“When I woke up, I was sore and bruised. And I could feel everything he did to me.” …Could feel how rough he’d been with my body, particularly inside me. And the bruises… I was always bruised inside and out. “He took my clothes, so I was forced to be na**d for him.
“My time there’s a blur because he kept me drugged after that.” A blessing in the deepest level of hell. “I couldn’t figure out how he was doing it. The water? The food? Even if I skipped them, I still woke up the next morning knowing I’d been raped again.” He’d been so rough. Every time. Like I was nothing more than a tissue meant to be discarded via paper shredder. I never had time to heal.
But thank God I was never really conscious for it all… I couldn’t even imagine the trauma my body and soul would’ve suffered had I been.
As numb as my body was, the tears continued to well behind my eyes. And as I forced myself to relive that horrible nightmare, they just kept coming and coming.
“I wanted to die. No one was looking for me. No one even knew I was missing. Every morning I died a little bit more and I just wanted it to end. So I stopped eating. Once I flushed three meals, he realized what I was doing. He held a knife to me and said there were worse things he could do than drug and rape me, and that he’d do it that very night if I didn’t start eating again.
“I felt so hopeless. I couldn’t even die!”
I took a moment to calm my breathing, which was difficult now that I was choking on the thick fluids sliding from my nose down my throat. Nick was so quiet, and at some point, he had removed his hand from my shoulder. But I knew he was still there. He was so close I could feel his body heat on my backside, and it gave me the strength to continue.
“I didn’t know what to do. He had all the control. I was at his mercy, and he never gave any. And the drugs… He kept me so doped up it took me forever to put it together. It wasn’t in the water or the food. It was the vent. He laced the air whenever he wanted to come down, or to keep me quiet when people came over. And they did. The bastard hung a baby monitor in my room so I could hear how close these strangers were to discovering me. And rescuing me. He even forced me to listen to him screw the women who gave it up willingly.” The only good thing about those nights was that he wouldn’t come down to take it from me.
But then there was the one friend who did know about me. The one that got visiting rights to my prison. My captor knew I’d be listening in fear for his voice, knowing that he’d make his way down to me eventually. The things he did hurt me the most and left faint scars on my skin. But I didn’t tell Nick about the horrors of that man. No, this story was about the man that locked me in that dungeon to begin with.
“When I finally figured out the vent, I began trying to get it off. It took four days.” And four more rapes. “I had to move the bed and jump up and down while trying to loosen the screws. I was so exhausted and weak because he only fed me once a day. And the drug was always coming out in some dosage. He only upped it when he needed me knocked out and only turned it off once I was too drugged to fight him off.
“Finally, I got the cover off and stuffed the vent with the fitted sheet. Then I waited for him to come back down. I laid under the covers and hid the vent cover under the pillow. And when he got close enough, I bashed his head in with it.” He reeked of liquor, just like he always did when he used me. The stench was usually strong enough to waft up my nose and snap my mind free of the drug’s trance momentarily, like a shot of adrenaline, but still rendered my body useless, forcing me to know what he was doing against my will.
“I ran out of the basement but I only succeeded in replacing one prison for another. There were still iron bars and steel doors. I was desperate, and thought the only way I was going to get out was if the people monitoring the security system disarmed it. So I set the fire.”
I looked to my horribly damaged arms. My sleeves had been pushed up this whole time and I didn’t even notice.
“But the damn curtains weren’t burning very well. So I grabbed some wine bottles from the kitchen. The first I threw did nothing but hit the ground rolling and settle beneath the fire. So I smashed off the top of the next one and slung it at the fire and along the walls so it’d travel faster. I did it over and over again, but I guess one of the bottles weren’t wine. The moment I slung the liquid, I swear it caught fire midair and flashed back at me like the hand of God.”
Tears really began pushing their way out then, burning and stinging my raw eyes and sensitive skin just beneath them. “I think I angered God or something for what I did, because all I know is there was a loud boom and I was thrown backwards. Whatever was in that bottle splashed against my skin during the boom, and most of those spots were on fire. The arm holding the bottle got it the worst. I consider myself damn lucky that it didn’t get my hands or face, but it got my arms, my chest and my abdomen. And all I could do was roll myself over the rug and beat myself with an afghan to put it out.” I still shuddered over the pain.
“It took forever for the doors to unlock, and by then I was in so much pain I just wanted to lay there and die. The firemen grabbed me and had me sent to the hospital, but I snuck out before the police could question me.”
Squeezing myself harder, I whined, “I didn’t want to go to jail. I was glad that ass**le was dead, okay? But it was still my fault. I set the fire that killed him. And when the fireman asked me if anyone else was in the house, I said no. Because I wanted him dead!” And I didn’t care. I’d do it all over again, except next time, I’d burn that other f**ker, too.
They changed me. Now I was ugly…both inside and out.
“But all the police had to do was check with his lawyer to know I was the one staying in that house. They’ll know it was me.” My breaths deepened, my insides so queasy I wanted to throw up. I swallowed, hard. “Sometimes I think I should’ve just let the fire take me, too.”
“No. No!” Nick finally said. Arms pulled at me, as I still lied on the floor in a tight fetal position, trying desperately to protect myself from an enemy I thought long gone. He gathered me up, and my vision spun a few circles, but calmed when his hands squeezed both sides of my face. His eyes were red and puffy, and streams of tears marked his paler-than-normal cheeks. I never even heard him cry.
Firmly, he said, “You listen to me. No one’s coming for you, because you did nothing wrong. That man… He…” His eyes closed, finding it hard to continue. “That f**king bastard was killing you little by little every day. Fire was too merciful for his sins. What you did was self-defense, and even if the police did find you one day, I promise you they’ll never charge you with anything. You did the world a f**king favor getting rid of that piece of shit. And don’t you ever f**king call yourself ugly again. Don’t you ever feel guilty for what you had to do to escape.”
I couldn’t answer him, my jaw quivering too hard within his grasp, the tears pouring harder than ever. “But there’s still the other guy,” I whispered.
“What guy?”
The one who loved to cut me. “There was a friend that knew about me. With only one body recovered from the fire, I knew it was just a matter of time before he caught up to me. He’ll never let me get away with it.” Agitation growing within, my voice began to panic. “And I saw him tonight! Outside the diner. He found me and I won’t stay here to be taken again!”
“You listen to me. No one is coming for you. You’re just seeing things. I was right behind you and nobody was hanging around the diner. If that man had any way of tracking you, he would’ve found you a long time ago.”
I didn’t believe him. He was still out there, and as long as he was, no part of me would ever believe otherwise. I shook my head, my body shaking so violently I was unable to offer anything more.
“Damn it, Megan.” He released my face and stumbled to his feet. Once grounded, he swooped me up and carried me to bed. Practically swaddling our bodies in the blanket, he forced my body to lean into his. “You’re safe now. No one’s ever going to hurt you anymore.”
Safe. That was a word that hadn’t been in my vocabulary for quite some time, and I still didn’t believe in it. But locked within Nick’s firm grasp, I could almost actually believe it. Mentally and physically exhausted, I willingly succumbed, and he held me in the world’s tightest embrace even long after I cried myself to sleep.
10
When I awoke, I felt cold. Nick was no longer behind me, and the blanket he had pulled over me just didn’t provide the warmth and comfort his body had. I sat up, my heavy eyelids trying to focus on the dimly lit apartment. Light was shining outside, but it wasn’t squeezing brightly past the edges of the blinds, so I knew morning had already come and gone.
Nick was sitting on the sofa, his back to me, head pointing down. “Nick?” I called softly, even the muscles controlling my mouth was still numb with sleep.
He turned his upper torso, a small smile trying to form. “Hey,” he replied softly back. “How are you feeling?”
“Sleepy.” I tossed the blanket off me and swung my legs off the bed.
Nick bent over and disappeared a split second before he arose from the sofa, his sights set on me now. “Then why are you getting out of bed? Go back to sleep.” He sat down beside me and my body involuntarily swayed toward him as the bed sank. His arm reached around my shoulders and I leaned my head against his neck, a trace of cologne lingering from the night before. I felt really dazed.
What did I do? I told him. Everything. Admitting that was like baring a huge piece of my soul, and I felt more na**d than ever. I had shared that horrible secret, and the ugliness inside me, thinking it would run him off, leaving him so repulsed he’d throw me away like the used tissue that I was.
But it didn’t. He was still here, still trying to wrap his arms around me, to comfort me.
Even worse, I was relieved, my body aching for the touch he supplied me, like the relief that followed when an addict gave into temptation during withdrawal.
But my nightmare was far from over. Even though I had admitted the cause of my pain, of the torturing images that would haunt me until the day I died, it didn’t alter the truth of my worst fear. That I had killed, and there was someone out there that knew that, someone who was probably just as cruel and sinister as the one who burned. I buried my head in my hands and hung my neck. “What if I’m not seeing things and that guy really is out there somewhere? Looking for me?”
“I stand by what I said before. If he had any way of tracking you, he’d have found you by now.”
Oh, how I wanted to believe every single one of those words. To think that I could walk away, move forward and make some attempt at a life.
He must have sensed the hesitation in my sigh, because he gingerly tilted my chin until we were eye to eye. “You’re safe with me. I promise I’ll protect you.” I moaned when his forehead pressed against mine, his hand reaching over to caress my cheek, our lips brushing so softly that I actually believed the passion behind those words.
“But be honest with me. Did you ever talk to someone about what happened? I mean about what happened before your last day? ” he skirted.
My head swayed lazily. After being taken to the hospital, it wasn’t easy avoiding the staff to sneak back out, as the pain killers they managed to get in me before I could rip out that IV made me lethargic. My arms and abdomen had been wrapped up at least, but I had nothing on my back but a hospital gown. I had to risk getting caught entering a staff locker room to dig some used scrubs out of the laundry bin near the door. I suppose I could have ventured farther in to find fresh ones, but the risk just wasn’t worth it.
It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon a girl my age working the street. I think she knew, like she could read it in my eyes, see it by the way I wrapped myself up in my arms and had trouble making eye contact. She told me about a women’s shelter she knew would take me in. I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if they hadn’t. They gave me food, clothes…even let me help out for two weeks so I could earn the cash that paid for my ticket out of there. Luckily, they had a nurse that volunteered for them, and she was able to help me deal with the pain and apply clean dressings for my burns. The women there wanted to help me more, but I wouldn’t let them, wouldn’t tell them anything that had happened. I just wanted to get as far away as possible. And they respected my decision once I lied and told them I was eighteen.
“Do you need to talk to someone? Other than me?”
“No,” I whispered. And it was the truth. Though some of the images still haunted my thoughts, it had been a year and a half already. I felt letting a shrink get into my head at this point would be counterproductive, only dredging up what I had successfully put to rest.
“Tell you what,” Nick said, his lips hovering near my cheek. “Let me take a quick shower, then you can shower while I go get us something to eat.”
I nodded and murmured in agreement, even though I had no desire to eat anything. He kissed me tenderly once more, then disappeared behind the bathroom door. The sound of water helped to snap me out of my Nick-induced haze and I made my way to the sofa. I didn’t want to think, because I knew the darkness all too well, my mind always trying to pull me under. I needed to drown myself out, needed to focus on something else, anything else, and I began to search the area around me for the TV remote. Nick was the one who actually watched it these days, and I had no idea what he did with it in between uses. Checking the floor, I noticed the corner of a book sticking out beneath the sofa and pulled it out.