No Pads… No Helmets… Just Memories!
Twisted Dreams
(READ NOTES PRETTY PLEASE!!)
"Come on Alex, HIGHER!" My shill voice giggled as I looked down at my feet as they faced the tops of trees and a clear blue sky.
"I'm not going to push you that high, Jasey!" His voice instantly laughed even though it sounded much deeper than the voice I had embedded in my mind, but it was Alex nonetheless. That I was sure of.
"Oh come o- EP!" I yelped when he suddenly grabbed the chains causing the swing I was sitting on to snap to a stop. The metal clanging as it rocked and kinked before it twisted one hundred and eighty degrees leaving me to face my boyfriend. My eyes instantly fell on his knobby knees as I giggled and laughed and nearly over looked the fact that his legs were clothed in much tighter jeans than what he would usually wear. His Nike dunks were replaced with a pair of mud caked combat boots, and though I was kind of digging them, I was curious as to where this was all coming from.
"No, no... I'm not risking you falling off and getting all scuffed up before the wedding!"
WHAT?
My head snapped upwards and I nearly fell off my swing at the sight I saw. So my assumptions were right, it was Alex all right, but he looked... Older? Much older! His eyes looked the same as they held that signature sparkle whilst smiling at me, but still he just seemed so different. His little button nose was the same and his dimples still showed but his jaw was speckled with scruff, and not like the scruff of not shaving for a few days but a real, purposeful and planned scruff. And his hair, oh his hair it was shorter, I mean I could see his face! It was styled but it still covered that huge forehead of his. He was... Handsome! Sexy even... But my thoughts were disturbed when he let out a laugh.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" He smiled as his cheeks flushed pink; looking just as all the memories in my head remembered him even though his skin seemed a little more tired.
"Uh... Uhm, no reason." I quickly breathed as I blinked at him and remembered the previous words he had said, the ones that caused me to look at him so quickly. My eyes fell from his to look down at my hand and low and behold, a simple diamond ring sat on my finger. Holy shit. I almost opened my mouth to say something else when his large, guitar calloused hands took both of mine in a grip so soft it almost felt like he wasn't touching me at all. But Alex seemed completely unfazed by my bewilderment and continued gently pulling me to my feet.
"After all these years..." Alex breathed as he stood me up and pulled our hands apart, his going to my sides where they sat over my ribcage before sliding down to my hips and swiveling my body closer to his. "We're finally doing it." He said with a grin just as I decided to stop freaking out about the fact that Alex now looked twenty-something and I probably did as well and just decided to enjoy this moment with him whether it was all some twisted dream or not. I bit my lip as I looked at him sheepishly and wrapped my arms loosely around the back of his neck. "Were getting married."
Just hearing those words caused a very real feeling to bubble from my belly as I smiled at him. I wasn't sure what to say to him so instead I slid my hands to the base of jaw and pressed our lips together in a seemingly long awaited kiss. Or at least that was what I tried to do. The only issue was when I leaned in to kiss him I felt nothing at all, it wasn't even like the passion was gone it felt just as though my lips passed right through him and I was left kissing air.
But then once I began to think about it, I didn't feel the warmth rush from his body to mine once we touched, and I didn't feel the spark from holding his hand. I had felt nothing at all aside from the fuzzes from his words. I felt nothing. My eyes snapped open as I abruptly pulled away from the not-so-kiss and furrowed my eyebrows, frightened as to what was going on. "What's wrong?" Alex asked causing me to flinch as his returning words brought a throbbing pain to surface right under the skin of my right temple. And on top of that, there was beginning to be this really annoying beeping in the back of my mind, but it didn't even seem like Alex could hear it as he was completely unfazed.
"Uh- I um," I stuttered as I looked at him and then at his chest as I blinked, trying to think beyond the persistent beeping inside my head. I wasn't sure what was going on but as real pain began to pop up on different parts of my body the situation was beginning to feel less and less like a dewy dream. "I don't kno-"
"Hey, Jasey what's going on?" Alex asked in a sudden panic as he stepped backwards making me realize his arms had fallen from my sides. I looked at him curiously and tried to dissect the terrified look on his face as he glanced back at me and stuttered. "W-What's happening?"
"What?" I snapped stubbornly as I looked at him before glancing up at the sky that seemed to be growing rapidly darker, only it didn't seem like it was nightfall at all. "Alex what's g- uh..." I mumbled as I felt an immense weight press against the entirety of my back making me feel as though I was lying down even though I was in fact standing. "Alex?" I choked out looking back at him. "What's happening? Why do I feel this way?" I panicked, thinking he knew the odd sensations I was enduring and could make them stop, make me stay in this happy place and keep me away from the darkness that was flooding the sky. The very darkness that was now causing a gray shadow to cast over everything as far as I could see, which wasn't very far once I actually looked around and noticed it was only me, Alex, and the set of swings, all surrounded by a wall of enclosing haze.
"Jasey, wh-why are there b-bruises?" He choked out with a horrified look as his face seemed to de-age with every time I blinked, looking younger and younger with each second that passed. But with all the confusion, my shredded mind could only form a few chocked sounds causing Alex to speak out once again. "Look!" He said, practically pulling a mirror out of thin-air and shoving it in my hands, "What is happening to you?"
I grabbed the mirror and held it up, trying not to dwell on the fact his voice now seemed to be fading in and out and I was left thinking that this was it, the end. But I had to train my thoughts, my eyes to look into the mirror as well as refrain from gasping at the sight I was instantly faced to see. I too, like Alex moments before, seemed much older than I would ever remember causing my jaw to go slack. Unlike everything else I seemed so at peace despite my mind set, my hair was long and neat and formed into perfect curls that framed my more defined face, but it wasn't even my hair that had me caught up. It was my eyes. They weren't the gray color my mother had given me; they were blue, a bright, clear and crystal blue which had me staring in awe at my own reflection.
"My gosh..." I whispered as I blinked my bold eyes, flicking my full lashes and looking into them intently. They were beautiful and very unlike me, but just as I was beginning to feel satisfied, the beeping in my brain I had previously managed to tune out came back with vengeance, being louder than before and all of a sudden my right eye began to shrink- no, swell! The tissue around it was beginning to multiply as shades of purple and blue stained the skin in a hideous bruise. But not alone had that bruise formed, all of a sudden bruises were beginning to appear left and right, skin began to split in unsightly gashes and everything seemed to be turning to terror. I pressed my hand to my cheek in horror only to choke when the image in the mirror did not duplicate the act. In fact, the image on the mirror was slipping away, running off the glass and leaking from the frame to drip down my filthy, battered hands. Looking up, everything else was beginning to bleed from sight just as the image on the mirror had. Everything was fading away, even Alex as he reached his hand out to me and looked like a dripping ice cream.
"Alex no!" I gasped as I tried to reach out and grab him, to stop him from slipping away and to stay in this moment forever but my arm refused to move. "ALEX NO, DON'T GO!" I cried out, desperate to keep him with me as I was too terrified to be alone, but it was too late. All of a sudden it was like I had been hit upside the head and the lights went out.
Everything was black, but it wasn't like the black of a nightmare, it was a noisy black. Like, for instance I could still very much hear beeping of what I know could assume to be some machine I faintly knew and voices, lots of voices but none I really recognized or cared for. It was like they were right beside me, but just out of reach and I had no way of getting to them. I was trapped in a nowhere land. And I was alone.
I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry but I didn't think I could. I was no longer looking at things like I was above them, I felt once again inside myself, like I knew what was going on, I was aware even from within the darkness that had consumed me. It looked like it does when its pitch black -like at night, but you know your eyes are open because you can sense it, that there is something within the darkness, and that it doesn't just end at your eyelids. But what was inside here with me, or just beyond it I had no clue. I was petrified; I was suddenly succumbing to the forces all around me, the beeping, the voices, the weight on my back, the ache in my mind. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to be alone, I wanted to be home, in Alex's arms as he curled a lock of my hair around his finger and told he loved me. I wanted to be alive, to be loved; I wanted to be a part of the world I could still feel rampaging inside me, begging to be rejoined. But I was too weak.
The beeping was getting too loud, the voices too hard to understand, and the weight too much till the point came where something inside the darkness snapped and everything was lifted- if only for a moment that is. It was like the floor fell from out beneath me and something inside me clicked. My sense of awareness was gone and sounds flooded my ears like a fucking hurricane as if I had just popped them and could finally hear much clearer than before, only I didn't want to. I knew my eyes were shut now causing the darkness as I clenched them shut and had to force a whine of crippling pain from slipping out. But while the darkness had caved, the weakness had not, and I recoiled from the light I had been silently praying for and let out a small cry.
"Jasey!?" A panicked voice instantly gasped and I felt something touch what seemed to be my hand causing me to jump to life and snap my eyes open. "Hey, hey, Jasey it's okay!" the person consoled as I panicked slightly in my place, once-again-gray eyes wide as I gasped for air and looked around me, a more detailed image of where I was slowly coming into focus out of the white haze I had caused from so abruptly opening my eyes like I had. "Sh... It's alright..." The voice whispered as I blinked slowly and looked down at a hideous paper gown that was covering my lap. I knew the gown well but why I was in it I was uncertain of. The last thing I can remember before the terrible nightmare of losing Alex was being cornered by... Riley. No. No, no, no, no!
"No!" I hiccupped as my eyes began to sting and I looked at my hands, the now familiar bruises covering the one arm I could see, the other secured in a sling. No. An IV was stuck in my hand like in all the movies and TV show's I had ever seen meaning- no! I looked up and the numerous monitors towering over me like a castle wall, each and every one emitting that fucking beeping. No it can't- no. He couldn't have... I didn’t even try to control the trembling of my lip as I looked at the hand now holding mine, and then the person it belonged to. "Jack?"
"Hey, sh, just stay calm okay?" He said causing me to puff my lip as I wasn’t exactly sure why I should or should not be freaking out as of now, but I chose against it at the whim of my cluelessness and Jack's evidently desperate plea. I blinked at him hopelessly as I looked beyond him at the empty set of seats, one holding Julie's purse, one Rian's coat, one my father's and the final one was... empty.
"Jack..." I whispered as I glanced around the room to see if he was sitting someplace else, sleeping maybe seeing as I had no sense of time let alone what had actually occurred. But whatever it was I was sure he was here, he had to be, maybe he was just outside, or getting some air, but there was no way he would leave me here alone, without him. Jack hummed a bit causing my eyes to snap to his and see a scared look in his brown orbs making me tremble. It wasn't often Jack got scared and it only made me think that something awful had happened to me, even if I could no longer remember. But seeing his fear made me only want Alex more, to hold me and tell me that no matter what I was fine, and to do it before I could have the chance to remember what had really happened to me to put me here. "Jack," I breathed, "where’s Alex?"
And it was like I had just slapped him in the face and begun to cry all at the same time. He physically flinched at my words even though they had come out as no more than a whisper. He looked at me with an unreadable expression. I wasn’t sure if he was confused, scared or plain out hurt by the look in his eyes, one unlike before. My breath had quickly begun to pick up, it's pace increasing every second Jack left me hanging, refusing to tell me he was just outside, or that he would be right back. I had to pry our eyes apart to look down at my lap to keep from breaking down in front of him, I would be fine. I didn’t need to cry. I just needed Alex that was all. It felt like hours before Jack finally replied, "Jasey?" He called quietly, squeezing my hand and bringing my eyes to his direction, but not meeting him directly. "Do you not remember?" He asked, avoiding the question.
So that was it? Alex wasn’t here? He left me by myself when something clearly terrible had happened to me when he was so hell bent on ensuring to me that he loved me, does that mean that it was all a lie, or is this all just some twisted dream. I shut my eyes, waiting for the floor to fall out beneath me again and take me back to reality, to take me to Alex, and away from the idea that Riley had actually beaten me to such a bloody pulp with his own hands, or even breathed on me at all. Because in reality that would never happen, Alex wouldn't allow it, Alex loved me too much, but that didn’t seem so certain as I felt the coldness of my rooms brush my bruises telling me he was nowhere near me to hold me while I cry. Suddenly I felt a tear kiss the creases that my cheeks cause near the edges of my eyes and I choked a sob, "God no!" I cried out softly now knowing that this was no dream, that feeling that tear meant this was real, all too real. I began to frantically shake my head, my hands subconsciously yanking at my hair causing Jack to shush me again, only this time with no avail. "No, Jack tell me he's here!" I cried and opened my eyes only causing more tears to relentlessly leak onto my cheeks, "tell me he's outside, that he will be right back! Please, Jack, t-tell me-"
"Hey, sh, sh, it's going to be alight!" He tried to sooth me in attempts to keep my calm, going as far as to try and hold my face in place only causing me to recoil.
"TELL ME HE DIDN’T LEAVE ME HERE ALONE!" I snapped in a tone dripped to the bone in desperation. My eyes pleading with him as much as my words to convey that my risen level in tone wasn’t out of rage but distress in that I fucking needed him right now. But instead of saying anything at all Jack just visibly swallowed around his throat and lowered his hands to his lap. His eyes never leaving mine as I stared at him with grounded determination to get an answer out of him despite the fact I was so close to breaking I could practically feel the individual fibers of my being beginning to tear and the snot start to drip from my nose like it always does when I'm on the brink of hysterics. But I refused; I was not going to fall until I knew why Alex was not here to catch me, why he had left me, "What happened to me, Jack?" I whispered on a trembling tone that no doubt contradicted the coldness of my steady stare.
"Uh..." Jack swallowed as he shifted awkwardly and looked as though he wanted to look away, to avoid the confrontation only he couldn’t having been under my gaze for so long already. "I think we should wait till-"
"Just tell me, Jack!" I snapped before sniffling slightly, not giving a rats ass about the water works flooding from my eyes, my body was too numb to care about crying right now, I was numb to any and all emotions, I just wanted answers before this -hopefully- brief moment of invincibility wears off and I crumble into the creases of this hospital bedding. "What happened to me, why am I here?"
"Jase, I think we should wait till the doctor comes back in an-"
"TELL ME!"
"It was Riley, okay!" He instantly snapped back, flinching at his own words as they fell from his lips, "Riley found you, an- and he fucking- he- r-none of us know what to do! Okay? What do you want to hear, what is it that you want from me? Huh?" He ranted on, the words flying from his mouth like fizzes from a soda that was dropped then instantly opened and Jack immediately looked as though he wished he could take it all back, and if that was the case, I was wishing the same. Just as I had suspected, my cloak of invisibility fell down from around my shoulders and the pain flew at me. My wall of strength fell down into a dust cloud of despair, mushrooming up and around me, casing me inside its ring of polluted air and leaving me to sit and contemplate what he had said. "Jasey..." He whispered hopelessly as the cloud cleared and my gaze fell to my lap.
"No..." I whimpered, shaking my head again as I felt the tinge in my eyes return with vengeance, the stinging almost at the level of a physical pain because my eyes were so dry from all the crying I had probably done without even being aware of the act. I wanted to be strong, but how could I? "You're lying!" I instantly told myself aloud, but even my own voice failed to convince me that Jack's words held no truth and I began to pull my knees into my chest, feeling like I was physically shrinking anyway under Jack's watchful eyes. "No," I breathed, "Alex wouldn't allow that, he promised me, he wouldn’t allow that, Jack, Alex loves me, he wouldn’t let that happen!" I cried, begged, fought with tears streaming from my eyes as I balled the hospital blanket in my graveled fists and shot the most contradicting look Jack's way. One filled with confusion and disappointment, all while it begged for him to begin to laugh and tell me he was kidding, that I had fallen down the stairs or something like that. Only he did none of that. I sniffled and gasped a few tripped up breaths before looking down at my lap and asked the one question I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer to in the end of it all. "Jack," I whispered with a trembling voice as I sniffled once again and tried to wipe my tears with my one able hand. But it was no use, they just kept coming. "Why isn't Alex here?"
The breath in Jack's voice caught in his throat so loud I thought he had choked; only when he failed to gag or even really gasp I look a few more shaky breaths, waiting less-than-patiently as Jack blinked at me with a torn expression in his eyes. 'He doesn’t love you.' A voice inside my head insisted and I bit my lip, silently praying for Jack to respond. To prove the voice wrong as it carried on. 'Alex never loved you, and now he surly wont, having been fucking beaten, how could he?' I wanted to scream out for the voice to shut the fuck up but I could only reduce to letting out a small muffled scream that could have easily been passed as pain all whilst I pulled at the sheets and slammed my eyes shut. 'Your mother was right' the voice said, 'no one will love you, not even Alex' it said, 'he left ‘cause he couldn’t lie anymore, this was his getaway'.
"STOP!" I gasped out as I kicked under the covers and tangled my movable hand in my mangled hair. "STOP TALKING!" I screamed, causing fear to rush though Jack as he looked from me to the door helplessly. "PLEA-se..." I cried as my angry voice broke and despair fell back into my tone, filling my words and writing my thoughts in to sounds to be understood by the other, had Jack even been bothering to listen to my mental collapse that is. I went to look up at him, to cry for him to call Alex, to help me undo whatever had been done to bring him to vanish when I needed him most, only when Jack looked back at me with a shattered expression, there was two knocks at the door, and it was being pressed open. "Jack?" I pleaded for his attention even though it was already turned towards the door, my voice too small to mean more than whatever the middle aged man poking in had to say as he raised two gray brows at Jack.
"A moment, please?" He said in a heartless tone that held nothing but professionalism as he blatantly avoided my gaze and only spoke to Jack, clearly and directly. The guitarist having less strength than the older man as he shot me one worried look and pushed his seat back, getting to his feet.
"Jacky...?" I whimpered in a voice that made Jack's shoulder's visibly curl inward and force him to look at the floor. He knew I only called him that when I wanted something, or worse, when I needed him as I had no one else. It had been a long while since I had used his name in such a way, and I could see how it had visibly turned something inside him. But even with my final attempt at a plea he didn’t turn around, sit back down and hold my hand like I so desperately needed him to. Instead he just kept his back turned to me and shuffled to the door, following the old man out and bringing Julie's face to instantly replace the two previous figures. I swallowed hard around my raw and swollen throat at the sight of her warm and watery eyes and continued to cry. My eyes burning more than ever before as I puffed my lip out and looked at her, "Mommy?"
"I'm here baby..." She instantly whispered as she stepped into the room and shut the door in one swift motion before she was taking Jack's seat and holding my hand. Her warm touch alone had me once again falling apart at the seams, sobbing into my knees as I shook my head and gasped out little bubbles of fragmented words, never once completing a thought until one heart breaking statement managed to slip through shocking both of us.
"What happened?"
It was like I had just dropped a ticking bomb on my bedside table which caused the eerie silence to envelope the two of us. One Julie knew had to be broken on her own accord as I continued to cry after making out my singular thought. Tears streaming from my eyes like I had an endless supply stocked up from the weeks when no tears were shed and only happiness had consumed my minutes in every given day. Aside from my sniffles I was silent, I was no longer gasping and hiccupping, just sniffling and taking soft and tangled breaths, trying to build up my brain for something I was suddenly aware that I could have never been prepared for as Julie took my had she had been holding and gave it a squeeze, "Jasey, deer." she said slowly causing my to sniffle and softly shut my eyes. "There was a lot going on all at once..." She diverted before taking a deep and hesitant sigh and dropping my world off the side of a cliff with one swift remark. "Honey, you and Alex broke up."
Hearing the words caused everything inside me to freeze, and had I not been listening to my blood stop suddenly in my eardrops I would have sworn I hearted the beeping of my heart monitor quite literally skip a beat. What? I looked at her with the blankest of expressions and tried to figure a way around the pain that was slowly creeping in through the wounds that had been ripped open, climbing up the streams of my tears and stabbing my eyes relentlessly. I felt as though she had just ripped my heart out and eaten it whole with those few softly spoken words. But how could that be? How could words so soft hurt so bad, how could a whisper so light feel like a load of bricks, slowly crushing my chest and causing this feeling of suffocation that was strangling me. "No," I choked out as I squeezed her hand mercilessly and shook my head, "No, no that’s not true!" I cried. "It can't be true, he wouldn’t do that!" I cried out before ripping my hand from Julie's grasp in order to cling to the cold metal railing of the hospital bed. I needed to hold onto something grounded and quickly as I felt my world begin to desiccate from the inside out.
How could this be? How could Alex break up with me, and not even do it to my face. All the times he had told me he loved me, all the times he had held me at night. All the times he's wiped my tears and told me not to cry, that everything would turn out right, why now? Why this time? What was so different that made had me un-lovable? Had Riley beat me so bad that I was distorted so much that Alex could no longer look at me with a gaze of love. Was it all my fault? Did I ruin us? Was it because Riley had gotten to me that I was now simply nothing but used goods, damaged merchandise? Why.... What went so wrong that made him lose sight of what he had seen in me all along, what I was finally beginning to see and understand? Or maybe... maybe Alex finally got to see what my real mother always saw. No. That can't be true. Alex loved me, he really did. I know it; I could feel it- he had to have been feeling it to.
Right? Would someone feel the passion I had and simply walk away. "He wouldn’t do this to me..." I whimpered through a clenched jaw and eyes as I felt the muscles tighten to a painful level of constraint, I didn’t care. Focusing on the pain in my jaw, the pain in my arm, my head, my back, it made the pain in my heart seem less harsh even if it was the most crippling pain of them all. Just knowing that minutes- hours ago someone had loved me, and now they do not. It has to make you wonder how damaged must I really be? To have the force to fill me with the overpowering sense of uselessness to make me see more and more all the reasons Alex had to walk away, and to realize it was me who needed him to stay. I let out a heart crippling sob as Julie reached out; startling me as she gently touched my hand.
"Jay..." She whispered and I pried my eyes open in order to glance at her even if only for a moment before I saw the conflicted look in her eyes and had to turn away. "Jasey, you need to know..." She forced out past her fighting lips and sighed, "It wasn’t Alex who broke it off." The words catching my ears like a blindsided car accident, rolling past a stop sign like a harmless act only to be plowed down an instant later by an eighteen wheeler truck. Stopping my heart instantly as I looked at her, holding her gaze this time and waiting for the three final words to fall from her mouth as they did with much resentment as Julie looked down at our layered hands and breathing out, "It was you."
This time I physically heard the monitor attached to my barely breathing heart skip a beat in time to trigger the crippling pain that shot straight up my chest from the place where heat used to grow in my stomach before. The pain shot straight through the cavity in my chest that would hold my heart had it not been breaking into a million fracturing pieces and turning into dust. Only this time I didn’t cry, I couldn’t, my body wouldn’t allow it. Even though I could still somewhat feel the tears staining my bruised and colored cheeks, my lips refused to part and my lungs denied my sobs, and that was when it happened.
"He doesn't even love you, how could he!?" Riley gasped through his laugher as I silently sobbed feeling every sliver of hope I thought I had, evaporate into oblivion. My cry trembling when I felt his body crouch down beside mine and his hand on my thigh. The rough skin dipping the fabric of my jeans in a fiery touch that stung like the flames of the Hell he came from causing me to grit my teeth from beyond my cries. "No one will be looking for you..." He whispered as I was sure only I could hear his words with Colton still cackling to himself in the background. I tried to crawl away in a weak attempt, my shoulders slipping on the slick and prickled bricks and my bloods nails scraping once again against the pavement, but his other hand grasped my chin. "He doesn't love you." He spat through clearly clenched teeth as he snapped his face close to mine. "No one will ever love you."
“Jasey!” Julie’s voice cried out as my body refused to react to the flashback, not gasping not sobbing not even sinking backwards into the bed. My mind was a blur my vision was incompetent as it blinked and faded in and out and nothing could be heard over the merciless beeping of the machines. “What’s going on, what’s happening to her- Jasey?” Julie cried out and my eyes somehow managed to snap to the side to see her holding my hand.
I never thought I would hear a sound and simply know it would be one I could never forget. Hearing each and every individual thread of my cloth top being pried from the others was one of those sounds I knew would be forever imprinted in my mid. The beeping could still be heard over my flashback, corrupting the thoughts. “See…” His sick voice cooed as cool air swirled to fill the empty void my shirt had made, wind kissing my skin and bringing goose bumps to its surface as I fought to keep conscious. “It’s easier when you stop fighting me!” He said, it didn’t matter that in my semi-conscious state I was still letting out feeble whimpers that managed to pass my shallow, swollen throat and busted lips. “More enjoyable…” He hummed as his abrasive hands scratched my smooth skin, taking the flesh only love had touched and turning it into something filthy and meaningless, like myself. “Don’t you think?”
“Mam- there is nothing I can give her in this state, her vitals are fluxing but they are under control, she has to work though this on her own.” A new voice reasoned causing an ache in my brain that made the mental images warp like food coloring in a glass of water. Stretching in weird ways and creating new images with every waiting second that it sat and thinned out within the water.
“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” His voice sang in a menacing tone as I heard the sound of a zipper slipping and my entire stomach clenched- the pain the act brought causing my teeth to grind from how hard I had been so brutally and repetitively hit. I wished I wasn’t in so much pain, wasn’t so weak, for if I wasn’t it would have been so easy for him to spread my bleeding legs which had gone numb in the short time after the gashes were slit. “Alex is to pussy to have popped your pretty little cork.” He said, his words practically bathing me in dirt as even being under his stare made me feel minute and undeserving of living with any joy or purity in my life. He made me realize I was deserving of this. I wanted to fight him, but my body was to week, to numb and to terrified to move in any way that wasn’t physically done for my by Riley’s coarse hands as they slid up my raw and ugly thighs to the place only Alex had ventured causing me to cry out and yelp. “I’m going to show you how a real man does things, right.” He spat, literal spit flying from his lip and stinging my scratched and bloody face as I felt a sensation I knew was not right and began to cry.
“NO RILEY NO!” I tried to scream out but it was to la- “NO-OWWW-” I cried out in agony at the feeling up being practically ripped in two down my center. A firm hand slapped over my lips and silenced my cries of pain and agony as Riley refused to stop, trusting into me without thought as he moaned loudly in an unthinkable pleasure. I slammed my eyes shut as I felt his free hand grab at my breast and I tried to block out my mind, to trick myself into believing this wasn’t happening. I tried to tell myself I was with Alex, but it was no use, I wasn’t. So I gave up fighting.
“PLEASE DOCTOR YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!” Someone cried out as I finally let strangled cry pass my lips as I faded between two worlds that were as equally unpleasant, one where everything was being ripped apart, and the other where I simply had nothing at all left but these fresh memories to remember.
"Listen here," Riley spat as I flinched away from his nearing breath as best I could in the position I was in, his body still crushing mine into the cold and ruthless pavement as tears ran from my eyes. He didn’t say anything for a long moment as nothing more filled the air but my strangled and scattered breaths which came often and off beat. I could feel his chest pounding against mine as I wished for nothing more than for either one of our chests to stop moving- for good, but that was when I heard it, the sound. The sound of metal on pavement before an edge kissed the bit of my thigh that stuck out past his hips. 'No, no, no, please no!' I whimpered out pathetically which probably wasn’t even heard over his malevolent laughter as he watched a terrified expression claim it place on my tear drenched face. "You as much as scream even once and I won’t be hesitant to slit this precious skin of yours just one more time."
"No...” I whimpered out, remembering faintly the vow I had made to never do such a thing again, and to the one I loved, the one I wanted and needed here now to save me like he has always done. It wouldn’t matter that it was I who did it, it was done, especially after what I knew was about to happen, why would he ever believe and or want to believe me.
"Maybe on your arm though... Where everyone can see!"
"No!"
"Maybe I could even cut something so poetic it may just tare your fucking fairytale movie apart, like a name!" Riley taunted as he reached out and roughly grabbed my crooked arm, the one he knew already had a few scars of its own to bare. He let out a chuckle as my body froze over, fearing if I moved even a fraction the silver blade would split my already delicate skin like warm butter and that would be it. "Maybe..." He hummed as he began to faintly twirl the dull edge of the blade over my wrist in a knowing fashion, like he was sickeningly serious before he began to grin. "Maybe even the name of your beloved, Ale-"
“NOO!” I cried out in a strangled heap before quickly realizing my scream was all too real for having meant to be in a mental reality. I blinked open my eyes and was met with my hospital blanket covered lap, “No…” I whispered as tears pooled in the brims of my eyes for real and I shuddered at the now obvious pain crippling my pelvis, “God, no, please no!” I whimpered and pulled my knees into my chest. “Tell me it’s not true!” I cried as every pain I had so obliviously been feeling now had an all too brutal explanation which had somehow been lost- or better yet, buried. I looked up to see a set of dark chocolate eyes looking back at me, their edges brimmed with concern and sympathy as I trembled helplessly in that hospital bed, the entire room having feel silent aside from my ragged breathing. “Jacky?” I hiccupped with blurry eyes and rickety words and caused the boy to float to my side, taking my hand. “Tell me it’s not true.” I said as I saw the remorse swim into his eyes and leak all over his face, so obvious that the pain and regret that was inside him was slowly beginning to come out in my presence as he reluctantly sighed.
“I wish I could, Jasey.” He said innocently as I pulled our eyes apart and splintered the moment with a hiccup. “C’mo-" He had begun but instead sighed once again and stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “Believe me Jasey, I wish just as much as you that I could tell you this is all a lie.” He said solemnly in a tone that held so much regret and resentment it was almost difficult to decipher the truth in it at all, had I not been looking for it that is. Jack’s words were spoken in a tone that while it seemed forced, like he hated the words he was saying, was final, there was no going around or denying it and knowing so seemed to spark numbness inside me.
I sniffled slightly as a doctor called my name and tried to claim my distracted attention. But I wasn’t nor planning on paying attention any time soon. Tingling numbness tickled my toes as it began to fill the space in my feet, pricking the pain and odd sensations away with a black hug of nothingness which had me feeling indifferent. I tried to look away, to look at the doctor and find words in the silence my brain had created but I couldn’t, my eyes refused to do anything but follow the invisible feeling on its travels. The numb feeling I was following crept up my legs and rolled over my bent up knees to slide down my ravaged thighs. It's spreading pace quickening with every beat of my heart as it spent a moment or two to numb my hips and swirl into the pit of my stomach. The empty sensation surly taking me over and leaving me barren of any and all emotion. But in short due time my hearing return, as dud the power of my eyes, but the numbness seemed to stay, lingering without any sign of weakening any time soon. All I could so was it there. So that is what I did.
I sat there and listened to the doctor explain to me what had happened in as full detail as he could provide, looking more pained then me at some point in time. I sat there as he told me about the cuts that explained the pain I had felt before, the pain on the tops of my thighs, as well as the dislocation of my shoulder. I sat there as he explained how only fragments of what happened were known to be factual, but that a rape had occurred. I sat there whilst he explained the case being made and the arrest being planned, but no matter what he said, what was told I stayed blank. Not blinking twice as I signed off on a confirmation to perform a rape kit even if it sounded vulgar and invasive, nor tearing up as he explained that flashes of the event may come back to me to resolve the loss in memory with time, but that was no shock to me at all seeing as it had already begun, something I didn’t even care to mention because the images were already dissipating from my thoughts. They didn’t hurt anymore though. Nothing did, well nothing but the thought of knowing I had lost the one piece of me I ever loved, and had done it on my own disillusioned accord. I was numb to all pain including the pain I knew was shredding away at the strings of my heart, waiting for the tingling to stop and from my brain to allow the pain to creep in. But at that point in time I wouldn’t even mind.
I would open the pain with open arms as it was surly in some sense better than the pit of nothingness I was feeling my chest become, the life draining form my eyes and the smile slipping from my lips for what may as well be forever as the one thing that made me believe in tomorrow was fractured and while a tomorrow could still be seen, it was not a tomorrow I strived to be in like it would have been had I not lashed out on Alex like I had in the state I was in. It was a tomorrow for certain, but what I was unsure of was if it was even a tomorrow worth wanting to live in. But it was the only tomorrow I had, there was no going back, no changing the past as Alex had turned his back on me in what I hoped was a reluctant and regretted act as I was now left with only one choice which was to do the same. To turn my back on him.
The only time I felt anything at all after the down fall of emotions and the collapse -ation of my heart was the tinge of something unknown when the doctor and my family vanished and I was left alone with Jack again at the request of my silent and saddened eyes. Sitting down in his previous seat silently and reaching up to wipe my tears, finally forcing me to the realization that I was indeed still crying. I looked at him unemotionally. I felt so drained, I felt used and useless and overall exhausted. I wanted to leave this awful place and go back to a comfortable place I no longer had, and knowing so sent a now oddly vibrant shock to my lifeless heart as I let myself sniffle. “I just want to go home…” I mumbled and looked away from Jack, ashamed he had to look at me now that I knew what had happened to me. I wasn’t worthy enough to be holding his hand, I was a disgrace. Maybe I had actually done right by breaking me and Alex up, at least now I didn’t have to face the fact that I was ruined and could avoid being devastated in a weeks’ time when he would realize how vile I am now and dump me anyway. But even thinking so of those things, it didn’t change my verbalized wish to go home. You know the saying 'home is where the heart is'? That was what I had in mind when I spoke the chosen words I had. I could go back to my house. To the four walls I dubbed my room, sleep in my bed under my covers but never again would I feel the comfort that being at 'home' brings. A house is not a home, and if home is where the heart is than I up and pushed my sense of home straight out the door.
And maybe he would have walked out on his own, maybe this would have been the inevitable downfall of us because it seems as though nothing good in life ever lasts anyway. But even if that thought was true, it still stung to think that I had fallen so hard for something so false, so fragile. I loved Alex and it hurt to know that he had walked away so easily when I so clearly needed him. That he had let Riley ruin me at all no matter the cost. I didn’t want to think it was true, but here I sat, holding Jack's hand instead of his own so did I really have any choice but to believe him, my situation was confusing enough, I had to let Alex's choice be the final decision on the matter whether it killed me or not, I had to let him go if that was what he really wanted. It didn’t matter if imagining life without him stung, and I think Jack could see the pain on my face as he suddenly sighed and got up, pulling his hand reluctantly from mine only to instantly lower the railing on the side of my bed and sink into the firm mattress. "I know Jasey," Jack sighed in the saddest voice I had ever heard from him which only made things worse, how many people did I have to hurt? I couldn’t even look at him after hearing his tone just knowing that because I had fucked up and wound up in this hospital that I had stripped Jack of his joy. I knew he was hurting but his words were lies, equally as painful as lies had ruined me so many times to that point. But I was just too weak to fight him when he wrapped his arms around me, my body craving the real touch of a warm embrace. Jack sighed again, "Soon Jasey," he said, "you can go home soon."
I let out a whimper. "No." I shortly gasped out as I reached up and clung to his boney arm for dear life as the pain came back in a sudden battle with the numbness I had been feeling. A war sparking inside me. "I can't ever go home!"
"Come on Alex, HIGHER!" My shill voice giggled as I looked down at my feet as they faced the tops of trees and a clear blue sky.
"I'm not going to push you that high, Jasey!" His voice instantly laughed even though it sounded much deeper than the voice I had embedded in my mind, but it was Alex nonetheless. That I was sure of.
"Oh come o- EP!" I yelped when he suddenly grabbed the chains causing the swing I was sitting on to snap to a stop. The metal clanging as it rocked and kinked before it twisted one hundred and eighty degrees leaving me to face my boyfriend. My eyes instantly fell on his knobby knees as I giggled and laughed and nearly over looked the fact that his legs were clothed in much tighter jeans than what he would usually wear. His Nike dunks were replaced with a pair of mud caked combat boots, and though I was kind of digging them, I was curious as to where this was all coming from.
"No, no... I'm not risking you falling off and getting all scuffed up before the wedding!"
WHAT?
My head snapped upwards and I nearly fell off my swing at the sight I saw. So my assumptions were right, it was Alex all right, but he looked... Older? Much older! His eyes looked the same as they held that signature sparkle whilst smiling at me, but still he just seemed so different. His little button nose was the same and his dimples still showed but his jaw was speckled with scruff, and not like the scruff of not shaving for a few days but a real, purposeful and planned scruff. And his hair, oh his hair it was shorter, I mean I could see his face! It was styled but it still covered that huge forehead of his. He was... Handsome! Sexy even... But my thoughts were disturbed when he let out a laugh.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" He smiled as his cheeks flushed pink; looking just as all the memories in my head remembered him even though his skin seemed a little more tired.
"Uh... Uhm, no reason." I quickly breathed as I blinked at him and remembered the previous words he had said, the ones that caused me to look at him so quickly. My eyes fell from his to look down at my hand and low and behold, a simple diamond ring sat on my finger. Holy shit. I almost opened my mouth to say something else when his large, guitar calloused hands took both of mine in a grip so soft it almost felt like he wasn't touching me at all. But Alex seemed completely unfazed by my bewilderment and continued gently pulling me to my feet.
"After all these years..." Alex breathed as he stood me up and pulled our hands apart, his going to my sides where they sat over my ribcage before sliding down to my hips and swiveling my body closer to his. "We're finally doing it." He said with a grin just as I decided to stop freaking out about the fact that Alex now looked twenty-something and I probably did as well and just decided to enjoy this moment with him whether it was all some twisted dream or not. I bit my lip as I looked at him sheepishly and wrapped my arms loosely around the back of his neck. "Were getting married."
Just hearing those words caused a very real feeling to bubble from my belly as I smiled at him. I wasn't sure what to say to him so instead I slid my hands to the base of jaw and pressed our lips together in a seemingly long awaited kiss. Or at least that was what I tried to do. The only issue was when I leaned in to kiss him I felt nothing at all, it wasn't even like the passion was gone it felt just as though my lips passed right through him and I was left kissing air.
But then once I began to think about it, I didn't feel the warmth rush from his body to mine once we touched, and I didn't feel the spark from holding his hand. I had felt nothing at all aside from the fuzzes from his words. I felt nothing. My eyes snapped open as I abruptly pulled away from the not-so-kiss and furrowed my eyebrows, frightened as to what was going on. "What's wrong?" Alex asked causing me to flinch as his returning words brought a throbbing pain to surface right under the skin of my right temple. And on top of that, there was beginning to be this really annoying beeping in the back of my mind, but it didn't even seem like Alex could hear it as he was completely unfazed.
"Uh- I um," I stuttered as I looked at him and then at his chest as I blinked, trying to think beyond the persistent beeping inside my head. I wasn't sure what was going on but as real pain began to pop up on different parts of my body the situation was beginning to feel less and less like a dewy dream. "I don't kno-"
"Hey, Jasey what's going on?" Alex asked in a sudden panic as he stepped backwards making me realize his arms had fallen from my sides. I looked at him curiously and tried to dissect the terrified look on his face as he glanced back at me and stuttered. "W-What's happening?"
"What?" I snapped stubbornly as I looked at him before glancing up at the sky that seemed to be growing rapidly darker, only it didn't seem like it was nightfall at all. "Alex what's g- uh..." I mumbled as I felt an immense weight press against the entirety of my back making me feel as though I was lying down even though I was in fact standing. "Alex?" I choked out looking back at him. "What's happening? Why do I feel this way?" I panicked, thinking he knew the odd sensations I was enduring and could make them stop, make me stay in this happy place and keep me away from the darkness that was flooding the sky. The very darkness that was now causing a gray shadow to cast over everything as far as I could see, which wasn't very far once I actually looked around and noticed it was only me, Alex, and the set of swings, all surrounded by a wall of enclosing haze.
"Jasey, wh-why are there b-bruises?" He choked out with a horrified look as his face seemed to de-age with every time I blinked, looking younger and younger with each second that passed. But with all the confusion, my shredded mind could only form a few chocked sounds causing Alex to speak out once again. "Look!" He said, practically pulling a mirror out of thin-air and shoving it in my hands, "What is happening to you?"
I grabbed the mirror and held it up, trying not to dwell on the fact his voice now seemed to be fading in and out and I was left thinking that this was it, the end. But I had to train my thoughts, my eyes to look into the mirror as well as refrain from gasping at the sight I was instantly faced to see. I too, like Alex moments before, seemed much older than I would ever remember causing my jaw to go slack. Unlike everything else I seemed so at peace despite my mind set, my hair was long and neat and formed into perfect curls that framed my more defined face, but it wasn't even my hair that had me caught up. It was my eyes. They weren't the gray color my mother had given me; they were blue, a bright, clear and crystal blue which had me staring in awe at my own reflection.
"My gosh..." I whispered as I blinked my bold eyes, flicking my full lashes and looking into them intently. They were beautiful and very unlike me, but just as I was beginning to feel satisfied, the beeping in my brain I had previously managed to tune out came back with vengeance, being louder than before and all of a sudden my right eye began to shrink- no, swell! The tissue around it was beginning to multiply as shades of purple and blue stained the skin in a hideous bruise. But not alone had that bruise formed, all of a sudden bruises were beginning to appear left and right, skin began to split in unsightly gashes and everything seemed to be turning to terror. I pressed my hand to my cheek in horror only to choke when the image in the mirror did not duplicate the act. In fact, the image on the mirror was slipping away, running off the glass and leaking from the frame to drip down my filthy, battered hands. Looking up, everything else was beginning to bleed from sight just as the image on the mirror had. Everything was fading away, even Alex as he reached his hand out to me and looked like a dripping ice cream.
"Alex no!" I gasped as I tried to reach out and grab him, to stop him from slipping away and to stay in this moment forever but my arm refused to move. "ALEX NO, DON'T GO!" I cried out, desperate to keep him with me as I was too terrified to be alone, but it was too late. All of a sudden it was like I had been hit upside the head and the lights went out.
Everything was black, but it wasn't like the black of a nightmare, it was a noisy black. Like, for instance I could still very much hear beeping of what I know could assume to be some machine I faintly knew and voices, lots of voices but none I really recognized or cared for. It was like they were right beside me, but just out of reach and I had no way of getting to them. I was trapped in a nowhere land. And I was alone.
I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry but I didn't think I could. I was no longer looking at things like I was above them, I felt once again inside myself, like I knew what was going on, I was aware even from within the darkness that had consumed me. It looked like it does when its pitch black -like at night, but you know your eyes are open because you can sense it, that there is something within the darkness, and that it doesn't just end at your eyelids. But what was inside here with me, or just beyond it I had no clue. I was petrified; I was suddenly succumbing to the forces all around me, the beeping, the voices, the weight on my back, the ache in my mind. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to be alone, I wanted to be home, in Alex's arms as he curled a lock of my hair around his finger and told he loved me. I wanted to be alive, to be loved; I wanted to be a part of the world I could still feel rampaging inside me, begging to be rejoined. But I was too weak.
The beeping was getting too loud, the voices too hard to understand, and the weight too much till the point came where something inside the darkness snapped and everything was lifted- if only for a moment that is. It was like the floor fell from out beneath me and something inside me clicked. My sense of awareness was gone and sounds flooded my ears like a fucking hurricane as if I had just popped them and could finally hear much clearer than before, only I didn't want to. I knew my eyes were shut now causing the darkness as I clenched them shut and had to force a whine of crippling pain from slipping out. But while the darkness had caved, the weakness had not, and I recoiled from the light I had been silently praying for and let out a small cry.
"Jasey!?" A panicked voice instantly gasped and I felt something touch what seemed to be my hand causing me to jump to life and snap my eyes open. "Hey, hey, Jasey it's okay!" the person consoled as I panicked slightly in my place, once-again-gray eyes wide as I gasped for air and looked around me, a more detailed image of where I was slowly coming into focus out of the white haze I had caused from so abruptly opening my eyes like I had. "Sh... It's alright..." The voice whispered as I blinked slowly and looked down at a hideous paper gown that was covering my lap. I knew the gown well but why I was in it I was uncertain of. The last thing I can remember before the terrible nightmare of losing Alex was being cornered by... Riley. No. No, no, no, no!
"No!" I hiccupped as my eyes began to sting and I looked at my hands, the now familiar bruises covering the one arm I could see, the other secured in a sling. No. An IV was stuck in my hand like in all the movies and TV show's I had ever seen meaning- no! I looked up and the numerous monitors towering over me like a castle wall, each and every one emitting that fucking beeping. No it can't- no. He couldn't have... I didn’t even try to control the trembling of my lip as I looked at the hand now holding mine, and then the person it belonged to. "Jack?"
"Hey, sh, just stay calm okay?" He said causing me to puff my lip as I wasn’t exactly sure why I should or should not be freaking out as of now, but I chose against it at the whim of my cluelessness and Jack's evidently desperate plea. I blinked at him hopelessly as I looked beyond him at the empty set of seats, one holding Julie's purse, one Rian's coat, one my father's and the final one was... empty.
"Jack..." I whispered as I glanced around the room to see if he was sitting someplace else, sleeping maybe seeing as I had no sense of time let alone what had actually occurred. But whatever it was I was sure he was here, he had to be, maybe he was just outside, or getting some air, but there was no way he would leave me here alone, without him. Jack hummed a bit causing my eyes to snap to his and see a scared look in his brown orbs making me tremble. It wasn't often Jack got scared and it only made me think that something awful had happened to me, even if I could no longer remember. But seeing his fear made me only want Alex more, to hold me and tell me that no matter what I was fine, and to do it before I could have the chance to remember what had really happened to me to put me here. "Jack," I breathed, "where’s Alex?"
And it was like I had just slapped him in the face and begun to cry all at the same time. He physically flinched at my words even though they had come out as no more than a whisper. He looked at me with an unreadable expression. I wasn’t sure if he was confused, scared or plain out hurt by the look in his eyes, one unlike before. My breath had quickly begun to pick up, it's pace increasing every second Jack left me hanging, refusing to tell me he was just outside, or that he would be right back. I had to pry our eyes apart to look down at my lap to keep from breaking down in front of him, I would be fine. I didn’t need to cry. I just needed Alex that was all. It felt like hours before Jack finally replied, "Jasey?" He called quietly, squeezing my hand and bringing my eyes to his direction, but not meeting him directly. "Do you not remember?" He asked, avoiding the question.
So that was it? Alex wasn’t here? He left me by myself when something clearly terrible had happened to me when he was so hell bent on ensuring to me that he loved me, does that mean that it was all a lie, or is this all just some twisted dream. I shut my eyes, waiting for the floor to fall out beneath me again and take me back to reality, to take me to Alex, and away from the idea that Riley had actually beaten me to such a bloody pulp with his own hands, or even breathed on me at all. Because in reality that would never happen, Alex wouldn't allow it, Alex loved me too much, but that didn’t seem so certain as I felt the coldness of my rooms brush my bruises telling me he was nowhere near me to hold me while I cry. Suddenly I felt a tear kiss the creases that my cheeks cause near the edges of my eyes and I choked a sob, "God no!" I cried out softly now knowing that this was no dream, that feeling that tear meant this was real, all too real. I began to frantically shake my head, my hands subconsciously yanking at my hair causing Jack to shush me again, only this time with no avail. "No, Jack tell me he's here!" I cried and opened my eyes only causing more tears to relentlessly leak onto my cheeks, "tell me he's outside, that he will be right back! Please, Jack, t-tell me-"
"Hey, sh, sh, it's going to be alight!" He tried to sooth me in attempts to keep my calm, going as far as to try and hold my face in place only causing me to recoil.
"TELL ME HE DIDN’T LEAVE ME HERE ALONE!" I snapped in a tone dripped to the bone in desperation. My eyes pleading with him as much as my words to convey that my risen level in tone wasn’t out of rage but distress in that I fucking needed him right now. But instead of saying anything at all Jack just visibly swallowed around his throat and lowered his hands to his lap. His eyes never leaving mine as I stared at him with grounded determination to get an answer out of him despite the fact I was so close to breaking I could practically feel the individual fibers of my being beginning to tear and the snot start to drip from my nose like it always does when I'm on the brink of hysterics. But I refused; I was not going to fall until I knew why Alex was not here to catch me, why he had left me, "What happened to me, Jack?" I whispered on a trembling tone that no doubt contradicted the coldness of my steady stare.
"Uh..." Jack swallowed as he shifted awkwardly and looked as though he wanted to look away, to avoid the confrontation only he couldn’t having been under my gaze for so long already. "I think we should wait till-"
"Just tell me, Jack!" I snapped before sniffling slightly, not giving a rats ass about the water works flooding from my eyes, my body was too numb to care about crying right now, I was numb to any and all emotions, I just wanted answers before this -hopefully- brief moment of invincibility wears off and I crumble into the creases of this hospital bedding. "What happened to me, why am I here?"
"Jase, I think we should wait till the doctor comes back in an-"
"TELL ME!"
"It was Riley, okay!" He instantly snapped back, flinching at his own words as they fell from his lips, "Riley found you, an- and he fucking- he- r-none of us know what to do! Okay? What do you want to hear, what is it that you want from me? Huh?" He ranted on, the words flying from his mouth like fizzes from a soda that was dropped then instantly opened and Jack immediately looked as though he wished he could take it all back, and if that was the case, I was wishing the same. Just as I had suspected, my cloak of invisibility fell down from around my shoulders and the pain flew at me. My wall of strength fell down into a dust cloud of despair, mushrooming up and around me, casing me inside its ring of polluted air and leaving me to sit and contemplate what he had said. "Jasey..." He whispered hopelessly as the cloud cleared and my gaze fell to my lap.
"No..." I whimpered, shaking my head again as I felt the tinge in my eyes return with vengeance, the stinging almost at the level of a physical pain because my eyes were so dry from all the crying I had probably done without even being aware of the act. I wanted to be strong, but how could I? "You're lying!" I instantly told myself aloud, but even my own voice failed to convince me that Jack's words held no truth and I began to pull my knees into my chest, feeling like I was physically shrinking anyway under Jack's watchful eyes. "No," I breathed, "Alex wouldn't allow that, he promised me, he wouldn’t allow that, Jack, Alex loves me, he wouldn’t let that happen!" I cried, begged, fought with tears streaming from my eyes as I balled the hospital blanket in my graveled fists and shot the most contradicting look Jack's way. One filled with confusion and disappointment, all while it begged for him to begin to laugh and tell me he was kidding, that I had fallen down the stairs or something like that. Only he did none of that. I sniffled and gasped a few tripped up breaths before looking down at my lap and asked the one question I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer to in the end of it all. "Jack," I whispered with a trembling voice as I sniffled once again and tried to wipe my tears with my one able hand. But it was no use, they just kept coming. "Why isn't Alex here?"
The breath in Jack's voice caught in his throat so loud I thought he had choked; only when he failed to gag or even really gasp I look a few more shaky breaths, waiting less-than-patiently as Jack blinked at me with a torn expression in his eyes. 'He doesn’t love you.' A voice inside my head insisted and I bit my lip, silently praying for Jack to respond. To prove the voice wrong as it carried on. 'Alex never loved you, and now he surly wont, having been fucking beaten, how could he?' I wanted to scream out for the voice to shut the fuck up but I could only reduce to letting out a small muffled scream that could have easily been passed as pain all whilst I pulled at the sheets and slammed my eyes shut. 'Your mother was right' the voice said, 'no one will love you, not even Alex' it said, 'he left ‘cause he couldn’t lie anymore, this was his getaway'.
"STOP!" I gasped out as I kicked under the covers and tangled my movable hand in my mangled hair. "STOP TALKING!" I screamed, causing fear to rush though Jack as he looked from me to the door helplessly. "PLEA-se..." I cried as my angry voice broke and despair fell back into my tone, filling my words and writing my thoughts in to sounds to be understood by the other, had Jack even been bothering to listen to my mental collapse that is. I went to look up at him, to cry for him to call Alex, to help me undo whatever had been done to bring him to vanish when I needed him most, only when Jack looked back at me with a shattered expression, there was two knocks at the door, and it was being pressed open. "Jack?" I pleaded for his attention even though it was already turned towards the door, my voice too small to mean more than whatever the middle aged man poking in had to say as he raised two gray brows at Jack.
"A moment, please?" He said in a heartless tone that held nothing but professionalism as he blatantly avoided my gaze and only spoke to Jack, clearly and directly. The guitarist having less strength than the older man as he shot me one worried look and pushed his seat back, getting to his feet.
"Jacky...?" I whimpered in a voice that made Jack's shoulder's visibly curl inward and force him to look at the floor. He knew I only called him that when I wanted something, or worse, when I needed him as I had no one else. It had been a long while since I had used his name in such a way, and I could see how it had visibly turned something inside him. But even with my final attempt at a plea he didn’t turn around, sit back down and hold my hand like I so desperately needed him to. Instead he just kept his back turned to me and shuffled to the door, following the old man out and bringing Julie's face to instantly replace the two previous figures. I swallowed hard around my raw and swollen throat at the sight of her warm and watery eyes and continued to cry. My eyes burning more than ever before as I puffed my lip out and looked at her, "Mommy?"
"I'm here baby..." She instantly whispered as she stepped into the room and shut the door in one swift motion before she was taking Jack's seat and holding my hand. Her warm touch alone had me once again falling apart at the seams, sobbing into my knees as I shook my head and gasped out little bubbles of fragmented words, never once completing a thought until one heart breaking statement managed to slip through shocking both of us.
"What happened?"
It was like I had just dropped a ticking bomb on my bedside table which caused the eerie silence to envelope the two of us. One Julie knew had to be broken on her own accord as I continued to cry after making out my singular thought. Tears streaming from my eyes like I had an endless supply stocked up from the weeks when no tears were shed and only happiness had consumed my minutes in every given day. Aside from my sniffles I was silent, I was no longer gasping and hiccupping, just sniffling and taking soft and tangled breaths, trying to build up my brain for something I was suddenly aware that I could have never been prepared for as Julie took my had she had been holding and gave it a squeeze, "Jasey, deer." she said slowly causing my to sniffle and softly shut my eyes. "There was a lot going on all at once..." She diverted before taking a deep and hesitant sigh and dropping my world off the side of a cliff with one swift remark. "Honey, you and Alex broke up."
Hearing the words caused everything inside me to freeze, and had I not been listening to my blood stop suddenly in my eardrops I would have sworn I hearted the beeping of my heart monitor quite literally skip a beat. What? I looked at her with the blankest of expressions and tried to figure a way around the pain that was slowly creeping in through the wounds that had been ripped open, climbing up the streams of my tears and stabbing my eyes relentlessly. I felt as though she had just ripped my heart out and eaten it whole with those few softly spoken words. But how could that be? How could words so soft hurt so bad, how could a whisper so light feel like a load of bricks, slowly crushing my chest and causing this feeling of suffocation that was strangling me. "No," I choked out as I squeezed her hand mercilessly and shook my head, "No, no that’s not true!" I cried. "It can't be true, he wouldn’t do that!" I cried out before ripping my hand from Julie's grasp in order to cling to the cold metal railing of the hospital bed. I needed to hold onto something grounded and quickly as I felt my world begin to desiccate from the inside out.
How could this be? How could Alex break up with me, and not even do it to my face. All the times he had told me he loved me, all the times he had held me at night. All the times he's wiped my tears and told me not to cry, that everything would turn out right, why now? Why this time? What was so different that made had me un-lovable? Had Riley beat me so bad that I was distorted so much that Alex could no longer look at me with a gaze of love. Was it all my fault? Did I ruin us? Was it because Riley had gotten to me that I was now simply nothing but used goods, damaged merchandise? Why.... What went so wrong that made him lose sight of what he had seen in me all along, what I was finally beginning to see and understand? Or maybe... maybe Alex finally got to see what my real mother always saw. No. That can't be true. Alex loved me, he really did. I know it; I could feel it- he had to have been feeling it to.
Right? Would someone feel the passion I had and simply walk away. "He wouldn’t do this to me..." I whimpered through a clenched jaw and eyes as I felt the muscles tighten to a painful level of constraint, I didn’t care. Focusing on the pain in my jaw, the pain in my arm, my head, my back, it made the pain in my heart seem less harsh even if it was the most crippling pain of them all. Just knowing that minutes- hours ago someone had loved me, and now they do not. It has to make you wonder how damaged must I really be? To have the force to fill me with the overpowering sense of uselessness to make me see more and more all the reasons Alex had to walk away, and to realize it was me who needed him to stay. I let out a heart crippling sob as Julie reached out; startling me as she gently touched my hand.
"Jay..." She whispered and I pried my eyes open in order to glance at her even if only for a moment before I saw the conflicted look in her eyes and had to turn away. "Jasey, you need to know..." She forced out past her fighting lips and sighed, "It wasn’t Alex who broke it off." The words catching my ears like a blindsided car accident, rolling past a stop sign like a harmless act only to be plowed down an instant later by an eighteen wheeler truck. Stopping my heart instantly as I looked at her, holding her gaze this time and waiting for the three final words to fall from her mouth as they did with much resentment as Julie looked down at our layered hands and breathing out, "It was you."
This time I physically heard the monitor attached to my barely breathing heart skip a beat in time to trigger the crippling pain that shot straight up my chest from the place where heat used to grow in my stomach before. The pain shot straight through the cavity in my chest that would hold my heart had it not been breaking into a million fracturing pieces and turning into dust. Only this time I didn’t cry, I couldn’t, my body wouldn’t allow it. Even though I could still somewhat feel the tears staining my bruised and colored cheeks, my lips refused to part and my lungs denied my sobs, and that was when it happened.
"He doesn't even love you, how could he!?" Riley gasped through his laugher as I silently sobbed feeling every sliver of hope I thought I had, evaporate into oblivion. My cry trembling when I felt his body crouch down beside mine and his hand on my thigh. The rough skin dipping the fabric of my jeans in a fiery touch that stung like the flames of the Hell he came from causing me to grit my teeth from beyond my cries. "No one will be looking for you..." He whispered as I was sure only I could hear his words with Colton still cackling to himself in the background. I tried to crawl away in a weak attempt, my shoulders slipping on the slick and prickled bricks and my bloods nails scraping once again against the pavement, but his other hand grasped my chin. "He doesn't love you." He spat through clearly clenched teeth as he snapped his face close to mine. "No one will ever love you."
“Jasey!” Julie’s voice cried out as my body refused to react to the flashback, not gasping not sobbing not even sinking backwards into the bed. My mind was a blur my vision was incompetent as it blinked and faded in and out and nothing could be heard over the merciless beeping of the machines. “What’s going on, what’s happening to her- Jasey?” Julie cried out and my eyes somehow managed to snap to the side to see her holding my hand.
I never thought I would hear a sound and simply know it would be one I could never forget. Hearing each and every individual thread of my cloth top being pried from the others was one of those sounds I knew would be forever imprinted in my mid. The beeping could still be heard over my flashback, corrupting the thoughts. “See…” His sick voice cooed as cool air swirled to fill the empty void my shirt had made, wind kissing my skin and bringing goose bumps to its surface as I fought to keep conscious. “It’s easier when you stop fighting me!” He said, it didn’t matter that in my semi-conscious state I was still letting out feeble whimpers that managed to pass my shallow, swollen throat and busted lips. “More enjoyable…” He hummed as his abrasive hands scratched my smooth skin, taking the flesh only love had touched and turning it into something filthy and meaningless, like myself. “Don’t you think?”
“Mam- there is nothing I can give her in this state, her vitals are fluxing but they are under control, she has to work though this on her own.” A new voice reasoned causing an ache in my brain that made the mental images warp like food coloring in a glass of water. Stretching in weird ways and creating new images with every waiting second that it sat and thinned out within the water.
“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” His voice sang in a menacing tone as I heard the sound of a zipper slipping and my entire stomach clenched- the pain the act brought causing my teeth to grind from how hard I had been so brutally and repetitively hit. I wished I wasn’t in so much pain, wasn’t so weak, for if I wasn’t it would have been so easy for him to spread my bleeding legs which had gone numb in the short time after the gashes were slit. “Alex is to pussy to have popped your pretty little cork.” He said, his words practically bathing me in dirt as even being under his stare made me feel minute and undeserving of living with any joy or purity in my life. He made me realize I was deserving of this. I wanted to fight him, but my body was to week, to numb and to terrified to move in any way that wasn’t physically done for my by Riley’s coarse hands as they slid up my raw and ugly thighs to the place only Alex had ventured causing me to cry out and yelp. “I’m going to show you how a real man does things, right.” He spat, literal spit flying from his lip and stinging my scratched and bloody face as I felt a sensation I knew was not right and began to cry.
“NO RILEY NO!” I tried to scream out but it was to la- “NO-OWWW-” I cried out in agony at the feeling up being practically ripped in two down my center. A firm hand slapped over my lips and silenced my cries of pain and agony as Riley refused to stop, trusting into me without thought as he moaned loudly in an unthinkable pleasure. I slammed my eyes shut as I felt his free hand grab at my breast and I tried to block out my mind, to trick myself into believing this wasn’t happening. I tried to tell myself I was with Alex, but it was no use, I wasn’t. So I gave up fighting.
“PLEASE DOCTOR YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!” Someone cried out as I finally let strangled cry pass my lips as I faded between two worlds that were as equally unpleasant, one where everything was being ripped apart, and the other where I simply had nothing at all left but these fresh memories to remember.
"Listen here," Riley spat as I flinched away from his nearing breath as best I could in the position I was in, his body still crushing mine into the cold and ruthless pavement as tears ran from my eyes. He didn’t say anything for a long moment as nothing more filled the air but my strangled and scattered breaths which came often and off beat. I could feel his chest pounding against mine as I wished for nothing more than for either one of our chests to stop moving- for good, but that was when I heard it, the sound. The sound of metal on pavement before an edge kissed the bit of my thigh that stuck out past his hips. 'No, no, no, please no!' I whimpered out pathetically which probably wasn’t even heard over his malevolent laughter as he watched a terrified expression claim it place on my tear drenched face. "You as much as scream even once and I won’t be hesitant to slit this precious skin of yours just one more time."
"No...” I whimpered out, remembering faintly the vow I had made to never do such a thing again, and to the one I loved, the one I wanted and needed here now to save me like he has always done. It wouldn’t matter that it was I who did it, it was done, especially after what I knew was about to happen, why would he ever believe and or want to believe me.
"Maybe on your arm though... Where everyone can see!"
"No!"
"Maybe I could even cut something so poetic it may just tare your fucking fairytale movie apart, like a name!" Riley taunted as he reached out and roughly grabbed my crooked arm, the one he knew already had a few scars of its own to bare. He let out a chuckle as my body froze over, fearing if I moved even a fraction the silver blade would split my already delicate skin like warm butter and that would be it. "Maybe..." He hummed as he began to faintly twirl the dull edge of the blade over my wrist in a knowing fashion, like he was sickeningly serious before he began to grin. "Maybe even the name of your beloved, Ale-"
“NOO!” I cried out in a strangled heap before quickly realizing my scream was all too real for having meant to be in a mental reality. I blinked open my eyes and was met with my hospital blanket covered lap, “No…” I whispered as tears pooled in the brims of my eyes for real and I shuddered at the now obvious pain crippling my pelvis, “God, no, please no!” I whimpered and pulled my knees into my chest. “Tell me it’s not true!” I cried as every pain I had so obliviously been feeling now had an all too brutal explanation which had somehow been lost- or better yet, buried. I looked up to see a set of dark chocolate eyes looking back at me, their edges brimmed with concern and sympathy as I trembled helplessly in that hospital bed, the entire room having feel silent aside from my ragged breathing. “Jacky?” I hiccupped with blurry eyes and rickety words and caused the boy to float to my side, taking my hand. “Tell me it’s not true.” I said as I saw the remorse swim into his eyes and leak all over his face, so obvious that the pain and regret that was inside him was slowly beginning to come out in my presence as he reluctantly sighed.
“I wish I could, Jasey.” He said innocently as I pulled our eyes apart and splintered the moment with a hiccup. “C’mo-" He had begun but instead sighed once again and stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “Believe me Jasey, I wish just as much as you that I could tell you this is all a lie.” He said solemnly in a tone that held so much regret and resentment it was almost difficult to decipher the truth in it at all, had I not been looking for it that is. Jack’s words were spoken in a tone that while it seemed forced, like he hated the words he was saying, was final, there was no going around or denying it and knowing so seemed to spark numbness inside me.
I sniffled slightly as a doctor called my name and tried to claim my distracted attention. But I wasn’t nor planning on paying attention any time soon. Tingling numbness tickled my toes as it began to fill the space in my feet, pricking the pain and odd sensations away with a black hug of nothingness which had me feeling indifferent. I tried to look away, to look at the doctor and find words in the silence my brain had created but I couldn’t, my eyes refused to do anything but follow the invisible feeling on its travels. The numb feeling I was following crept up my legs and rolled over my bent up knees to slide down my ravaged thighs. It's spreading pace quickening with every beat of my heart as it spent a moment or two to numb my hips and swirl into the pit of my stomach. The empty sensation surly taking me over and leaving me barren of any and all emotion. But in short due time my hearing return, as dud the power of my eyes, but the numbness seemed to stay, lingering without any sign of weakening any time soon. All I could so was it there. So that is what I did.
I sat there and listened to the doctor explain to me what had happened in as full detail as he could provide, looking more pained then me at some point in time. I sat there as he told me about the cuts that explained the pain I had felt before, the pain on the tops of my thighs, as well as the dislocation of my shoulder. I sat there as he explained how only fragments of what happened were known to be factual, but that a rape had occurred. I sat there whilst he explained the case being made and the arrest being planned, but no matter what he said, what was told I stayed blank. Not blinking twice as I signed off on a confirmation to perform a rape kit even if it sounded vulgar and invasive, nor tearing up as he explained that flashes of the event may come back to me to resolve the loss in memory with time, but that was no shock to me at all seeing as it had already begun, something I didn’t even care to mention because the images were already dissipating from my thoughts. They didn’t hurt anymore though. Nothing did, well nothing but the thought of knowing I had lost the one piece of me I ever loved, and had done it on my own disillusioned accord. I was numb to all pain including the pain I knew was shredding away at the strings of my heart, waiting for the tingling to stop and from my brain to allow the pain to creep in. But at that point in time I wouldn’t even mind.
I would open the pain with open arms as it was surly in some sense better than the pit of nothingness I was feeling my chest become, the life draining form my eyes and the smile slipping from my lips for what may as well be forever as the one thing that made me believe in tomorrow was fractured and while a tomorrow could still be seen, it was not a tomorrow I strived to be in like it would have been had I not lashed out on Alex like I had in the state I was in. It was a tomorrow for certain, but what I was unsure of was if it was even a tomorrow worth wanting to live in. But it was the only tomorrow I had, there was no going back, no changing the past as Alex had turned his back on me in what I hoped was a reluctant and regretted act as I was now left with only one choice which was to do the same. To turn my back on him.
The only time I felt anything at all after the down fall of emotions and the collapse -ation of my heart was the tinge of something unknown when the doctor and my family vanished and I was left alone with Jack again at the request of my silent and saddened eyes. Sitting down in his previous seat silently and reaching up to wipe my tears, finally forcing me to the realization that I was indeed still crying. I looked at him unemotionally. I felt so drained, I felt used and useless and overall exhausted. I wanted to leave this awful place and go back to a comfortable place I no longer had, and knowing so sent a now oddly vibrant shock to my lifeless heart as I let myself sniffle. “I just want to go home…” I mumbled and looked away from Jack, ashamed he had to look at me now that I knew what had happened to me. I wasn’t worthy enough to be holding his hand, I was a disgrace. Maybe I had actually done right by breaking me and Alex up, at least now I didn’t have to face the fact that I was ruined and could avoid being devastated in a weeks’ time when he would realize how vile I am now and dump me anyway. But even thinking so of those things, it didn’t change my verbalized wish to go home. You know the saying 'home is where the heart is'? That was what I had in mind when I spoke the chosen words I had. I could go back to my house. To the four walls I dubbed my room, sleep in my bed under my covers but never again would I feel the comfort that being at 'home' brings. A house is not a home, and if home is where the heart is than I up and pushed my sense of home straight out the door.
And maybe he would have walked out on his own, maybe this would have been the inevitable downfall of us because it seems as though nothing good in life ever lasts anyway. But even if that thought was true, it still stung to think that I had fallen so hard for something so false, so fragile. I loved Alex and it hurt to know that he had walked away so easily when I so clearly needed him. That he had let Riley ruin me at all no matter the cost. I didn’t want to think it was true, but here I sat, holding Jack's hand instead of his own so did I really have any choice but to believe him, my situation was confusing enough, I had to let Alex's choice be the final decision on the matter whether it killed me or not, I had to let him go if that was what he really wanted. It didn’t matter if imagining life without him stung, and I think Jack could see the pain on my face as he suddenly sighed and got up, pulling his hand reluctantly from mine only to instantly lower the railing on the side of my bed and sink into the firm mattress. "I know Jasey," Jack sighed in the saddest voice I had ever heard from him which only made things worse, how many people did I have to hurt? I couldn’t even look at him after hearing his tone just knowing that because I had fucked up and wound up in this hospital that I had stripped Jack of his joy. I knew he was hurting but his words were lies, equally as painful as lies had ruined me so many times to that point. But I was just too weak to fight him when he wrapped his arms around me, my body craving the real touch of a warm embrace. Jack sighed again, "Soon Jasey," he said, "you can go home soon."
I let out a whimper. "No." I shortly gasped out as I reached up and clung to his boney arm for dear life as the pain came back in a sudden battle with the numbness I had been feeling. A war sparking inside me. "I can't ever go home!"
Notes
okay guys sorry this took a week longer than I expected/let on, but im sad to say that due to some circumstances that may become a usual thing- as much as it displeases me.unlike other times where i take extra time, this wasnt to make sure it was better than ever- and i sooo wish it was. its just that recently ive been kind of falling back into a hole i never fully got myself out of, and being the type of person i am makes coping with issues difficult because -i will admit- i refuse to confine in people, its a fault.
but basically without dragging my issues out on you guys ill just say ive been struggling more and more with dealing with a pressing family matter as of now, and the past few months really but i want y'all to know that this IN NO WAY mean i will EVER EVER give up on this story because thats just not happening, im so close, and im in no way a quitter. all this means is that my mind is all over the place which makes writing something so emotional super difficult and my mind trails off (as seen in this update A LOT as its a fucking mess in my opinion in comparison to what i was originally going for) so i might need more then a week or two at times to get updates out to you guys..
so if you see that im kind of going MIA again, dont worry im still writing im just trying to keep myself in the right frame of mind to do so.. and a little message or two from you guys is always helpful and appreciated, i know some of you follow my tumblr and know more about it and that means a lot to me that you guys care so much.
but as far as this update goes PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LEAVE ME SOME COMMENTS!
and dont forget to SUBSCRIBE AND RATE IF YOU HAVENT!! its motivation i swear on it!!
until next time..
Sarah
I'M GOING TO CRY NO WHY WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE
2/14/16