ᴡᴏʀꜱʜɪᴘ ᴍᴇ (ᴇᴊ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ)

1: Easy Target

        "Let me be real with you, Y/N. You were an easy target." Alicia, your therapist, sighed deeply and pushed her glasses farther back up the bridge of her nose. "You were lonely, you wanted a group of people you could roam college with. That's normal. They took advantage of you." Her words were ones you'd heard before, but they never got through to you, not really.

After screaming into the night for help concerned citizens gathered around you while someone called the cops. Your head had been spinning and despite your stomach having nothing left to give you had still felt the urge to vomit. No one could comfort you and only a couple tried. You were found in the streets in a bloodied robe with tears streaming down your face. Some people thought you were crazy, having a psychotic break, or that you had just killed someone. Most decided to keep their distance.

When the police came and half-coherent words of demons and human sacrifice spilled out of your mouth you were immediately marked as mentally unstable and toted off to the station for light questioning. They didn't believe you. Not until they saw the altar, the tar spills, and the stacks of disemboweled corpses. Then they were concerned. You and a hand full of other survivors were found as witnesses and asked what felt like hundreds of questions. With how high the body count was, the police were more inclined to try and pry names from you all rather than do dozens of DNA tests.

They never found Jack though, but you and everyone else figured he had to be dead somewhere out there. He couldn't have lasted long after the massacre, not without his eyes.

When they were done with you and decided you weren't guilty of anything, at least legally, you were shipped to a psychiatric hospital for deprogramming and anything else they thought was wrong with you.

By the end of it, you were a shell of who you used to be. You didn't know what was real anymore, you didn't know what to do with yourself, all you believed at that point was that you should have saved him. You blamed yourself for his death. You might not have physically killed him, but you had let him die.

"Y/N?" Alicia asked with a raised brow. "Are you listening?"

"Oh... yeah sorry. Just zoned out." You'd been doing that a lot lately. You found it hard to focus on anything, even when it was to help you.

Alicia sighed, "It's fine. Now back to what we were talking about, you need to stop blaming yourself. Cults are extremely manipulative. It's hard to wrap your head around anything that defies them." You gave a half-hearted nod in response. She frowned, "I know you don't believe me, and I know it's hard, but I don't blame you. No one does." But you do. That's why you're still here every week.

"I just... I just wish I would've done something. I don't know what I could have done, but I wish I would have tried." You muttered, picking at a loose string on your sleeve.

"I get that, but at some point you have to let go. It's the only way you can move on."

"I know." But you don't. You don't want to move on. You'd let a man die, and for what? A fake god who promotes torture and death? You can't just forget that, you won't let yourself.

Alicia gave a knowing look, clearly not believing you, but she let it go. "Well, how are other things going? Make any new friends?"

You shrugged, "No. I've just been working."

"Still saving for a new place?"

"Yeah."

✦★✦

"Stop fuckin around lady! I bought this shit yesterday and it already fell apart!"

CRASH