are safe.”

She feels him sit down. When he removes his hand from the back of her head so she can lift herself from his chest, the room is dark.

I won? She won! She finally won against that awful white light!

A wave of joy surges through her. But then a feeling of dread crawls in and tugs on the pit of her stomach, reminding her of her new dark reality. Now she realizes that winning is not synonymous with happiness. That the two don’t always come hand in hand. But it can be synonymous with fear. With anticipatory terror. A fear of what’s to come.