Oh god, it hurts.
Every move, every thrust. What he’s doing to me… it overrides the pain of his fingers tearing out bits of my hair, the tearing of skin each time the rope around my neck gets too tight, the way he shoves my face harder into the desk to make sure I don’t look away from Pierre.
I don’t.
My eyes stay locked with his horrified and frozen ones as this man takes the pieces of my soul I was starting to put back together, stealing them from me, taking my happiness, myhealing, and shattering all of it into a million shards, scattering them in the wind so I can never find anything remotely like it again.
He picks up his pace, pumping into me faster, inching the desk across the floor with the force of his movements, each emphasized with a high pitched scratch along the wood floor and that’s when I lose myself almost completely. My past mixing with this present, Collin Hastings’ voice switching and alternating with this man’s. I can almost feel the knife enter my body with each punishing thrust, tearing its way from my core all the way to my chest in a dry, searing pain, the cold steel against my skin burning just like everything else.
The grunting and groaning above me starts to fade in and out, the distorted voice still rotating in and out for Hasting’s as his movements become more brutal and he starts waxing poetic about coming inside me so I won’t ever forget him.
Hastings said that, too.
As he raped me, as he killed me, over and over like everything else, he said I’d never forget him because he was a part of me now.
Twice in one lifetime.
A ghost that’s come back to haunt me.
A devil determined to drag me to hell.
The man cries out as his movements become uncoordinated, as he does what he said he would so loud and hard that the chair wobbles and Pierre slumps forward, his head landing just a few inches from mine.
“That’ll be more satisfying the second time around, Leonor,” my attacker says as the noose cuts off my oxygen completely. “But I need you out of my hair while I take care ofdaddy dearest. I’ve got big plans for the both of you and it gets me excited when I think about it.”
He laughs as he rams into me one more time, his erection almost gone but still in me and when he pulls out it feels like every inch of tender flesh and bruised muscle along my destroyed insides tears, but I don’t have time to process it because he pulls the rope even tighter and I quickly black out.
Sometimes,when I dream about the night I died, I’m absolutely certain that I saw my life flash before my eyes. Every rotten fucking minute from the time I was born until the time I was reborn had me praying this was it, the one time death actually took me away but then… oh, and then, I’d see my real parents, I’d see my boys, and I’d see everything we’d built together and when that happened, I begged whoever was listening to let me have just one more day of that.
Other times, I know for a fact that was a PTSD delusion and the first time I died, I saw nothing but that cold, empty void and the countless demons waiting to feast on whatever was left of my soul.
Right now, I’m somewhere in between.
I keep fading in and out of consciousness.
One second I see the icy void, the next it’s the faceless monster who killed my father.
He threw me on the floor after I passed out then left me there while I fought to stay awake, keeping the rope wrapped tightly in his hand while he did up his pants, while he stuffed the used condom and its wrapper in one of his cargo pants pockets.
My vision kept blurring as he lifted Pierre out of his chair and onto a tarp, rolling his lean body in the heavy plastic before using zip ties to keep him inside of it. I started to see spots when the man began cleaning every inch of the office, using the chemicals we had on hand, making sure not one surface was untouched, not one bit of evidence was left behind.
I didn’t understand why he left Pierre’s head unwrapped, though.
If he wants to make sure there isn’t anything that could indicate what happened here, surely he’d have to cover that, too, otherwise… My eyes droop and grow heavy but I manage to force them open in time to see our attacker crouch down by my father’s head, then tug the rope around my neck to get my attention.
“By the time I’m finished,” he whispers as he pulls a scalpel from one of the pockets on his vest. “I’ll have six pairs.” He lowers it to Pierre’s wide open eyes, carefully slicing away the eyelids of the left one before slipping the blade into the socket. “Six sets to watch me break every single piece of what’s left of Leonor Allan. Six pairs of eyes that will sit on my shelf, tworows on either side of yours, those soulless blues staring at me everyday, seeing nothing but me.”
My heart starts hammering in my chest, my fear taking over enough to send my adrenaline surging through my veins. I try to keep my breathing even, to pretend I’m still hazy and out of it in hopes that I can try to get away when the opportunity presents itself, and thank fuck, it actually does.
The man lets go of my noose and turns slightly as he removes Pierre’s left eye, carefully placing it in a little glass jar he produces from another pocket. Watching that happen has me hesitating, has me holding my breath and forgetting what I’m supposed to be doing but as he goes back for the other eye, I kick my ass into gear.
I quietly and carefully roll toward the open door, every inch of my body aching but not enough to slow me down. I roll again then again until I’m in the doorway, seeing now that the house is mostly dark and the sun is setting outside.
This time I stop breathing intentionally, pushing and wiggling myself to my knees, using what little strength I have in this moment to get to my feet and just when I think I might make it out of here, the goddamn floor creaks.
My attacker’s head whips in my direction a second before I dart into the hall, the adrenaline rush hitting an all time high as I book it toward the stairs.
“If I didn’t want to kill you myself when the time is right, I’d do it now just so you used up your nine and stayed fucking dead!”
