Forawhile,Ijust dreamed of Theo. Of that happy life we said we’d have. Eating ten different flavors of ice cream on a pebble beach, protecting ourselves from the cawing seagulls swooping overhead to steal our food, laughing when they got too close.
Watching the waves crash against the rocky shore, with colorful beach huts in a row at our backs, and white clouds in the gray sky blocking out the bright sun, until every so often, the rays broke through and lit everything up.
I could imagine it, live in it, as long as I was left alone. Theo’s wide smile, his dark hair shining lighter brown in the summer, the way he would insist on smearing sunblock on my pink shoulders, put a dab on my nose with a smirk.
We’d be based back in the UK, on the south coast or far up north in Scotland, deep in the highlands where no one would be able to find us. Our bubble. Our own little bubble to exist in where all we needed was each other.
It had felt within reach, achievable in some idealistic way.
For a while, I just dreamed of Theo…
Even when a deep, dreaded familiarity crept over my skin, flooded my nostrils and my ears. I sensed it, where I was, but my brain was on block, wouldn’t let it in. The weight in the air that had oppressed me and brought me to my worst moments — it crippled me, destroyed my sanity.
But drip by drip, a fog started lifting, the heaviness left my eyes as whatever drug I’d been doped with worked its way out of my system. The lethargy remained in my heart, my mind, the cloudy refusal to admit what everything was telling me.
I knew where I was even without opening my eyes. But as long as they were shut, it wasn’t real.
I was on that beach. I was with him. Happy. Safe. Laughing.
Theo rummaging through the pebbles at our feet, trying to find the weirdest one to present me with. Theo encouraging me to get my toes wet, to paddle along the shore.
No. No no no. I wasn’t back here. This wasn’t true. I refused it.
Later, in bed, a big, airy, white sheeted bed with enormous windows and a breeze blowing in. Theo kissing me. Theo laughing. Theo there. Theo’s face. His scent. His laugh–
The smells, the familiar metallic tang that haunted my dreams, were just haunting them again, that was all. It wasn’t actually flooding my nose and making my body come out in violet shivers. It was a nightmare. I was trapped in a nightmare, and the stuff with Theo pushing its way through was real. That was the reality, not this. Never this. The drag of my toes against the cold, hard floor, the scream of my arm muscles as they held my entire weight, suspended above my head, it was fake, a memory. The smell of blood and urine and semen was a memory I needed to break free of.
I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t open my eyes and exist in it. Somewhere between the panic and the pain, I passed back out. I returned to the beach and carried on eating my ice cream.
—
The next time I woke, it wasn’t gentle, I wasn’t given any time to pretend or fight my way back to my pretty imagination. I smashed to reality, my eyes flying open with a gasp in my raw throat. I was on the floor, no longer suspended, shoved into the corner, cold concrete seeping into my bare thighs. God, my body hurt. From deep, deep within, like I existed only of pure pain.
A sob wracked me, my aching throat and pounding head making it all spin.
Not here. Not this shed. I couldn’t reconcile with the fact that I was back here. My mind played tricks and warped everything, made it impossible to agree with my surroundings.
Maybe I’d never left. Maybe Theo had never come for me. It was all a dream, all of it. The love he had for me wasn’t real. Of course it wasn’t; that would be sick. Those smiles. The way he touched me. The way he’d scooped me up and rescued me. How did I ever think my big brother would want to do those things to me? Would want to love me in that way?
Were those beautiful moments we shared all just some joke my brain played on me? A method to cope, placing the literal only person who’d ever shown any genuine care in a position of romantic love, like I could ever have that, as if I deserved anything even close to it. Right now, as I languished in my eternal prison, it all seemed so far away. I almost laughed. As if I would ever have real joy. Like I could ever have a normal, kind relationship.
I was in Rafael’s cabin, the place where the very worst happened to me. But it didn’t look real; the walls rippled and shuddered; spiders and bugs crawled along every corner, a steady stream of them expanding and shrinking. When I blinked, they would flutter away for a split-second before returning in wavering pulses.
A scream tore from me, my throat not allowing it to be anything more than a hoarse shriek that cracked and stuttered as fear clawed under my skin. The walls were closing in; the creatures getting closer. Dead bodies swung from the rafters above my head, too high up to reach. I recognized the shoes, the legs.
Over and over, I’d endured and suffered here, but then it was done. It was supposed to be done. Tears flowed from me without restraint, and I tucked my body up, my knees under my chin, curling around and trying to get back to that place. That vision. Away from this hell. This monstrous place, where my eyes played evil tricks and my mind was breaking. Shattering beyond any kind of repair.
Curled up like that, I didn’t move for a long time, not until I found a way to break for good. I was going to this time. Just give up, turn into a vessel and fully break. If I could do that, it wouldn’t matter what happened to me. I would join the crazy-looking bugs on the wall or the spirits swaying from the rope above my head. With an anguished cry, I looked up.
I jolted, a face only a few inches from mine. No swinging bodies at his back.
“Hey, pretty girl,” Gabe said, his expression in a sneering smirk, his eyes cold and so bloody smug. Horror shivered down my body, and I jerked away, banging the back of my head on the wall with a vision-darkening crunch. I cried out in shock, my sight swimming once more. Please let him be a mirage too. The spiders behind him were still going, maybe he was one of them. A dirty bug.
But he remained, watching me react to him like it was his favorite show.
Gabe. I’d let myself forget about him. About the betrayal, the way I’d thought he was my friend, that I was safer with him. That I’d almost come to look forward to his visits because it meant reprieve. It hurt more, almost. Almost.
“You hungry?” he asked, waving a protein bar in front of my face. He was on his haunches, his head tilted forward a little while he awaited my response, my reaction. He probably wanted me to scream so he could whack off to it later, or describe it to Rafael while he did.
