“Whatdidn’thappen?” she muttered, scowling at her hands. “I was… out searching for a job when someone jumped me from behind and shoved a rag against my face,” she said with difficulty, like her own voice fought her, refusing to give sound to her thoughts, to that word.
I stayed quiet, letting her get it out, choking my demons until they passed out. The problem with that was more and more of them appeared as Lynn spoke. I wasn’t kidnapped off the street, but the parallels were there and I had to grit my teeth to sit through her story.
“When the drugs wore off, I was where you found me. In that barn.” Her upper lip curled, and she pulled her feet onto the chair, knees pressed to her chest.
“Careful,” I murmured.
The look she shot me was pure acid. “I know my limits.”
I held up my hands, backing off. Remained quiet.
She ground her jaw, muscles shifting in her cheek. “That’s enough surely. I’ve told you what happened.”
“I’m not the one who needs to hear it, Lynn,” I said in as gentle a voice as I could manage. Judging by her snarl, it was still combative.Truculent.
“What do you want to hear?” she demanded, her whole body coiling tight, a live wire one false step away from shocking me to death. “Do you want to know about the endless fucking parade of men who paid to visit that horror show, who made the women trapped in there with me scream and beg and sob until they eventually broke and went silent? You saw how they restrained us. Yousaw.They kidnapped us, sold our bodies to sick, poisoned excuses for men, to the very worst of humanity, the twisted and cruel, the ones who laughed at pleas and came when we cried. Yousawthat place. Do you think we stood a single fucking chance of getting out of there when we were locked in stocks twenty-four-seven? Do you think we could consent to a single fucking second as they—they—”
Her hands curled into fists, shaking hard on her knees. The rage in her eyes had given way to horror, to nightmares, and my gut tightened. I knew how she was feeling, and not just because I’d stepped foot in that barn.
She shook violently, and my instincts that were shredded beyond repair tried to form a command, a compulsion. I knew I should touch her, offer some comfort, but the idea of skin against my skin made me want to throw up.
“How the fuck is this supposed to help?” she demanded, teeth bared, eyes on fire as she swung around to look at me. “I can’tsleep,can’t breathe, can barely eat, and my whole life, waking and sleeping, is consumed by this. How the hell do you think talking about every sick detail is going to fix the mess in my head?” She drilled her finger into her skull and my hand twitched to wrap around her wrist, to pull her fingers away where they couldn’t do damage.
“It has power over you,” I said tentatively. “That’s why you can’t speak about it, why you can’t sleep without nightmares. Because you’re not the one with the power; your trauma is.”
“So how do I kill it? How do I take the power away from it?”
“You’re not gonna like the answer.”
Her eyes locked with mine, hard like I’d set a challenge. “Tell me.”
“This shit. Talking about it. Ripping it out of your head, one word at a time. Coping mechanisms help in the short term, but the only thing that’ll help you sleep long term is therapy.”
“No.”
A mirthless laugh left me. “Denying it doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Fuckthat.”
I shrugged. “Then you’d better make peace with never sleeping properly again. Why don’t you talk to the others who came here from the farm?”
“I barely know them.” I looked at her from the corner of my eye, and she snapped her teeth at me. “I don’t trust you either, don’t get the wrong idea. But I don’t have to worry about snapping and killing someone who wouldn’t deserve it.”
“Because I would?” I guessed.
“Exactly.” She smiled for a second, before her scowl replaced it. “Start another game, nightmare.”
I eyed her for another moment, then did, not sure what to expect when she picked up the controller again. Would she throw it at my head? Rip all the buttons off? To my surprise, she did neither, just stared at the screen as her character shot ahead of mine, because of course it did. I swore viciously and jammed buttons to catch up to her, not afraid to play dirty and earning myself a murderous glare; I felt it scald the side of my face.
“Did you talk about it?” she asked after a long pause.
“Eventually. I fought it, like you did. Nearly lost myself. My dad pulled me back from the edge, forced me to face it even if it made me want to rip the skin off my bones just to escape the feeling.”
I confessed more than I meant to, more than I wanted to. I focused on the race, my jaw clenched, the truth bitter in my mouth.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know the feeling.”
I threw a shell at her on screen just because I didn’t like that quiet, hollow voice. I’d heard it too many times. Used it myself too many times, too. It haunted me. I saw Hanna’s eyes, vibrant and full of life, then sharp with fear, then full of tears, then finally empty of life. My first and only friend died in a cesspit and no one cared but me.
