Page 20 of Wreck and Ruin
She's afraid.
I can see it in her eyes.
Raw, unadulterated fear clings to her like a second skin, coiling in the air between us. Whoever holds her prisoner in this place has done everything they can to shatter her in every way possible.
“Are you even supposed to be out here? Or are you free? Cause, I gotta tell ya, being chained to a fucking cave wall isn’t exactly fun, Little Siren,” I say like a giant sack of shit. It’s too late to take it back now. I said what I said.
I watch every flicker of emotion that passes across her face. She hesitates, uncertainty clouding her features before her eyes finally shoot to mine, and if they were daggers, I'd be fucking dead.
I silently say goodbye to the possibility of her ever trusting me.
Whatever thoughts had been racing through her mind, she clung to the one that would make this whole situation so much fucking worse for me.
A heartbeat later, she turns and walks away, not sparing me a second glance.
I blew it.
I scared her.
God fucking dammit!
I should’ve known better than this, of course, she ran. She doesn’t know me from Adam. How can I expect her to trust me, to risk her life, because that’s what helping me would do, and she knows that? I foolishly asked her,no, begged her to put the fate of her future in the hands of a complete fucking stranger over a life that’s fucking familiar to her?
A life that she’s clearly grown accustomed to because she’d much rather cling to the sick comfort of barely surviving than take a chance, or even risk the possibility that it might all fall apart and she winds up dead anyway.
She’s in survival mode. I can tell.
She retreats to the quiet corners of her mind. A secret refuge that she runs to where the brutal grip of reality cannot reach her. When it all gets too much, and any evidence that hope does not exist, that’s where you’ll find her.
I know this because once upon a fucking time.
I hid there, too.
Chapter13
AIRLIE
Iused to think that the ocean held all our secrets. That, within its blue and silver depths, were creatures much like us, only they lived beneath the water. Rising to the surface to observe, never to harm, before returning to their kind with stories of the outside world.
Sometimes, if I look hard enough, I swear, I see them. Their pale shadows twirling within the waves, convincing me to join them. I know they’re not real. But I would always wonder if they’d take me away if they were.
My mother used to tell me stories about them before she died. Though, I think it was her way of distracting me from the nightmares of this place, shielding me with foolish tales to take my mind off the games Father played with her. Eventually, he started playing them with me, too, and I couldn’t pretend any longer.
My heart feels heavy in my chest at the memory of my mother. I don’t have many, and there are times that I forget.
That’s the part I hate the most.
Forgetting.
For my mind to erase the special moments I shared with her feels like the greatest betrayal.
The cruelest kind of sin.
So much time has slipped by since she died, and I’m mostly on my own, so I don’t know if these memories areactualmemories or if I created them out of the emptiness I feel deep within my soul that she’s gone.
I trace my index finger along Flipper’s hairy little back and place Seba on the moonlit window rocks. They keep my secrets, too, and I know it’s because they trust me. I wish they didn't have to see me play Father’s games. I only hope they forget things too.
Father hasn’t visited in weeks. Not since handing me over to those men. He leaves me food and water at the gate before turning around and walking away for days at a time. As much as I’m thankful he hasn’t been around, I wish he would at least leave his candles behind so that I could collect tiny insects for my spiders to eat. I tried feeding them some of my food, but they didn’t seem to like it.
