Creating Yourself

I was 12 when my stepbrother first used a taser on me. He cornered me in the hallway, started zapping it, and trying to jab me with it. He acted like it was funny. He thought a lot of things were funny that I didn't. One visit he put his snake in my sleeping bag so I'd find it when I went to bed. He would sneak the bathroom and rip open my shower curtain to dump cold water on me. But the taser felt like a new level and I didn't like it.

I have some memories from days he would use the taser but it was one of the things that automatically sent my mind away from what was happening. I remember feeling so afraid anytime I'd hear it zap with its bright stream of electricity.

When I was 15, he stunned me with the taser then pulled me into his room. He'd been bragging about how he was going to show me what rape was and what he and his friend had done. He forced me to watch his homemade video of him and his friend raping a girl from his school. It was so hard to watch yet I knew I couldn't just get up and leave.

As his video ended he held my face down against the carpet and tried to kiss me. I bit my own lips together and refused to open my mouth but then I could hear the zapping of the taser and felt I had to listen. I don't know how long the whole thing lasted, it felt like forever and ended after he grabbed a drum stick from his floor and pushed it inside me repeatedly. He said that's all he could do to me since I was his sister.

Almost a year later I was asked to testify about what he had told me about the girl he hurt but I couldn't bring myself to say anything or mention the film. I've always felt guilty I didn't help.