That’s when Jackson speaks behind me. I spin around and my eyes latch onto the scarlet lines rolling over his long fingers, wrapping around his bony wrists as he cradles his nose. “It’s okay, she’s okay. You can leave.” His deep brown eyes find mine when he nods.
He heard me.
He sees me.
He understands, even after taking an unwelcome fist to the face.
“Are you sure?” one of the security guards asks, jerking his perfect chin toward the waterfall of blood. I’m watching him as his brow creases, and he’s beautiful, too fucking pretty.I bet he’s a piece of shit.
Erin moves around me and speaks a few hushed words to both security guards; however, I don’t quite hear them, because I can’t peel my focus from the nurse who took my fist to his face andstillchose to have my back.It pinches something deep inside of me.He stumbles slightly across the room and scrubs his hands raw in the chrome sink, then moves on to his face, until the evidence of what I just did to him is gone, like it never happened.
“Is it broken?” I croak to his back, the sound of paper towel tearing loud.
He spins around and shrugs, throwing the soiled paper in the bin at his side before wrapping his blood-stained hands around the edge of the sink. “Nah, don’t think so, but I deserved that. You were right, I shouldn’t have touched you. I’m so sorry for that.” He nods in understanding.
It wasn’t my intention to turn into the fucking devil, let alone to hurt anyone, for that matter. I’m better than them. Yet trauma, fear, and terror blanketed me in its darkness, and all I could do was…fight.And what’s sad, even through my realization, I can’t find the will to apologize.
He drops his chin to his chest while Erin moves around the room with a hessian bag in her hand. I hadn’t noticed security had left, as I was too focused on Jackson.I suppress another shiver, my eyes firmly locked on the hessian bag. The haunted smell assails the entrance of my nose, and the ghosting of fibrous grain is rough against my skin as the memory of my broken bodybeing jolted around the trunk fills every crevice of my fractured mind.
Everything is going to be a trigger.Every day I’ll be faced with tests, ones I will have to crawl through with torn knees, flayed ankles, and broken nails. I’m going to have to find pause, a moment to breathe,a reason to be better than them.
Erin lays out the bandages and cream on the table beside the bed before she pops her head up, seeking me out. “Would it be okay if we teach you how to change your bandages and care for your–” She pauses and swallows her remaining words.
“That would be great,” I whisper, not knowing what I did to deserve their kindness.
I keep my eyes firmly closed when they both change each soiled bandage, listening carefully to their instructions but never looking. I was told to change the bandages at my wrists, ankles, and groin once daily. The rest every couple of days. There were so many, my broken body covered in the wounds oftheirfilth, and I was anxious to see what would find a permanent residence physically, and what would linger beneath my skin for eternity.
I knew that the one at my pubic bone was going to be one I would have to face daily. Every time I look at my naked body. The three points of their depraved triangle.
I want to cut it out,slice my skin off.
Only, it would make no difference. They made sure I’d decay from the inside.
I close my eyes, biting into my bottom lip as it trembles.
Hold it together.
The sound of rustling beside me has my head snapping. I watch Erin place everything into the hessian bag, and I clear my throat when it tightens through my shortened breaths. She looks up at me, her green eyes concerned, and I squeeze my own closed, asking quietly, “Would it be okay if you could pleasechange that bag to something else? It’s just–” I don’t finish. I can’t get the words out.
My skull cracks against something hard, the movement intense as rough terrain beneath a heavy set of wheels sends my naked body crashing into each wall of the car's trunk.The fibers of a bag scrape across my tear-stained face.
When I open my eyes, I watch her pale before pushing to her feet. She clears her own throat, her chin to her chest, her movements choppy. “Oh, yes, um, I’m so sorry,” she stutters before stepping out of the room and returning with a paper bag instead. It rustles like a leaf trying to find safety during a storm.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
And she nods, a weak smile tipping her thin lips. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats.
I blink slowly, then I shake my head, my eyebrows furrowing. “You didn’t know.”
Jackson is to my right securing the last plaster around my ankle when I ask him, “Do you know if it made headlines?”
I knew that what happened to me was either going to be everywhere, ornowhere. I couldn’t help but wish for the latter. Shadow Heads and Devil’s Peak were small. I didn’t want to be known as the survivor, nor did I want the dreaded sympathy.
I got enough of that to want to slit my own wrists when my parents died.It only ever made it worse.
He shakes his head. “No, it didn’t. I’m so sorry, you deserve bet–”
I cut him off. “No, that’s good, really good,” I murmur, sighing my relief. Goosebumps stipple down my arms.
