Obsessed(71)

More blackness.

I was running out of the house, falling to the ground, slumped against the fence of the backyard. I felt scared and I couldn’t recall the exact reason why. I was shaking everywhere, glancing at the backdoor of the house like some evil being would come out of it. The world spun and I wanted to throw up, but nothing happened. I cried and closed my eyes instead, dozing in and out for seconds at a time.

“Please stop,” I muttered, half-consciously aware someone was touching me. I smelled booze and heard ragged breaths as a body pressed over mine. Hands went where they shouldn’t go and I cried harder, realizing the evil being I’d been running from was Deck.

“You’re not saying no this time,” he rasped angrily as he shoved my pants down. My hands shot up and tried pushing him away but he overtook me and continued until they were completely off.

“Stop, stop,” I howled at him, my nails digging into flesh. “Stop!”

“You’ve fucking lost it,” he chuckled. “No one will believe you after I’m done. So shut the fuck up and enjoy it.”

I struggled beneath him and went crazy, but he forced me so hard against the earth, I felt strangled and trapped. I could hardly breathe as he lowered his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Where’s your fucking guard to protect you now, Elise?”

Panic swarmed me. I blacked out for seconds from the terror of it all as he started on my underwear. I was so still, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t moving. Inside my head, I was screaming to fight, but my body was so tense and frightened, I couldn’t get it to work. I was in shock. Pure shock. This was my fault. Again. I’d put myself in this position, vulnerable to him and others. Maybe I deserved it. Maybe I was asking for it. Maybe I should shut the hell up and let him just take it so he could finally leave me the fuck alone.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” I’d asked Aston after the first time I was forced by Deck. “You’re not saying anything because it’s my fault. I was probably asking for it.”

He’d gripped my face and leaned closer to me, until I was swimming in his green eyes. He stared hard at me and I saw the anger he’d been suppressing; a kind of rage that he was trying not to frighten me with. I also saw his horror and fear, and his desperate need to protect me. I felt so comforted by that look. It did things to me I couldn’t describe. “Don’t,” he told me, “Don’t you fucking dare blame yourself. None of this was your fault.”

He was right.

I felt my body move again, and the fight in me finally travelled to my bones. I opened my mouth and screamed as loud as I could. Deck’s hand went over it, forcing it shut. My nose was blocked from my crying, and I couldn’t breathe. He was strangling me and didn’t know it. I shook beneath him, trying to get a breath in. My hands grabbed at anything I could. His hair, his face, his arms. I clawed so hard, he winced and growled, and his grip around my mouth loosened. I sucked in a breath of air and then I bit down hard on his knuckle. I bit like it was a piece of meat to a mutt and tasted blood. He moved off me just as voices shouted at him. Like a spooked animal, he got up and fled. A commotion ensued, an angry yell sounded out and I heard a voice…a voice that was so familiar.

“What did I say about touching her?!” he screamed.

Aston?

No way, it couldn’t be.

I tried hard to turn my head, but it felt like a bowling ball. Too delirious, I passed out.

When I opened my eyes again, someone was flashing a light in my eyes and I went crazy. No, I didn’t want to be touched again! NO! I shouted and cursed, pushing the person away every time he neared. Cindy’s voice rang out in the background. She told me to calm down, but I didn’t listen. I went nuts. More arms wrapped around me and I was being picked up, carried away and settled inside the back of a flashing ambulance.

I was reckless. I screamed and cried and got pulled back into the darkness. When I came to again, I was forced down a hospital bed by nurses. Voices spoke all around me, some familiar, others not. I continued thrashing my body like some insane mental patient until something pricked my skin.

Everything went loopy, and I knew, before I passed out, they had sedated me.





24.



Elise

Confused, I opened my eyes in the silence and looked up at the ceiling. My mouth was dry and my head ached. I opened my mouth to breathe because my nose was blocked.

I sighed softly, searching my mind for events. Images from last night flashed before my eyes, and I cringed inwardly at my behaviour. Fuck, I was a monkey. What the hell had I done? I groaned in humiliation. I disappointed myself most of all. If this was how I felt about what I did remember, what would I feel after I learned all the other things I had done?