DEATH OF A MAYFLY - Chapter 8

Warning: This chapter contains triggers for sexual abuse and stillbirth. If you would like to read a gentler version of Chapter 8 without the triggers, you can do so here.

A loud crash sent me stumbling backward as the trailer shook on its foundation. Outside I could hear the truck’s engine grinding and revving, pelting little bits of gravel against the windows. Then it was quiet for a moment, then revving again, tires squealing as the whole house vibrated, threatening to fall. A coffee mug slid off the kitchen counter, shattering on the floor, then another, and I held onto the table remembering the earthquake drills we’d learned in school.

He cut the engine. For a minute nothing moved. Then it started again, fumbling at the doorknob, cursing and banging the screen door against the outside wall. He couldn’t get it open. He tried again, shaking the door and kicking at it with his boots. Strange; I hadn’t locked it. I ran to open the door and found him stumbling on his hands and knees, gripping at the frame and trying to stand up. I smelled him immediately. Sweat poured down his forehead, dried blood on one side where he’d cut himself on something, and the dirt down the front of his nice blue shirt matched the clay from our driveway. He swayed back forth, his eyes twitching, trying to find me against the dimly-lit living room but seeing nothing.

“Fe!” he yelled. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Otis...” I started to say, but he locked eyes, squinting and shoving his knuckles into my chest. “Ouch, stop it.” He came at me again, pushing me toward the kitchen table. I backed away with my hands out in front of me. “What are you doing?” I could see he was out of control, little flecks of foam forming at the corners of his mouth as he reached out again, this time stumbling and falling flat on the floor. He paused then pushed himself back up, his head tilting side to side as he found his bearings. With my back against the refrigerator I had nowhere to go, overwhelmed by the stale booze leaking from his skin.

The Lighthouse

“Mmm,” he moaned, eying me up and down with the familiar leer as he stroked one hand down my side and onto my bottom, pinching it hard.

“Otis, don’t.” I wondered where he’d put the keys.

“Shh.” He shook his head, holding my shoulders and rubbing them softly with his thumbs, then squeezing them so hard I yelped—which he seemed to like—sliding his hands across my collarbone, inches from my neck. His wet, red eyes didn’t blink, the muscles in his jaw flexing in and out like the gills of a fish.

Then he reached up and laced his fingers into my hair, pulling me backward to the floor in an excruciating power move. I knew not to say anything. He wanted me to beg; he loved it when I begged. I tried to loosen my hair from his fists but he held on tighter, yanking my hands away and slapping me hard across the face.

“Please don’t.” My voice sounded small. Still holding my hair he sat down hard on my stomach. My blood pressure shot up, pulsing in my eyes and ears as I struggled to breathe. He shifted his full weight back onto my pelvis and lifted my shirt over my face, scooting back again and pulling my pants down. Twisting the shirt tight around my neck he punched me once, twice in the face, and I could taste hot blood pouring down the back of my throat as he focused again on my lower half.

Stay awake, I thought, watching the beads of sweat dangle from his hair as he spread my legs and raped me one more time. The familiar waves of pain made me sleepy; maybe I could just rest for a few seconds...

“Wake up!” he screamed, spitting in my face. I tried to open my eyes, nearly swollen shut from the blows. He looked possessed, one wet, pulsing vein in the center of his forehead, and the deep creases around his eyes making him seem so much older than he had when he’d left this morning. He punched me in the face again, then once in the stomach, then continued raping me with his fingers and privates. “Stay awake!” he screamed. I tried to but his voice sounded far away, echoing in my head as I fought to stay conscious. Were my eyes open? I wasn’t sure. One hand squeezed my breasts as he jerked harder. Why isn’t this over yet? What’s taking so long?

He pulled his hand out of me and grabbed my throat, first only rubbing, caressing but pushing too hard. I gagged, coughing, and I heard him laugh before he started choking me with both hands, raping and killing me now. I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything. Everything faded away—his breath, the pain, the room. I felt nothing, but from far away I thought I heard someone playing the piano. And then I lifted up off the floor. Inside my mouth tasted sweet, and my mother spoke for the first time, telling me to sleep.

I floated there for minutes, years, drifting in and out of time above all the pain, until my body sailed softly back down to the ground and I felt the cold. Beneath me my back stuck to the floor in a half-dry puddle of my own blood, naked and freezing as I blindly realized it was daytime. I couldn’t breathe through my shattered nose and gauged the silence, wondering if I was alone in the trailer. He could be anywhere, I thought, but as I inhaled the cold air that told me he’d never stoked the fire I felt safer, reaching over and finding the wall.

A sudden and crippling wave of pain threw me flat on my back, clutching at the floor, my hair, my skin, anything I could find to keep me from bursting into flames. I had to hold onto something, white lightning surging through my core, top to bottom, then again, and again until it stopped just as suddenly and I could breathe.

Water.

The inside of my mouth hurt where my teeth had sliced into my cheeks when he hit me, and my lips were swollen and cracked. Dragging myself up to my elbows I crawled an inch at a time toward the bathroom, miles away at the end of the house, but the pains came back before I could get there. Again I clawed the walls with my fingernails, grunting and tearing at my chest. I’d never felt pain like this before. But then it stopped again, cold sweat pouring down the small of my back, and I hurried to the bathroom on hands and knees, pulling myself up to the sink to scoop handfuls of water from the faucet. Most of it spilled down my front, but I didn’t care as I slid back to the floor waiting for the next wave.

It didn’t disappoint, crushing me from the inside out. I leaned against the tub and banged the toilet seat up and down, screaming through another round of debilitating pain, and listening to the rhythm as I counted in my head, waiting for it to stop. Through tiny slits I saw the bruising from my chest down past my misshapen stomach that contorted with each excruciating pulse, and I screamed for my mom, biting down hard on my knuckles until the pain stopped again. I climbed quickly into bed.

I stayed there all day riding the waves of pain, faster and stronger, more brutal through the afternoon and late into the evening. No one heard my screams, or held my hand, or offered me a sip of water; I was completely and utterly alone. I knew what was happening and I knew it was too soon. Otis had beaten me so badly he’d induced my labor, leaving me without a doctor or midwife to help or tell me what to do. I screamed myself hoarse, fighting the burning thirst and pain, but more than that the temptation of giving into quiet oblivion, nothingness, and flying off to hear my mother’s voice again. But its little bones leaned into mine and battled its way to the surface. There was nothing I could do about it, I had to push now, clawing at the headboard with a primal, guttural howl from somewhere deep in my soul.

I rolled over onto my hands and knees, rocking forward and backward, shaking the bed and hitting my head against the wood over and over again. Everything instinct, my body told me exactly what to do—the grunting, heaving, weaving, innate rhythms pushing down deeper into my pelvis as I wailed alone there in the dark. In the few seconds between contractions I felt between my legs, needing something to tell me this was finite before the burning and stretching began all over again, cutting me like a knife. I grabbed onto my parts, pulling and rubbing and digging, trying to find the end.

“Get out! Get out!” I bellowed, bowing low between my knees as I continued to push. I had no control over anything other than my breath, low and steady, tilting my head back and forth and leaning one ear at a time on my shoulders in the same persistent rhythm. Sometimes I’d give in and float up and out of my body, letting “her” do all the work below. Then I’d crash back to earth, diving so deep inside myself that I thought I would drown. There wasn’t any time between the pains and pushing, and I gurgled, unable to catch my breath deep enough to matter.

At the moment I thought for sure I’d suffocate under the pressure, an intense urge to push took over my entire being as the fluids and pain left my body for the last time. It was only then that I became aware of the clouds of steam evaporating off my legs in the cold room, the condensation dripping down the window, and the silence. I lay back on my pillow gulping at the cool moist air. Between my legs felt warm and wet, but too quiet.

Adrenaline seeped out of my body, my arms and legs shaking from dehydration and cold. I reached my hands down between my legs once more, trying to find it. I pulled my knees up and scooted back on the mattress, aware of the pain in every joint but no longer overwhelmed by it, leaning back on my elbows to take a look. A tiny glass figure lay perfectly still on the wad of bloody sheets crumpled at my feet. She looked gray, her little fingers and toes limp and her skin beginning to peel underneath soft wisps of hair caked in the drying blood. Her face was peaceful like she was sleeping, the tiniest most perfect little lips and nose. I reached and touched her body, already cool in the drafty bedroom. Grabbing the stained sheet and wrapping it around her I pulled her close to my chest, wiping the rest of the blood from her face as I sang to her against the pillows. I didn’t cry, instead memorizing everything about her—her ears, eyelids, her toes almost too small to see. I wanted so badly to know the color of her eyes, but let them rest. Then the pains returned, not as much, and I held her tiny body tight to my chest. My daughter.

I slept with her in my arms all night knowing he wouldn’t come home. He knew what he’d done, likely too afraid to come back and find me dead, maybe sleeping on a woman’s couch somewhere with a wild story about how I’d run off. I had some time. I got up for only a minute or two, carrying her little body with me to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom, then back to the cold, but now dry bed. I hadn’t eaten in a long time and my body hurt from birthing her, but it hurt more from being beaten and broken. I still struggled to see through swollen eyelids, rubbing the constant ache in my bruised and engorged breasts that begged her to eat, milk dripping through my fingers and mixing with blood on the sheets.

The only thing I knew was to sleep. I’d had no right to become a mother; I’d never wanted to know her. And now I never would, and I couldn’t breathe, unable to massage away the phantom pains she’d left in her wake.

On the third day I opened my eyes to a shuffling sound, something with us in the bed. I ripped back the blankets to find a mouse pulling at the feathery-soft threads of hair on my dead daughter’s head.

“No!” I screamed, grabbing it by the tail and hurling it at the window. It slammed against the glass and fell lifeless to the floor. I kept screaming, something broken, snapped, and I cupped my ears and hid between my knees, shutting out the light. I could smell the room around me, a putrid mixture of life and death, my still-naked body stained with dried fluids and blood that coated my thighs and stomach.

She lay there on the bed, so much smaller than she’d been. Her little arms and legs looked wrinkled and powdery, and her face had begun to sink in on itself around her tiny little cheekbones. I steadied myself against the wall—I hadn’t eaten in days and my body was still in so much pain from the broken ribs and tearing between my legs. I could smell urine and my greasy hair pressed against the sides of my face, encrusted in days-old sweat and salt.

I shuffled down the hallway and made my way into the kitchen, grabbing a soft flour-sack towel from the rag drawer under the sink, embroidered with little birds and yellow sunflowers along one side. I wrapped my little girl in the towel, so tiny I wound it twice around her body, tucking the placenta underneath her like a pillow. With her in one arm I climbed onto the end of the bed and reached up, pulling open the attic door. Inside a wooden slide ladder rested against the opening and I slid it down until it was a few feet off the floor. Cold, stale air blew down into the bedroom and I listened for anything that might be scuttling around up there.

I carried her up the ladder one shaky step at a time and into the dark attic. Little bits of light streamed through cracks in the roof, just enough to be able to see some stacks of boxes and crates, piles of yellowing paper, a lampshade, and a small traveling trunk. I carefully climbed up and over the landing, cradling her in my arm. The rafters were low and I had to scoot around on my knees in the dust, making my way over to the trunk. It looked old, with leather straps and two tarnished brass buckles, and inside were more papers and an empty cigar box that someone had thrown away long ago.

I laid her carefully onto the attic floor, cushioning her head with the flour-sack towel, then pulled everything out of the trunk, tipping it over and blowing out the dust. I picked up my baby again—her little face, once so plump and sleepy, had all but disappeared in just a few days and I found myself looking away. I never wanted to say goodbye, even more than I’d never wanted to know her in the first place. But now suddenly she was a part of me, a piece of my physical being that couldn’t be replaced. If I buried her in the ground she’d be gone forever. I kissed the matted curls stuck tight to the top of her little head and laid her gently down into the trunk, tucking the towel around her body like a mummy.

In the corner of the attic were some old bags of rations—flour, salt, sugar, and what looked like rice—likely stored long before Otis moved into the house. Mice had gotten to the flour, rice, and sugar, but left the salt alone, and I dragged the heavy burlap bag across the floor. Tearing it open with a rusty nail, I used my hands to scoop a little at a time, encasing her in the salt like snow around her tiny body. When I could finally lift the bag I poured the rest on top, leaving her doll-like face to the very last.

“I love you, sweet girl,” I whispered, and I thought I could hear music again, but someone was singing this time. I covered her up with the rest of the salt, safe forever, and shut the lid and latched it tight.

I sat in the bathtub hugging my knees, sobbing as the water ran red with blood, the damage he’d done painted across my skin like a map. From the top of my head, to my neck, chest, stomach, hips, and legs, bruising of every shade and hue told the world what he’d done, or would have if I’d ever let them see. But I never would. I tenderly wiggled a broken knuckle, wiping at his purple fingerprints all over my arms that I knew made their way up to my neck. Water could wash away some things, but the rest I’d cover underneath layers of clothing, using winter as my excuse, and makeup to hide the rest. I’d wash and smell sweet, brush my hair and wear it down. I’d change the sheets, make the bed, and put on a fresh pair of clothes, standing over dinner at the stove when he finally came home. Life would go on just as it had before, as if nothing had ever happened. And no one would know the difference.

January 11

Baby Girl

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

Copyright© 2025 Eleanor Leonard All Rights Reserved

Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.