“You want me to punish Casey in your place?” He clearly knows all my buttons and will press them over and over again to keep me compliant.
“Pouring bleach on me and having the twins smash my hands, smacking me around, pelting me with food, smashing my head off door frames, pulling out my hair…none of that was enough?”
“You’re still fucking back-talking me, aren’t you?” He isn’t wrong.
“Fuck you!”
“Outside or I’ll drown her in a bath of bleach and tell the world you did it.” He looks at my hands and smiles again. How long has he been planning this? Is he just an opportunistic bastard or a psychopath?
I grab my bag and turn back to give him one last glare, but he’s already turned away from me and pulled out his mobile phone. Am I’m already forgotten, or will he hurt Casey regardless?
Stepping outside, I shut the door and lean against it with my ear pressed close, listening for Casey and praying he is only bluffing. No screams. No crying. No panic. The apartment is eerily quiet. The corridor is dead too, despite it only being lunchtime.
I clutch my bag to my chest and sink to the floor. Should I laugh at the way my day has come full circle? The way this echoes last night is both sad and ironic. Perhaps I should push my bed out here and have done with it?
God, my hands hurt. My teeth, my jaw, my head, my ear, my stomach—maybe it’d be easier to catalogue the parts that don’t hurt?
I mean, my big toe feels kind of good.
This time I do laugh. The sound is tinny and small, but at least I’m not crying.
There’s still not a peep from inside. I regret not keeping a pastry for myself; the growling, gnawing agony in my gut is almost as bad as the thrumming ache in my hands. A drink of water would be nice, too. I’m still breathing, though. That has to count for something, right?
I close my eyes. Sleep feels like the best way to use this time. Who knows when I’ll next get the chance, and sleeping in the day is safer than at night, especially if he makes me stay out here all night long.
It all feels like one never-ending day. If I’ve learned anything, it’s never to underestimate life’s potential to fuck shit up. Just when you think things can’t get much worse, life whispershold my beerand shows you the new depth of how low you can sink.
I need rest. I’m weary to the core.
With my eyes closed, my mind is set adrift, but I can’t quite sink into the oblivion of true sleep when every breath is sharp and every pain-filled motion startles me half-awake again. I settle instead for a daydream state where I plan out the house I’m going to buy when I make enough money to escape the Vale. I decorate it in a thousand different ways and still keep one ear out for trouble.
Or at least I think I do until something moves against my arm.
I register it in that surreal space between wake and sleep, the place where reality filters into the haze of dreams, but you exist between them both with neither quite able to catch you.
The pressure against my arm is delicate…considerate. It brushes down my arm and over my fingers in a gentle caress. Where my hand rests at the juncture of my thighs, the pressure lifts and begins again at the top of my arm. It moves inward, this time daring to trace the curve of my breast and then it isn’t gentle anymore.
I try to open my eyes, but it takes forever. I’m not asleep.I can’t be asleep, but I’m not awake either. What was just a disembodied pressure, now becomes a hand. I acknowledge the crush of all five fingers as it squeezes hard against my chest. The stench of cigarettes and booze smothers my face.
Like sleep paralysis, my exhaustion fights me as I struggle to regain cognisance. Sleep has full control over my body, but my mind is already fully engaged and screaming curses.Why did I fall asleep? Why hadn’t I been more careful? Why is it taking so long to realise I’m not alone?
I’m not alone.
My eyelids spring wide, my unfocused vision blurs at the unexpected proximity of the man who leans into me with his face only inches from mine. The stench is worse now. Thicker. Pungent and mixed with the ripeness of sweat and dirt. His hand stays on my breast but over my T-shirt, I’m too well coiled for him to get underneath the fabric.
“Do it. I fucking dare you. See what happens, you sick fucker.” It’s bravado speaking, not any genuine sense of strength. I won’t give him my fear. That’s what he wants after all, the power to make me nothing at all, because you can’t regret nothing. You can’t feel sorry for it or empathise with it. You can’t respect it.
But I’m not nothing.
“Tha’s no way to speak to yer guardian angel, is it?” The weaselly drawl, the stink, and the pervasive creepy vibe are all unpleasantlyfamiliar.Gresh. With the realisation of his identity comes the anger and a wash of relief. I’m not safe—not by a long shot—but I know Gresh well enough to talk him down, threaten him, maybe even call my dad for help?
“Gresh? I should have known. I told you, didn’t I? I warned you not to follow me home again.” I jerk away from him, dislodging his hand from my body and sliding away just enough to pull myself upright. “And don’t you ever take liberties with me again.”
“I was just checking you were alive, baby.”
“You were copping a feel. You are one sick little pervert, Gresh. I’ve had enough of you. I’m telling my dad.”
“Who do you think told me you were alone on the corridor?”
