As I laid on the red rug, I struggled to maintain my awareness. My most basic faculties were plummeting away from me at freefall speed. My brain was cloudy and shorting out like a fried circuit-breaker in a dingy basement. The knots swelling and rising all over my bludgeoned head and the gaping lacerations only expedited my descent. I was a misshapen heap; peaks of fleshy mountains with the drooping valleys occupied by a warm scarlet river of flowing plasma in between. My expression had become a metaphor for life. Its many ups and many downs entrenched in the patterns that had been savagely thrashed into my face. I felt just as utterly ruined inside as I did on the outside.
The nauseating flavors of my most personal parts had been extracted to dowse my palate. The intimate violation that he’d seen fit to drag me through was incomparable to anyone with any semblance of a soul; a tier of torment that the average mind is unable to comprehend until it experiences it.
He seemed like such a docile and harmless man, pathetic in many ways. Someone that you wouldn’t expect to be able to tie their own shoes. Someone who didn’t harbor the capacity to wash themselves properly. Yet, somehow, he was capable of such atrocity and unmatchable hatred.
In retrospect, all the signs were there. I just gave him (and the world) too much credit I suppose. I thought projecting my good intentions onto others would act as a safeguard. But benevolence, charm, and charity will be of little help once you fall into the clutches of a heartless heathen.
I had been in his godforsaken bedroom for far too long waiting for him to cook up his next assault. The worst part is knowing that he was coming back. He is always just mere seconds, minutes, or hours away from turning that grimy silver doorknob again. The mental anguish is almost as horrendous as the physical violence and defilement.
My desecrated body begged my brain, trying to convince it to agree. Posing the existential argument for death. My carnal form wished he had just finished it already while my heart ached thinking about Daniel. He’s all I have now. Well, I don’t even have him really, but I have the thought of him at least. Knowing that he needs me is my lone remaining comfort as I await the diseased mind of that fucking slob to plot the next manifestation of his diabolical values.
There are no bounds to his perversion, no moral to his blueprint, yet, somehow, I feel as if he’s still holding something back. Like there is some sort of sickening surprise that he’s kept veiled but still has in store for me. For us, I should say.
I looked back at the girl with the black garbage bag on her head. She was bound to the chair. I was too destroyed to attempt communication. She wasn’t moving or talking anyway. Had he done something to her while I was knocked silly, or had she passed out from the stress? Her still bleeding frame told a tale similar to mine. If we ever did get to talk, it seems we’d have a lot in common.
As I coughed up another mouthful of blood and gist, it splattered all over my forearm and hand. I looked up from my dripping extremity and toward the infinite piles of filth in the utterly hopeless bedroom.
The bedroom was a place that was supposed to be reserved for slumber, peace, and love. I felt like we couldn’t be farther from the most basic form of relaxation. The place of rest had been dampened with my blood and tears. It looked like the bedding of a serial killer or murder scene. It very well might be.
The scent of the violence was still in the hot stagnant air, blended with the overall stench of the rotting rubbish that filled not just the room but the entire property. It was a playground for the uninvited guests—the squirmy insects and hairy mice.
I could clearly hear the wild scampering scrapes from the army of wiry-legged pests that roamed the nightmarish hellhole with excitement. Their bulky overfed silhouettes raced around in the darkness beneath the bed. The house was a blacker degree of abyss than I could have imagined. He must have enjoyed them… were they his pets? I certainly was. I was the pet of a vicious psychopath and surrounded by the repellant reincarnations of my dirty past.
Suddenly, I felt even dizzier than before, like my surroundings were twisting around like a cinnamon swirl. I no longer had the strength to move or plan, it seemed I had entered an autopilot state. My life was being presented back to me.
Was I dying? Was this what people described as their life flashing before their eyes? There was no way to be sure, but somehow, I was back at the beginning again…
