Please Write Your Rant About Male Domestic Abuse Victims

please write your rant about male domestic abuse victims

Okay, I'll do this but fair warning, I might include some kind of parallels to the Depp vs Heard trial(s) because my mind functions better if I have some kind of real-life or fictional literature to support me through the development of my thoughts, so if you believe Amber Heard for some reason, you might not like what I have to say. Also, please if you're gonna comment, be gentle and polite, I'm always open to new (well-based) points of view and I promise I'm open to an honest conversation with anyone who is kind <3

Observation: I will use Domestic Violence (DV) as a broad term throughout this but know that I refer mostly to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) here. The difference between the two is that DV can happen between members of the same nuclear family (between brothers, partners, or child and parents) while IPV happens only between romantic partners.

The reason I don't use DV especially is because abuse against boys (by parents, sisters, etc.) also falls under this category and then it's a whole other discussion about the socialization of children and teenagers, the social minority they represent and how that's a whole new discussion (that I'd be happy to extend in another post actually if there are any other people interested).

To begin with, we have to understand some things: we don't have exact data about male victims of domestic abuse, not only because it's severely under-reported but also because many reports are not even filed because the lines for escaping domestic violence (police, shelters, phone lines, etcetera.) attend only women and girls, or demonstrate a clear bias towards those victims. Plus, as it happens with women as well, abuse doesn't present just physically, but also emotionally and psychologically.

However, just to give you all an idea, in the UK, for example, it's estimated that almost 20% of domestic violence reports were from men in the last two years (2022-23), according to ManKind Initiative. In the US, according to The Tech Report, almost 45% of men believe they were victims of abusive relationships in their lives. In Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 38% of victims of violence in the country were men, 64% being DV-related.

Now, there is a reason for this, and this is called patriarchy. Patriarchy is the concept of one of the pillars of how our society is built, and it means the subjugation of one binary gender (female) by another binary gender (male) - although this definition is more for this essay's purpose than accurate for an academic study for example. It's important to note that gender violence presents itself against women institutionally (through proper institutions, such as the legal system, for example, or a company's hierarchy) and structurally (it's in the roots of our society culturally and thus, infecting everything else).

According to The Patriarchs, journalist Angela Saini's latest book, the Patriarchy is something tricky to explore even for our earlier academics, such as Engels, for example, because it presents itself in many different ways. For example, it changes its characterization according to culture, environmental needs, History, and other factors. Still, the important thing is that it has various different aspects in the areas it's present.

What I want to explore goes a little bit further: I want to understand how the oppression of women affects men because, unlike many other kinds of oppression, gender-related violence affects their enforcers (men) as well as their victims (women). Now, I am not saying this violence is equal to each other: violence against women permeates our societies' very core, it's ingrained in our institutions, in our culture. But on an interpersonal level, gender violence affects men and women both.

Men are pressured into "being a man" (a white person doesn't have to prove they're white in the same sense or with the same intensity as a man has to prove his man-ness), they're molded to become people in disconnection to their own emotions, they're encouraged to be violent or at least not to be "emotional", to the point of not even noticing when they're suffering some kind of violence or from a mental disorder, for example.

This plays a significant role in how we view abuse when perpetrated by women against men but it's not all we need to observe when talking about male DV victims.

Another matter I'd like to point out is the way we view feminine violence: in the Introduction of her best-seller, Lady Killers, Tori Telfer talks about how violence committed by women is often put under one of three categories: the mysticism, the sexualization, or the banalization. That is, socially, we have a habit of thinking about violence perpetrated by women as either mythological, sexy, or just plain silly, and therefore dumb and/or laughable.

Telfer's examples throughout the book are great and I recommend the book for more insight, but to me, three cases stick out to follow as examples:

How the first woman serial killer we have Historical records of, Elizabeth Ridgeway, was killed for being a witch (mysticism);

How Nannie Doss, an old lady who fit all the 50s housewife stereotypes and killed men with poison in her cakes, had her intelligence belittled by people trying to paint her as insane despite many psychiatrical reports of her being exceptionally clever, how she was labeled by the media as "Arsenic Nannie" (banalization)

And finally, how women who perpetrate violence are often sexualized, such as Raya and Sakina, from the beginning of 20th-century Egypt, who were tied closely to the criminal underworld of their neighborhood and who actually developed a method of killing four people with little blood and avoiding messes; or Lizzie Halliday, who was labeled "the worst woman on earth" with clear implications of her ugliness; or at last, Erzsébet Báthory, known more popularly as Countess Dracula despite having been a lot crueler than the name leads you to believe; they were all sexualized one way or another, their crimes fitting their appearances rather than their acts.

What I mean to point out by that is that feminine violence is something we as a society have a tendency to downplay to a dangerous level. Part of that is a result of downplaying violence as a whole, doesn't matter the perpetrator, but a big part of it is because we see violence as a men's trait. Culturally, violence is a characteristic we attribute to men while women are "even-tempered", motherly, nurturing, and delicate.

Those are the traits of femininity. Violence is not something we easily attribute to women, while men can be only violent, domineering, "warriors".

Now, intimate partner violence (IPV) against males and perpetrated by women is significantly overlooked and under-researched. Hell, there was a real and huge doubt whether men could be r*ped at the beginning of the 2000s, and even now there are people who still don't see how men can be sexually abused.

What we do know about IPV is that, according to this article, women and men have roughly the same rate of occurrences of physical abuse against their partners, and in most of the non-reciprocal violent relationships, women were mostly the perpetrators, although it is true that the more violent abuse occurrences are mostly perpetrated by men:

"Archer Reference Archer5 attempted to resolve two competing hypotheses about partner violence, either that it involves a considerable degree of mutual combat or that it generally involves male perpetrators and female victims. His meta-analysis of 82 studies of gender differences in physical aggression between heterosexual partners showed that men were more likely to inflict an injury; 62% of those injured by a partner were women, but men still accounted for a substantial minority of those injured. However, women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more act of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Younger aged couples showed more female-perpetrated aggression."

Again, that's not to say that violence committed against women in our patriarchal society is in any way equivalent to what men suffer as victims of IPV because that's not true. Violence against women is in every corner of our culture, it's in the roots of our society, and violence against men is not as institutional or structural as acts of violence perpetrated against men.

But I have to criticize how we view (or maybe it's best to say how little we view, or even consider) male victims of DV when we're talking about the matter because not only we are then perpetrating patriarchal beliefs that continue to harm us, we're also portraying women as being inherently and perpetually victims of violence, always in a place of perceived inferiority (although I need to point out there is nothing inferior about suffering violence) while men fall under the category of always the perpetrators of that violence.

That's undeniably harmful because it generates a dangerous generalization in individual cases, such as Johnny Depp, for example. Many of the people I saw defending Heard seemed to not comprehend that only because Johnny Depp was in a place of societal power in relation to AH (because he was, as an older, richer man) that wasn't enough of a reason to believe he was guilty of what she accused him of. Just because generally we might rightly point out a systemic oppression of women by men, it doesn't mean that we should apply those principles to individual cases, especially when we don't have access to concrete evidence and in high-profile cases such as Depp v Heard.

Now, after all of that, I need to point out a personal opinion of mine and bear in mind I don't have anything to base myself here so feel free to criticize it if you disagree (just remember to be nice, please): all of these facts make me ask myself how many of those cases of IPV were labeled as "mutual" (because there's actually a pretty fierce discussion on the matter of whether or not mutual abuse exists from what I could find, and mostly of academic research seem to understand that mutual abuse does exist) are actually mutual and not - in case of heterosexual relationships - emotional manipulation on the perpetrator's side.

And that leads me to ask myself how many of the false reports made by women against their male partners (which are the minority of reported DV cases, let's be clear here) were labeled as mutual because the men "fought back"? How many men who were victims of emotional manipulation didn't stay in those relationships or settle cases because of the threat of their female partners reporting them back from abuse as well?

And amongst those people, how many men did actually something that could be considered violent against their partner (talking now about emotional and psychological abuse, excluding the physical aspect for now) in an act of self-defense or instinctual nastiness as a defense mechanism against something that hurt them?

Having been a reactive victim in an emotionally abusive relationship myself, I can say with some ease that I said things that I know for sure truly hurt my abuser, I know I said things in the last days of our relationship that I would never say to other people if I wasn't so defensive right out the beginning of our latest interactions. But I refuse to fall into the trap of believing myself to be an equally abusive part of that relationship because I also know I did the work to try and better our relationship, I know because my other relationships are healthy and close and emotionally vulnerable and the whole circus.

So what I do have to ask myself is that in those IPV cases in heterosexual relationships where our first reaction is to classify them as mutual abuse or something like that... what do we expect from our male victims of IPV? What does the perfect male victim of IPV look like? Is it reasonable for us to expect men not to defend themselves at all because they're generally stronger than women?

Of course, I'm not advocating here that any kind of violence against your partner is okay because they're abusing you to any gender - self-defense has explicit rules to be applied for that exact reason. I'm simply pointing out that maybe we're diving into dangerous territory, or being overly zealous, considering mutual abuse at the maximum, or not believing men at all on the other side of the spectrum, when we're presented with a heterosexual case of IPV where the female was clearly or almost undoubtedly violent throughout the relationship.

That's the many reasons I can think to question people when they are presented with a case of DV of a woman committing abuse against their male partner. Because as much as women are socially oppressed, our biases in regard to gender affect our views of both men and women and can be really dangerous when generally applied to individual cases.

So yeah, I'm not thrilled with our critical skills when it comes to male victims of abuse, loves.

Not at all.

(if you're gonna answer, remember to be nice!)

Chapter 1 - The Demon’s Castle Horror Circus

Summary - find more chapters, read the synopsis, and trigger warnings here!

Lana felt the cold wind passing through the corridor, making her shiver while she kept her eyes wide open, trying to absorb all the details of that dark place she couldn't see the end of. Lana could feel her heart beating rapidly with the anxiety and the tension that accumulated in her body with each step she took. The mist that covered the ground was just slightly illuminated and she couldn't even see her own feet.

She could feel Gal's hands on her back. It was the only thing stopping her from turning back and leave that quiet, terrifying place and it was the slight push of her friend that made Lana put herself back together to continue to the first part of what promised to be a bloody night. Hesitating and feeling her body already trembling with excitation, she made herself move despite her loud heart in her chest, the sickness in her stomach and her sweating hands.

Then, two steps ahead, it happened. It was horrible and walked out the black wall as if was only made of mist. It had its eyes gushing thick blood and half of its disfigured face seemed like it was ripped out.

“Help me!” begged the creature from out of the shadows while grabbing Lana’s arm with his raw nail-less fingers, which sent a terrifying shiver through the girl’s body. “Please! He’s coming, help me!”

Lana stumbled forward, getting free of the man’s grip who continued to shout behind her, maddened. Not even two seconds passed when a little girl slipped right in front of her and stopped. Lana screamed, terrified of the little girl’s appearance, who wore a children’s dress. The little girl shouldn’t be more than ten and her eyelids had been pushed grotesquely to the sides, fixated with a wire that surrounded her head like a crown, highlighting the diamond-shaped raw meat around her eyes while her mouth was sewed shut.

Her silence, even with the other creature screaming in agony and despair behind Lana, was completely disturbing, and, staring at her green that didn’t blink, she felt her dinner coming up her throat for a moment. Lana almost couldn’t contain her gag, even though she couldn’t stop staring at the neon green eyes that made her panicking.

The girl slowly retreated from her way and Lana hurried, having to get away from that creature, but she was pushed back rudely at her third step and turned to see why. She felt she could pass out from the fear as she stared up at a man full of scars that had his mouth and skin looking like it was rotting, he smiled at her, his teeth all rotten as well, making her stop breathing for a second.

“Mine,” the creature growled with a maniac stare at Lana. “You’re mine.”

“No,” she mumbled weakly, stumbling backwards when another voice started to sound, yelling:

“Course she’s not yours, animal.” The demon appeared from the wall, just like the first creature, and still managed to surprise Lana. His eyes were totally white, he’s eyelids seemed to be in raw meat and he had horns on his forehead that had blood dripping from the torn skin. “She belongs to the Master.

“Yes, Master’s,” a whispered voice agreed but it didn’t embody anything and Lana couldn’t identify where it was coming from, which only made her more nervous as the whispers became louder. She ran to the exit, feeling her legs shaking. “Yes, she belongs to Mater, Master’s pet, Master’s, yes...”

And finally, finally, she reached the end of the corridor, but what Lana saw didn’t help her calm down. A clown was waiting in front of the wall that delimited the place and it was smiling to her with a smile that exposed its sharp and stained blood teeth from one ear to another. The white makeup on the clown’s face was stained with a blood-red color and the white wild eyes stared at her as if it could attack her at any given moment.

“Here, ma’am,” it spoke in a thin, grotesque voice that made her shiver while it pointed the passage to his side, for which she should go through. “The Master awaits you.”

Lana swallowed, but continued her way, making sure she was passing as far away as she could from the clown that kept staring at her with the wildness of a psycho. And maybe it is one, Lana thought while entering the place where the corridor led her. Maybe all people here are psychopaths for working in a place like the Demon’s Castle Horror Circus.

The circus surely was committed to fulfill their mission: terrorizing innocent people. Lana looked at the same mist of the corridor accumulating throughout the bleachers that lined up to the oval stage that seemed more like a black abyss than anything.

“I loved it!” Gal’s excited voice sounded behind her, making Lana scream from the scare, still tense because of what had happened in the corridor. Her scream echoed in the totally empty place, making it even louder. Lana looked at her only best friend with severity, scolding her while they walked to the middle of the bleachers.

“Don’t do that again.”

Gal just smiled, knowing that Lana loved to be scared and that, despite the panic, she loved the place. They sat in the third row, not far away from the stage, listening to the people screaming when passing through the corridor of torture, as Lana fondly had named it. The two friends felt the anxiety and expectations burning up with their blood running through their veins and looked at each other, excited, from time to time, while the audience filled up the bleachers, all of them seeming a little bit sick from the panic.

All the lights were turned off as soon as the last person sat. Lana could hear people yelling, scared, but she limited herself to holding Gal’s hand, smiling a little bit when feeling her heart in her throat. A single spotlight was lit up in the center of the stage, revealing a macabre figure.

The man's vest was all black, from his Victorian tailcoat and shoes to his cane, that was resting on his shoulder. His skin was pale as a corpse and his long thick beard was blue. The disturbingly white eyes were visible and penetrating even from afar. He stared at his audience with a serious expression, walking slowly to the border of the stage. His cane, now tapping on the wood floor, was the only thing was the only thing that made noise. The people, eager for the show to start soon, started to murmur between each other, impatient.

Lana knew that out there, the night was clear because of the new moon and the reality was way much gentler, but inside the circus the tension seemed to crush her and push her attention to the rhythmic movement of the presenting man’s cane, preventing her from thinking about her problems and how much she’d like her life was different.

“Silence!” Shouted the man to hear the crowd and all of them silenced again when they heard his voice tone down to a hoarse murmur that cursed all of them.  “The Master is getting closer.”

The echo of the steps could be heard from afar. The voice of the figure that was present on the stage was thick and echoed in the circus’s long black tarpaulins. He said again:

“Few little people know the Master personally, but those who do...,” he paused and delayed his look to the audience, “shout.”

And, for a fact, the screams were heard, all of them from the entry’s corridor. Turning back, like all the others when she heard the screams of agony and despair, Lana felt her heart, which was behaving while the cane was tapping the floor, speeding again and she had to take a deep breath to contain the sensation.

Then, he appeared. It was exactly the same man who had appeared in the middle of the stage: there was no difference between the two of them in their clothes, makeup, and appearance. They even seemed like the same person. Lana frowned, trying to find something in the second man’s height or weight that could differentiate them from the first one, but they looked alike even in those things. A laughter behind her made her jump and turned back to look at the stage, where the first man was no more.

“You, my slaves,” said the second man, turning back everyone’s attention to himself while he climbed down the stairs to the stage. The voice, which had a narrative tone, became a growl of contempt when Blue Beard mentioned the wife who defeated him, “have heard my story a lot of times, I guarantee. You heard about how I was feared and respected by women that belong to me and how they were punished when went to my basement. Until she came. My eighth wife.”

The man reached the middle of the stage and stood there, looking to the public as his doppelganger. He only stood there in silence until, not much time later, a new voice came and neutral, and it involved the audience in its soft plot, like a spiderweb, making them forget that it had a spider.

The man who was speaking now wore a modern and elegant, black and golden suit and a mask in the same colors. His way of walking, just like his voice, was calm and paced. He appeared from behind the black curtain from that was on the back of the stage and was smiling calmly while he spoke. His hair was caramel-blond, his face had sharp masculine edges and his stubble, but his eyes, weren’t visible because of the mask: there were black holes in her place.

 The witch Mágissa was Blue Beard’s eighth wife, also the smarter of them all,” he said and the man with the blue beard smiled with cruelty. “Mágissa was the most powerful among all of the witches and had a friend who she could rely on. This friend that always despised Blue Beard and was always despised by him.”

“Erick Soleir,” Blue Beard growled on his side, looking furious at the mention of Mágissa and Erick. “The cause of my destruction. I could easily rip off a man at that moment, but I’m gonna be content with yours for now.”

Before the public could process what, he was saying, Blue Beard ripped the man’s head off, making the audience gasp, shocked. It really seemed that he had decapitated the man: the body had fallen on the floor with a muffled noise and was immobile since then while his head was dripping blood between Blue Beard’s hands.

To Lana’s total despair and horror, the man smiled to the head that he ripped off and drank the dripping blood, leaking to his face with the deep red blood. She could have thrown up right there if not for her utter fascination for that revoltingly grotesque show. Blue Beard looked at the shocked or disgusted audience with a maniac satisfaction, the blood dripping through his neck and staining his tailcoat’s collar.

“He was the first one this night to lose his life,” Blue Beard announced while smiling and his teeth were reddish. “And I swear to Satan that I will take Erick Soleir’s blood tonight. If not, may the demons drag me to eternal damnation!”

 And like an explosion, the light was turned off again just the right amount of time to allow the actor to leave the stage. When they lit up again, the spotlights focused on a couple: a woman and a man who looked at each other with affection. The woman was dressed in a 19th-century dress that was ornate from the neckline to her waist with lace and the skirt was plain, covering her feet. The dress adapted to her body perfectly, highlighting her curves and making her look like a powerful woman. She was wearing a mask that made Lana touch her own face, uncomfortable with the sensation of looking at the woman’s face: the mask was made of skin and the impression Lana had been that it was stuck to her face with wire, but the woman was actually holding it by a thin stick.

         The man, that looked at the woman with a smile, also wore old black and red clothes. It wasn’t hard to guess that he was playing a vampire when Lana considered the pale skin from the makeup or the rose teeth from drinking blood. He looked like the man who was decapitated by Blue Beard with his blond hair and muscular body, but the difference was in his face: he had a thin face, not as sharp. The fangs that made part of his characterization, together with the blood, didn’t bother Lana, who was stretching to see his eyes. She felt an absurd necessity of looking at them.

By the corner of her eyes, she noticed that the dark characters she had encountered in the entry corridor had spread out through the bleachers and the audience avoided them as the devil ran from the cross. This made Lana distracted for a moment and she smiled at the people who were averted, and anxious when they saw a disfigured face between them. Or a killer clown. But soon her attention was once more attracted to the vampire.

He was fascinating in an almost analytical way for Lana. The smile he was showing off was real — he enjoyed what he was doing —, but it had a bit of irreverence and sarcasm. What could he possibly be thinking so that his smile would look like this?

His posture was impeccable and just like his smile, it showed an aura of rebellion around him. Lana felt jealous for a moment. Everything she could show with her own posture was that she was being sold in the marriage market. She tried to look at his eyes one more time and sighed in frustration when she realized he was wearing red lenses.

There was something in this character that irrevocably attracted her and Lana just came down from her thoughts' imaginary island when his voice was heard. It was low and hoarse, but somehow it could echo for the how arena, including through her body, which tingled softly, making her frown, confused with that sensation.

“Well, my dearest Mágissa, take off your mask for me. You know I’m your slave and your king and between us, there are no barriers nor secrets,” he said in a solemn tone and the witch smiled before taking off her mask, revealing its shape in her face in raw meat. The vampire murmured, looking delighted. “Your blood smells like a banquet just for me.”

“Come taste it, Erick,” said Mágissa in a low, passionate, and amused tone, all at the same time. She stayed still when the vampire’s expression turned almost predatory and got close to her slowly, leaning to her face as if he would kiss her.

Lana was close enough to see the vampire’s tongue as he tasted the fake blood of the raw meat of Mágissa’s cheekbone. The view sent a shiver that had absolutely nothing to do with fear through her body and she felt like everything around her was suddenly silencing. At that moment, she was completely hooked. She couldn’t even hear Gal whispering her sarcastic comments in her ear or the audience yelling in disgust or repulse.

“Your taste is sweet, my Mágissa,” said Erick while stopping and moving away from the witch with a satisfied smile. Lana felt her face heating up because of the double meaning of his words. She carefully looked while a conversation about Erick’s preoccupations started between him and her while also paying attention to the creatures walking through the bleachers so that she wouldn’t be caught by surprise by them.

Lana felt tense when she saw Blue Beard entering the scene and catching Mágissa and Erick together. The man with the blue beard had a cruel expression on his face and he raged about being the owner of everything that surrounded his castle, like the forest in which the witches lived, and about how Erick could never see his friend again if she didn’t marry him.

The vampire hated the proposal, he even thought about staying away to prevent that from happening while Mágissa insisted on becoming Blue Beard’s wife and that made them fight pretty badly. Lana watched, biting her lips, while the vampire went away, leaving Mágissa alone and obviously upset. But she was consoled by other witches who entered the stage and, just like her, wore black dresses and had parts of their skin missing out for everyone to see. It should be a characteristic of the witches, Lana considered, shrugging it off unlike the audience, who looked sick. She, on the other hand, was loving every bit of it, the macabre seeming even more appealing to her at every passing second, once it was the complete opposite of everything she was used to in her real life.

Lana smiled at the friendship the witches had, calling themselves sisters and being caring about Mágissa’s grief over the loss of her best friend and lover because of the fight they had earlier. Lana really liked to see how bad the witches treated Blue Beard, even on his own wedding day, and how they made up a plan for her to kill him.

While the play went on, the grotesque creatures that certainly would visit her nightmares circled the stage and spread out again throughout the bleachers, like they were expecting something. When they saw their Master, they would make a lot of noise and racket, but the rest of the time, they only walked along the bleachers, scaring those who were talking or too concentrated on the show, which made screams sound every now and then. Lana smiled when she saw one of them reach for her and then move away, disappointed that she was so attentive. She even considered letting herself get carried away to allow them to scare her, but decided against it. She was much more interested in the story and didn’t want to lose the details of it because of an unnecessary scare.

“Fascinating,” Lana heard Gal murmur when they watched Mágissa and Blue Beard’s wedding. She knew her friend was focused on the amount of research that would allow them to make that scene and she could almost already hear her discourse about that subject for the rest of the week after spending entire nights searching about it.

When she was already trapped in Blue Beard’s castle, Mágissa went into a stubborn mood and, as punishment, she had to watch as sacred animals were killed in front of her. The public, who looked already appalled by the macabre costumes and makeup, decided that it would be wise to leave the popcorn for later when they watched Blue Beard slicing owls and wolves in the middle.

Mágissa cried blood seeing the innocent animals being sliced open and screamed like she was the one being murdered. Lana felt her agony deep in her core, feeling extremely uncomfortable seeing those animals’ deaths in so much detail. In the moment Blue Beard was preparing himself to slice a living owl, Gal leaned into her and murmured:

“I found out that they show Blue Beard torturing Mágissa when she discovers the basement.” Lana frowned, wondering how her friend knew that, something that Gal clarified quickly, looking suspiciously innocent. “The city’s newspaper doesn’t have a loyal journalist.”

“Gabriel again, Gal?” Lana asked, forgetting about the play and turning to look at her best friend, preoccupied, even while remembering to keep her voice down. The girl, who had a careful disinterested expression on her face, shrugged.

“He’s good at what he does,” she murmured as an explanation and Lana rolled her eyes while pretending to pay attention in the play. “Plus, it’s not like I had accepted going back with him, Lana.”

“I know, but this doesn’t mean I don’t have to worry about it,” Lana said in an annoyed whisper. “Do you know how many abusive relationships start and how your relationship with Gabriel ends?”

Gal rolled her eyes, mad with her friend’s reaction, and said:

“Lana, you need to live in the real world and not in this bubble of fear and glass that Henrique has put you in since you were a kid. Then you’d be able to say what’s an abusive relationship.”

“Henrique doesn’t put me in...” Lana began to protest but they were interrupted by a thump of their bodies, as if they were on the bumper cars and had hit each other unknowingly. The yaw was caused by a man that was holding them by their shoulders.

“Silence, girls,” the reprimand was made in a funny tone, and the man, who was actually about their age, smiled at them naughtily. He, just like Erick Soleir, wore just a little makeup, just enough so that Lana could identify him as spirit because of the neck injury, and his skin, darker than hers, were dimmed to a grayish brown.

He had chocolate-colored eyes, an unshaven beard, and a sharp jawline, really masculine. His white shirt was open, allowing them to see his muscular chest. Gal arched her eyebrows to Lana, approving him, and had the audacity to whistle at him.

“Hey, Asher,” said Gal in a low voice, renewing Lana’s ulterior suspicions: her friend had already watched the play and they were here again just because of her. Lana squinted at Gal, but she was too concentrated on her flirt and ignored her.

As if he had just recognized Gal, the guy’s eyes shimmered with malice, but he didn’t say anything, just moved away from them and continued to do his job. Not wanting to be a victim of any more scares, they looked at each other, silently communicating, and turned their attention to the play. Lana rolled her eyes and snorted.

To this point, Blue Beard had already caught Mágissa in his basement and he had imprisoned the witch in a wood table fit for the torture of women in the Inquisition. Lana felt a shiver down her body when she thought about the torture she was about to see. Blue Beard had an almost calm voice when he said:

“What did you do, Mágissa?” he asked while turning her mask in his hand and looking at her fighting to be free from the chains that locked her and her magic up. “You betrayed your husband, Mágissa. Me, when I love you so much. What a horrible thing to do.”

“You don’t know what love is, Blue Beard,” the witch spat those words to her husband and stared at him like an equal despite her position at the table. Lana felt her admiration for that character increase and smiled a bit. “Don’t be a hypocrite, you bastard.”

The man just smiled softly and said in a smooth and dangerous voice that promised violence:

“Let’s see after that if you’ll be as naughty as you are now.”

Then he showed her mask and ripped it in two before ripping it again in four parts. Mágissa gasped from the pain and more blood dripped off her face, staining the white dress she was wearing. Amused by the witch’s suffering, Blue Beard smiled even more, his eyes shimmering with maniac while he grabbed a sharp knife.

“I want to know who the hell is responsible for their visual effects,” Gal said in resolution when the man stabbed Mágissa's arm without any hesitation or care, making her scream and cry while blood dripped down, dark red and thick. Mágissa's screams got higher and more disturbing while the torture went on and her sounds of despair were able to make Lana shiver in anguish. Some people paled and couldn’t watch as the show went on, looking away from what was happening.

Lana couldn’t avoid the gasp when she watched as Blue Beard slowly ripped the skin off Mágissa’s arm, revealing the raw muscle underneath it. Slowly, he also removed ir, leaving the nerves, bones, and veins exposed. Lana shivered as she saw it, holding her own arm tightly to placate the feeling crawling under her skin.

When she thought she couldn’t take the screams and Blue Beard’s slow torture, the witches, Mágissas’ sisters, broke in the cellar furiously, her skirts fling around them magically. None of them seemed happy and Lana shuddered with the rageful stares they were giving Blue Beard.

One of them, the oldest Lana could see, pointed her long thin finger at Blue Beard, who looked downright chilled and let his knife fall to the ground. Lana couldn’t hold back a smile as she noticed the fear in that horrible man’s eyes and expression.

“You abused our sisters before Mágissa, Blue Beard,” said the oldest witch with a warning voice. “Today you went too far. You tried to abuse the strongest among us and it won’t go unpunished, because you won’t defeat her. Mágissa will rise and get her revenge because no witch will ever forget the cruelty of men. You’ll meet your punishment by the hands of her who is our sister.”

With a wave of her hand, the oldest witch opened the cuffs locking Mágissa up and the young witch hurried to get up, almost falling over the table in which she had been tied up. She was grimacing in pain while she stood side by side with the other witches and cradled her injured arm. The oldest said to her:

“Erick told us you needed help.”

Mágissa smiled as she heard that, but her smile quickly faded as she turned to face Blue Beard, who stepped back.

“I really wanna know how they made this amputation look so real,” Gal murmured, intensely watching Mágissa as if she could read the answer inside the actress’ mind. Lana frowned.

“The skin of her hand was fake and the bones, veins, and nerves are body painted,” she explained, and Gal sighed after a few seconds in silence.

“I’ll never get how you can see this kind of thing,” she announced, putting an end to the matter and Lana didn’t bother to hide the smile growing on her lips.

“Seven times you maimed and tortured us, Blue Beard,” Mágissa said in an echoing voice that surprised Lana. She wasn’t expecting the special effect in the witch’s voice. “Therefore, seven times worse will be your punishment. You, Blue Beard, are doomed to suffer at the hands of the creatures you’ve imprisoned and enslaved. You’ll be hurt as you hurt others until the High Priestess says otherwise.”

“From now on,” the oldest witch, who was the High Priestess, announced: “This punishment will be forever and no power on Earth or underneath it will be able to stop it.”

A thunder rumbled and all of the creatures who were surrounding the audience gathered in a circle around Blue Beard, who had now a panicked expression that seemed to satisfy the audience. The lights flickered throughout Blue Beard’s demise, showing his face in flashes of despair as he was engulfed by the creatures and dragged out of the stage. The witches hugged and soon Erick appeared with a soft smile towards Mágissa. Slowly, the witches left the stage, leaving them alone.

Erick closed the distance between him and Mágissa, who smiled softly, her amputated hand long forgotten, probably because they didn’t seem to feel pain so intensely, seen as several parts of their bodies were skinless, Lana absently thought. The vampire and the witch held each other in silence and the lights went out, ending the show.

Lana felt the bleachers under her shaking as the other actors went downstairs to the stage and the lights went up again. All of the audience rose to applaud the group, who were all smiling, a lot less threatening than during the show. At some point in the middle of it all, Lana’s eyes traveled to Erick, who was openly smiling, just like his colleagues. His eyes, still with the red lenses, danced through the people in the crowd, who was applauding profusely, then stopped on her.

Erick’s intense stare made Lana’s body heat up and her lips tingled uncomfortably. He stared at her for a couple seconds, but it felt like years to her, who felt increasingly unable to avert her eyes from the vampire. So he was the one who did it first, ending the tremendous applauses and whistles with a final smile and disappearing behind the curtains with the other actors.

Gal, who was smiling beside her, was the first to pull her to the exit while people passed by them, talking about how much they liked the show.

“It’s a phenomenal review of Blue Beard,” the girl was saying, mesmerized as she side-hugged, Gal’s arm around her neck. “I got shivers in most of the scenes!”

“Me too and it was amazing,” Lana agreed with a smile.

“This city lives in the past centuries, I swear,” Gal suddenly said, cutting the conversation short.

Lana turned to where her friend was watching just to see a considerable amount of people protesting against the Circus with moralist and religious phrases in banners right at the place’s entryway; the workers trying to gently push people away. Both of them stood still for a few minutes, watching as the horde of revolted people tried to enter the circus by force. Gal didn’t hesitate to push Lana:

“These people are exactly like your grandfather; it isn’t a surprise he’s so idolized in the city.”

“My grandpa doesn’t live in the past century,” Lana defended him, feeling a bitter taste filling her mouth as she talked about Henrique. “He’s just conservative.”

Gal just snorted and pointed the obvious:

“He tried to scare my parents away from the city when we moved in, Lana. And look at what you’re wearing because of him! It looks like a seven-year-old's, for God’s sake.”

         Lana pictured the clothes she was wearing that night as she avoided looking down. It was one of the shortest dresses she could find and yet, it still went just a bit above her knee and probably had been bought to her when she was way younger. With her height, barely changed since she was twelve, it was hard to know if whether her clothes were from when she was a kid or not. The dress was yellow and its orange fall leaves were painted all around it and it had fall-themed drawings on the bottom. The cleavage covered her collarbone and it was sleeveless. As the night was cold, Lana had put on a thin yellow sweater and brown shoes. As she thought of it, Lana blushed.

“Okay, maybe this isn’t exactly the adequate attire to wear to a Horror Circus,” she admitted, blushing even harder when Gal let out a sarcastic laugh. “It’s not funny, Gal, you know I have no other thing to wear!”

         “If you were my size, I’d give you my clothes for when we hang out, but you’re too short, Lana,” Gal said in a kind mocking tone, then she grew serious: “And you only have these clothes because you’re too afraid to buy something your grandfather doesn’t approve of. You need to stand up for yourself, Lana, your grandfather can’t control you forever.”

 “He doesn’t control me,” Lana protested, but it lacked conviction as she knew that was a joke or a lie, and she felt the same bitter taste again. Lana just miserably added: “He just wants what’s best for me, Gal.”

“But he doesn’t trust you enough to let you decide what’s good for yourself,” Gal countered in a hard tone and Lana shut up, swallowing her own unpolite response and not commenting further. Gal, who still had her arm around Lana’s neck, noticed her reaction and sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be harsh. It’s not your fault.”

“Alright,” Lana mumbled back, her eyes on the grass under their feet. To break the ice, Lana brought back their earlier subject. “So you didn’t hang out with Gabriel, then.”

Gal gave her an apologetic smile.

“Does it help if I say I liked it so much I wanted to watch it again?” Asked her friend.

Lana sighed, her suspicion confirmed beyond any doubt: Gal had lied about not watching the show just to get her out of her house and bring her there. And, on the first time she came to the circus, she hooked up with the ghost who had scared them.

“No, but thank you for the effort,” Lana said.

Gal knew Lana couldn’t leave her house very often — it was too dangerous for Henrique to notice her absence —, but she couldn’t help but feel grateful for her friend’s effort in taking her out of the house and making her live a little. Something Lana didn’t do very often.

“Well, someone has to do it, since your grandfather was born in the Middle Ages,” Gal grumbled, probably not wanting to be heard.

Lana sighed. She was tired of that conversation, so she preferred to stay silent about it, knowing Gal wouldn’t instigate it also.

They walked through the wet grass to the parking lot, where Oman’s car was parked. Lana knew that what Gal had spoken back in their discussion was the truth, but even if the strongest desire in Lana’s heart was freedom, she couldn’t give up her relationship with her grandpa because of it.

It wasn’t a big sacrifice to give up her freedom when she never had any to begin with, or when she experienced it so little, she could barely feel its taste. Lana didn’t care enough about it if it’d make Henrique happy.

“What’s up?” Gal suddenly asked, waking Lana from her depressed thoughts about her life and making her look up to where the two young men stood near their motorcycles.

Gal obviously needed to stop and flirt with one of them, who Lana recognized as the ghost who had scared them during the show — Asher. He had chocolate brown eyes and a sexy aura Around him as he smirked: exactly the kind of guy who attracted her friend’s ferocious eyes.

Just like Gal, he had an unwavering malicious smile.

“We’re fine,” Asher answered. “This is Cam, the friend I mentioned last time.”

He gestured at his friend and Lana, as she looked at him for the first time, recognized him immediately. It was the vampire, Erick Soleir. With a curious look, she openly analyzed him, not worrying — as she always did — about being rude.

He had hazel eyes and smiled at Lana in a disdainful way that, even though it deeply annoyed her, just made him look even hotter. Cam had a thin face and his face without makeup was so sunburnt that his cheekbones and lips were reddish, something Lana considered a crime. Like, how could anyone keep their sanity seeing those slightly swollen, shining, rosy lips?

She certainly couldn’t, because she had to stop herself to bite her own lips when she noticed his. Cam was fit and both he and Ashe still wore their show costumes.

“This is Lana,” Gal said, smiling at Asher, her dark green hair shining under the full moon’s and the circus’ lights, which flickered rhythmically. “I also told you about her.”

If there was something Lana envied about her friend’s appearance, it was her hair. Usually, Gal always painted it dark green, which fit her skin tone, an olive tone that shone under golden light. Her hair, always voluminous, was shorter on the back, longer up front, and had bangs that fitted her. Gal’s face was oval and her lips attracted the attention, especially when she wore her favorite brown lipstick.

She had broad hips and big breasts, which always made her think she was fat, in consequence making Lana roll her eyes a lot, not because being fat was a problem, but because Gal was most certainly not.

She greeted the two men with a shy wave of her hand before turning to face the ground, silently asking to be left alone as she always did in the tedious parties her grandfather took her, all of them organized by her grandfather’s friends — or his children, which didn’t help.

“Are you two together now?” Asher asked without any embarrassment in his tone.

Amused, Lana smirked and lifted her eyes back to him.

“No,” she said with that small smile and Gal just explained:

“We’re just friends.”

Asher smiled, satisfied with his response, and hurried to invite them, his eyes never leaving Gal’s:

 “So do you want to go grab something to eat with us?”

Lana frowned, her smile fading when Gal turned to her, excited with the invitation and fighting not to let it too obvious. She checked the hours on her wristwatch, groaning softly as she saw it was already midnight, and showed it to Gal, who sighed.

“We can’t,” Gal said with another heavy sigh and Lana bit her lip, feeling guilty for depriving her friend of some fun. “I have to take Lana home in fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.”

“I can do it,” Cam offered in a calm and collected tone, the exact opposite of what Lana was feeling as she heard his offer. “She just has to give me the address.”

Gal looked at Lana, who, with her friend’s excitement at the prospect of hanging out with Asher in mind, couldn’t help but to nod, accepting a lift from the blond man. Gal smiled, satisfied, but quickly turned to Cam, a finger in his face as her expression grew dangerous:

“I’ll trust you because you’re an employee here and a friend of Asher’s, but touch a strand of her hair and I’ll hunt you down and destroy everything you love in your life.”

Lana laughed when Cam’s eyes got wide and he rose his hands as a peace sign, shaking his head while Gal and Asher walked away and got on his bike, which had a pretty dark green painting. Lana kept smiling as she watched the bike pulling away but became serious quickly as she turned to Cam, who watched her with amusement, although there was something in his expression, something she couldn’t quite place.

“Calm down, princess,” he said with that annoying smirk. “Even if your friend doesn’t trust me, I won’t bite unless you ask.”

Lana rolled her eyes — something she wasn’t used to do, but that man annoyed her in a way few people could. She refrained from commenting on how cliché that phrase was and said in an irritated tone:

“Just hurry up, vampire boy.”

He raised his eyebrows as if he was surprised and smiled a little bit more truthfully before pointing to his own bike.

“Your dress will go up too high if you get on the bike,” he warned in a provoking tone, smirking just because he knew it would annoy her.

Ignoring him with an angry look, Lana analyzed the bike, a black Yamaha YZF-R1 that made her frown in surprise. That was one of the most beautiful bikes she’d ever seen and its design had won the German Design Award. She suppressed the desire to whistle at the bike and just answered him:

“As long I get home quickly, it doesn’t really matter.”

“Since the princess is in such a hurry,” Cam said with a shrug, grabbing two leather jackets. Lana took one of them, even if it looked ridiculously big on her. Generally, most clothes looked ridiculously big on her, so Lana was used to it. Cam, however, said: “Maybe I can get the keys to the jeep if I can find my dad.”

She ignored him and got upon the bike behind him with some struggle as she tried to keep the dress down, but Cam’s mocking laughter made her give up and allow her dress to go up to the Middle of her thighs, hidden under the leather jacket. It doesn’t look so bad, she considered as she looked down to herself. It also shut Cam the hell up and he just started the engine and told her to hold onto him — passing her the helmet meanwhile — before asking her address.

Riding on a motorcycle, Lana considered, was definitely for few people, but she was most certainly included on the list. The feeling of the cold wind in her skin and hair, or at last the parts of her body that could feel it, was enough to make her heart beat faster in excitement. Although she was holding onto Cam’s middle strongly, Lana stretched out to let her face be hit by the wind through the helmet and smiled silly as she felt it cold.

Lana was so focused on the feelings running through her body, that she began to notice the feeling of Cam’s masculine body against her, the fact that her hands could feel his hard-defined abdomen against her fingers, how warm he was despite the cold night, and how close he was to her.

Before Lana could stop her own body from being inappropriate, the bike slowed down and stopped in front of Gal’s parent’s house, who were talking on the front porch while they waited for their children to come home in a piece and busied themselves with eating cookies and drinking hot cocoa, as usual. Mino and Sam Oman, who were Syrian refugees, had five children, of which three were adopted from everywhere in the world and two were biological.

The oldest of them was Sara, who was twenty-five; she had already moved out and lived in Rio de Janeiro, she was Mino’s biological daughter. The second was Jonie, who was twenty-two, was Sam’s biological son and hadn’t leave home yet, but had a stable job while he was majoring in International Relations; he said he was saving up to move to Brasília permanently. The middle child was Gal, who was eighteen and hadn’t left yet because of Lana. The fourth, who was fifteen, was Vichi (pronounced Viki), was quite shy, but a good friend to Lana as well. The youngest was little Ania, who was just five years old and loved to play with Lana every time she could.

When they saw him, Mino and Sam waved in a silent greeting, knowing they couldn’t warn Henrique about her presence. It was easy for them to be quiet, actually, once Sam was deaf. Lana had learned sign language with Gal and her younger siblings, which helped a lot When she snuck out. Ignoring Cam, she gestured at the two parents, warning them:

“Gal is fine, but she’s gonna be late.”

Sam seemed satisfied with that explanation and gestured back at her:

“Your granpa is in the office, careful with the noise of the bike.”

She thanked them with an adequate gesture and turned to Cam, who was watching their interaction with an amused and intrigued expression.

“You’ll have to wait until I get to my room before leaving,” Lana said in a professional tone and pointed at the window of her bedroom. “Can you see that window? The lights will go on, but you can only leave when I switch them off, okay?”

“You needed to sneak out of your house to go to a circus?” He asked as if he hadn’t heard a word she’d said, but Lana could reprehend him. She was too busy blushing, embarrassed for the fact that he’d understood too well what was happening.

Of course, she was embarrassed: she was eighteen and still needed to sneak out of her house to go to a damned circus. How could Lana justify that without sounding like a childish fool? The answer was clear: she couldn’t, so she didn’t, suppressing the feeling of humiliation and the will to cry in anger.

“Did you hear what I said?” She asked, clenching her teeth without looking at him.

Cam smiled at her, provocatively, but just nodded, leaving her feeling relieved with the change of subject. Trusting his response, Lana walked through the side corridor to the back entrance, entering the kitchen of beige tiles where Dinda, the chef, was at, waiting for her to come back home. Lana gave Dinda a thank you kiss and followed to the corridor, tiptoeing, struggling to keep silent as she passed in front of her grandfather’s office. Fortunately, she managed to pass without any problem and went to her room.

After she cleaned the make-up on her face and put on comfortable pajamas, Lana switched off the lights and paid attention to the almost imperceptible noise of Cam’s bike, which seemed to be taking away all of the freedom she tasted that night.

Chapter 2 - Coming Soon...

Prologue - A Broken Heart, Like a Clock

Summary - find more chapters, read the synopsis, and trigger warnings here!

Part 1 – Shall be Lifted… Nevermore “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted… Nevermore.” The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

To make it right, Cinara needed to break two hearts that afternoon and conquer another one by night time.

If she couldn’t, lives would be ruined, all because of a failed-before-it-even-began engagement. At that moment, Cinara would pay to have her own head struck by something heavy, anything to get the hell away from that familiar campsite, full of motorcycles and motorhomes.

Full of freedom.

How the hell, Cinara asked herself, could she have the courage to break her own heart?

Go to Chapter 1

Lfmao bold of you to assume that's not the main reason why I'd marry someone

I won't be settling for anything less than an Odysseus level of obsession from my future husband thank you very much

art by the.gauntlets

gofundme for the family

Freedom Girl - Summary

Hey, guys! That's my book here, I decided to post a few chapters (or maybe more) after translating it from Brazilian Portuguese to English. I really wanted to share this work and hope you enjoy it.

Here's a quick summary of the book:

Title: Freedom Girl

Series: The Freak Show Series

Tags: contemporary romance, hurt and comfort, BAFM women, a horror circus, charming love interest;

If you liked... you're gonna like this: It Happened One Summer, The Roommate, Book Lovers, etc.

Trigger Warning: the story deals with themes of abusive relationships with family, emotional and psychological abuse, as well as a few gory depictions of wounds.

Add: The book didn't have a Sensitive Editor, so any problems with how people of color, disabilities, or queer people are portrayed can be discussed directly with the author.

Synopsis: Lana is tired of playing her grandfather's good girl. She wants more, she wishes for a fulfilling and intense life, she wishes to be free. The arrival of her grandfather's new wife, Cinara, might be exactly what she needs, Lana rapidly realizes when her family knocks on the door. Cinara's family are nothing short of itinerant workers who own a circus of horrors, something she'd never seen before, and yet, it seemed to call for Lana with their world of mystery and fantasy.

Cam, on the other hand, is not a fan of the world his godmother, Cinara, is entering. And he'll do anything he can to understand better the venomous pit that is Henrique Vidal's life, even if he needs to use his granddaughter for that. To protect his family, Cam would do anything, even the unthinkable. But what to do when Lana becomes a part of his family?

Summary (with links):

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 - Coming soon...