Ouch! What the hell...
I tried to reach my head but both my hands were tied. Ohhh, fuck! I was wide awake now, but unable to move any of my limbs except my head. I looked around. I was inside a wooden hut, no bigger than the size of a bedroom of the old days, completely naked, bound with iron cuffs on a large wooden table. There was nothing in the room except for a stool next to where I was laying, on top of which I was able to see different types of knives, razors, lancets and fabrics all drenched in blood. There was a foul smell in the air as well. A mixture of rot and mold, but I could not see where it came from. I tried to pull my arms through the coughs, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get them to fit through. Shit! Shit! SHIT! There was light coming in from somewhere at the back. I tried to bend my neck to look at what was behind me. Two small windows shed some light inside the small cabin, but blurry as they were, made it impossible to see anything through them. There was a doorway between these two however and the table was perfectly aligned with it. Instead of a door, there was a curtain made of pine cones, tied together with fishing lines. There was music and laughter. I could hear it. I tried to see through the pine cones.
I could make out a number of people dancing in circles in the distance. I was not seeing smoke or the flickering light of a campfire. I could see clearly though they were not dressed either. There were both men and women and quite a few of them. There were probably around thirty of them, but I could not be certain at this point looking at them upside down and from a distance. Who are these people!? How can there be so many of them around here and we have never seen them until now? Shit, what is this? The singing and the laughter were getting louder. I looked again and witnessed they were now dancing ecstatically. In a successful attempt to concentrate more, I saw that some of them wore masks, others hats, or crowns, made out of flowers or branches or even animals. I could clearly see a person walking around with a bear's head instead of his own.
I pulled my arms as hard as I could, to get them through the cuffs. I felt the cold steel cutting through my skin. FUCK! Come on! Come on! Maybe if I break my thumbs... I pulled harder, but there was not enough strength in me left. I was scared. The night So and Minerva died popped into my head. This felt a lot scarier. Where is John!? Shit! What are they going to do to me? As this thought crossed my mind, I raised my head to look at myself. Aside from scratching my wrists trying to break free earlier and the pain at the back of my head, I was not feeling any other pain. I panicked. Am I just waiting to die? Is this it? I let myself go and cried. My mind raced in an attempt to find a way out of this mess but without success. I had no recollection of how long I was on that table, crying alone. It was certainly quite a while though as the light started to become dim. The festivities had also subsided when dusk came. I decided to overcome the pain in the back of my head once more, to see what was the cause.
I could clearly see the light of a bonfire now. Two figures stood in front of it facing each other. One was dressed in a white tunic and wore a crown, the other was naked like the rest of the crowd, which was kneeling in front of them. The figure in white made a movement with their hands inviting them to stand up. They started chanting slowly but I was unable to make out what they were saying. This was the least of my problems now however as through the pine cone curtain came a group of women. All of them stepped into the hut slowly and looked at me with calm expressions, smiling indistinctly and stood around the table I was laying on. Their ages varied. None of them was an old lady, but I could tell some of them were still girls, fifteen or sixteen years of age tops. They were wearing nothing but crowns made of ferns, branches and wildflowers.
"Please..." I said with my voice breaking and my mouth dry. " Please don't hurt me... I beg you."
"You must be thirsty dear..." One of them said, maintaining her calm expression and her smile. She was holding a wooden jug. Her beauty was otherworldly, but at this point, this made her even more terrifying. She purred some of the content of the jug into a cup the girl on the right presented her with and offered it to me.
"I am not drinking this shit!"
"I am afraid you don't have a choice dear. This is for the better."
"Who are you? What do you want from me?"
They kept looking at me unbothered. The woman turned to one of the girls standing behind me. Before I was able to attempt to look, the table tilted to the front and I was now in a standing position. Another woman approached me, holding a wooden bowl filled with what seemed to be blood. She dipped two fingers in and started painting my skin, muttering words I could make nothing out of, starting from my forehead.
"Get your fuckin hands off me you bitch!" It was futile to fight through this. Two other women grabbed me from behind and held me still until she was finished. I cried and screamed as fear took me over. I peed myself right there in front of all of them and shook from the sheer terror of what would follow. When she was done my body was covered in spirals and what seemed to be runes. I do not know why my senses were not leaving me yet. I should have passed out a while ago, but somehow I managed to go through this. One of the younger girls then approached me and poured ice-cold water on my private parts and cleaned up the pee. I was crying uncontrollably. "DON'T YOU FUCKIN TOUCH ME!!! NOOO!!! LET ME GO!!!" I gasped as the table returned violently to its original position.
One of the girls behind me held a small tube and a funnel in her hands. Nooo...nooo
"Don't you fuckin dare!" I whistled behind my teeth, keeping my mouth shut with whatever strength I had left. It was pointless. I felt the plastic tube being forced down my throat. I wanted to vomit but the only thing I felt coming up was bile. The content of the jug was poured directly through the funnel into my stomach. They pulled the tube as soon as the full content of the jug was finished. I coughed.
"What did you do to me ?" I managed to spell.
"Soon it will be all over." Said the woman.
My eyes were overflowing with tears. Everything was blurred out. Terror had consumed me. I was whimpering in horror, crying uncontrollably tied as I was, unable to do anything to help myself. I laid not only exposed physically but sentimentally as well. Their gaze in combination with their expressions of euphoria and happiness felt like a cold black hand reaching into me to dash the last failing spark of light. They started slowly distancing themselves, moving towards the walls of the room. I closed my eyes. I could not watch them anymore. I screamed over and over and between my screams, I started hearing them chant. It was low and slow, but it was there. I do not know for how long I kept crying. I cried until there were no more tears left to shed, until I was out of breath, exhausted and with a voice so broken that any sound I tried to make I felt my throat ache. I had a distinct taste of iron in my mouth as if I had been chewing on a spoon for days.
I opened my eyes. I felt my eyelids heavy and almost scratching their way over my eyes as they opened up. I could not tell how long this lasted. I could not begin to measure how much time I had spent screaming my lungs out. The blur from the tears was no longer there. But my view of the place was different from earlier. It seemed like the room was made out of thick smoke. The surfaces had a flowing element in their texture. It was not noticeable at first glance but it was there and it was showing up at the edges of my field of vision, gradually moving inwards to cover everything as a filter. The women who were only lit by the candles in the room were turning to shadows, dancing around following the movement of the flames. I could not make sense of anything at that point. I could not tell whether I was seeing all these because I was so exhausted or because there was something in that thing they forced inside me. Looking at the ceiling seemed like staring at the surface from underwater. No light was going through it however. It was like a liquid black mass, pulsing, seeking to devour the entire room with the shadows of the women as allies.
The dirty walls were now covered with writings. I was unable to make sense of what was written. Words, symbols and sketches were overlapping each other, all made with the same red paint... or blood. The more I looked at the walls in an attempt to make sense the more furious the waves of smoke became. Light came into the space from behind me. The smoke subsided creating an opening at the same spot the doorway was earlier. The light was pale and through it emerged a group of beasts, walking on two legs just like humans. They were humanoid in appearance. They had the bodies of men, but hooves replaced their feet and the shape of their legs resembled that of four-legged creatures. Thick fur covered them from the waist down and from the neck up. Their faces were covered in leaves, moss and lichens and branches were coming out of their skulls. Their eyes were all dark and motionless. Please be a dream... Finally, two other figures arrived in the room and stood right in front of me. I felt my eyes open wide. You... It was the man in white from the forest who now had the head of a goat. Next to him was a man significantly bigger than the rest, but sharing their beastly forms. His form however was distinct. A bear.
I felt saliva running from the edge of my lips but I could neither close my mouth, nor move or speak as my tongue had gone numb and I didn't have any strength left to make my voice be heard. The only thing I was still capable of doing was to open and close my eyes. The Bearman climbed on top of me. If I close my eyes...if I let go...I may not open them again...I looked inside the black void of the bear's mouth and I saw the slight shine of what must have been eyes. A hand grabbed my face forcing me to the right. The Goatman looked at me and whispered
"There is no reason, no greater purpose. You are in Jinnestan. Time and space are one and the same for the lord of this plane. Where we have been, we shall be over and over and over again. Everything good is meant to be revisited. Everything bad re-experienced. Navigating through the darkness accompanied by light is possible, but one merely explores darkness this way. Being raised within it requires a different approach. May He take you to His sweet embrace tonight my child. May He choose to present Himself for the sake of all of us and may you relieve us from the terror of this world. Stay strong child. The worst will be part of what was soon." My limbs were completely numb. The air going through my lungs felt solid. My insides started floating within my flesh.
Meanwhile, not too far away...
"Is it them?"
Nadia was extra cautious. We did not know who else might have found refuge in these mountains. For all we knew, we were alone all this time, with survivors arriving in our territory after days, weeks and in some cases even months of travel. It was rare, not unprecedented.
I focused my attention on the view ahead as I looked through the binoculars. There was no room for mistakes, a raid at the wrong place could start a blood feud between tribes making things even uglier for all of us. It has to be them... who else could be living in a camp like this one? A six feet tall totem of an unearthly kind of creature made of bones stood in the middle, the huts were covered with black mud and runes were carved over the walls. The remains of a bonfire were still burning, letting out the last breaths of smoke in the air.
"It has to be them..."
"John..."
"I know, I know..."
A figure in white came out of a hut to the left. He stretched seemingly without a care in the world. I felt the hair at the back of my neck rise up as if I was a real-life wire. I saw him taking a sip out of a bottle that played there on the ground next to him. He washed his mouth and spit the liquid right before a man as big as a tree entered my field of view and stood next to him. There was no way I would forget these two.
"It's them."
My grip tightened around the binoculars as my heart lost a beat for a split second and then started beating so hard as if it was making an attempt to jump out of my chest. I was already making plans about how I would strip these humanoid monsters out of life and enact my vengeance but I had to be patient. We had been monitoring the camp for a few hours now. We had acquired a view of their numbers and what each part of the camp was about, however, it was still unclear to us where Daphne was held as a number of huts could serve for hostage confinement. At first glance, the place did not look like it could withstand an organized attack of any kind. There was no sign of a guarded perimeter, no guards, no animal traps, not even wires with empty cans. Over the past couple of years, the numbers of bears and wolves had doubled in these mountains, not to mention the wild boars or the hollows. What are they even thinking? How have they managed to survive like this up here?
The man in white started moving towards the huts to the left with the Bearman following his lead. He strolled through the paths, as Pluto would stroll through the realms of the underworld in mythology. His white robes moved the dead leaves on the ground at his passing and the gentle breeze coming down over the mountain pushed them against his naked body, turning the sight of his proceeding into something we clearly shouldn't be watching. The two men stopped outside a hut where earlier we saw a number of women enter, wearing nothing but their skin. A while later we heard them chanting all together but unable to see what was transpiring inside, we had no clue as to why they would be chanting altogether, that loud. It might as well have been screaming... I could not shake the idea from my head that Daphne might actually be inside that same hut...What if we are already too late?
The Bearman turned to his side and revealed a shiny, silver dagger. He kneeled in front of the man in white and offered him the dagger with both hands, lowering his head, resembling a knight of the middle ages, offering his service to his king. As the man in white raised the dagger making it shine under the faint moonlight, Julia arrived next to us silent as a cat.
"Everyone is in there. We surrounded the building and made sure nobody else was around. Daphne has to be in there if those are the people who attacked you in the woods." At the sound of these words, I picked up my rifle from the ground and started to run toward the wooden hut. I could not wait for Nadia to give us the order. The two men had finished whatever it was that they were doing and headed inside. If Daphne was really in there, then she was now in grave danger. I heard Nadia and Julia cursing and rushing after me while giving the attack order over the walkie-talkies.
Don't stop... do not freeze, no matter what you see in there, saving Daphne is priority number one. Shoot anyone that moves... come on! Faster... faster! It's not too far. As I was running downhill I saw Peter and the others coming out of the bushes from the other side and dashing towards us. Their job was to ensure the perimeter was safe and that we had an exit path. The hut we were about to enter had one entrance and no windows. As I arrived at the doorstep, I heard a rhythmic chanting from inside, a little louder than a whisper. I kicked the door open and held up my rifle ready to fire with Nadia and Julia over either of my shoulders.
"Daphne..."
She was tied on a table, naked, covered in bruises and blood, worse than a lamb ready for slaughter. In front of her stood the man in white and the Bearman, both of which turned as soon as the door cracked open. The women we saw earlier were filling every square inch of the room. Some of them mature, others about Daphne's age or younger, some maintaining reason, others in a state of ecstasy. The room was only illuminated by candles either held by women or set on the ground, like the ones around the table.
"You sons of bitches!" screamed Nadia, when faced with the same sight and shot three times the Bearman before being charged from the side by two women screaming in frenzy. I heard Peter's shotgun firing twice as he entered the room. As I pointed my gun toward the man in white, he raised his arms in a stance of surrender and three young girls rushed in front of him covering him with their bodies, causing me to freeze faced with the uncertainty of whether I could shoot unarmed, little girls. I turned my rifle to shoot a woman attacking me from the left straight to the head at point-blank range. Her blood splashed all over me as I heard more gunshots behind me and further screaming indicating the others had entered the hut. Another woman grabbed my rifle from the right screaming in an attempt to stop me from shooting. I turned my gun to deliver a strike with its backside on the head, leaving her unconscious.
We were outnumbered. The entrance didn't allow us to enter the room as quickly as needed and unable to spread out, we could not fire shotguns as the risk of hitting one of our own was too big to take. Those of us who had managed to step inside had to deal with multiple people at once and even though I and Nadia had been able to take care of our opponents the same could not be said for Julia who was now wrestling with two women, who were holding her gun and attempting to hit her with their bare fists or Peter and the others who were stuck only a few steps from the entrance shooting and fighting their way through the rest of the women in the room. I looked at the man in white again and the girls surrounding him. His stance still indicated he was surrendering but the white hood he wore prevented me from seeing his face. The expressions of the three girls serving as human shields were empty. Faced with the horror that transpired in that room in front of them, they did not shed a single tear nor did they let out a single scream. On the contrary, the one in the middle seemed to be smiling. In my attempt to assess the situation and decide who to help first I failed to notice that the Bearman had stood up and was now rushing towards Julia pulling a hatchet from his back.
"NOO!!!" yelled Nadia and she ran against the giant man pulling a machete from her waist. She pierced as hard as she could straight to the man's guts.
"Nadia move!" I yelled from where I stood, but once again the man was faster and managed to strike her with the back of his fist. Nadia stood her ground leaving me no opening for a clear shot. She pulled her machete out of the man's belly and raised it to strike for the final time on the head, but that monster of a man dropped the hatchet on his side, grabbed her from the top of her head and started punching her with no remorse. Nadia fell flat on her back right in front of him. Now!
Bang - Bang - Bang
The man collapsed taking one step back for each gunshot he took to the chest. Julia was flat on her back as well, struggling to keep the two women on top of her from ripping her eyes out and enduring one hit after the other. I turned my gun towards them and fired at the one closest to me. Julia managed to slit the throat of the other once she got distracted, leaving her body to drop on top of her and the blood gushing out of her throat to paint her face. As I switched my attention back to the man in white and the girls, I noticed Nadia making an attempt to stand on her back. At the same time one of the girls abandoned her post close to the man in white, picked up the hatchet next to the dead body of the Bearman - Don't make me do this kid...- and raised it up high aiming straight for Nadia's head. Without spending a single moment thinking any longer, I armed my rifle and shot the little girl in the head. Her lifeless body dropped to its knees, but the hatchet followed its original course, with a slight shift in its trajectory and landed on Nadia's left shoulder, cutting it through and through. Dazed as she was from the repetitive strikes on her head, she was unable to dodge. Her screams pierced through every other form of commotion, blood started to spout from the hole the hatchet left in the place of her arm, just like water would spout out of a volcanic spring.
"Nadia!!! Easy honey, try to hold still..." Julia had managed to move the bodies of the two dead women off of her and went immediately to her aid. Peter and the others had also managed to make their way inside through the entrance almost unharmed but still by killing all five of the women blocking their way. I kept pointing my weapon toward the man in white, but I couldn't shoot. In my head, I still had not comprehended how I just shot a little girl in the head. It was impossible not to make parallels with someone shooting Daphne and what I would have done to them. I took a better look at Daphne who was laying upside down on the table. She had not made a single move. Her body kept twitching at random moments or shook while she muttered words I could not make out.
"Take care of the wound and get her back to our camp, we'll take care of the rest... Go!" ordered Julia after giving Nadia a kiss on the forehead.
"Nooo...! I have to be here...stop! Stop right now! Let me go!" she was pale as a ghost but she was spitting the words through her teeth in fury and pain.
"Take her Peter, please. I'll tend to her wound as soon as we are done here," said Julia calmly with a heavy breath, ignoring Nadia's frenzy. Peter and the others carried her away, leaving us alone with the last three people still living in the room.
"Who the fuck are you?" asked Julia, maintaining a tone of voice completely incoherent with her choice of words. The man remained silent and so did the two little girls. Julia raised her bloody machete and mimicking her move I aimed better at the man's head and took some steps closer.
"Move back and stay there, otherwise you'll have an even worse fate than your big friend here." continued Julia without letting down her guard a single bit. The man placed his hands on the girls' shoulders and made a few steps back reaching the wall. Julia approached the table and turned it to its original position. She checked up on Daphne quickly and covered her with her own jacket.
"She is weak... very weak, but alive" she told me.
"What have they done to her...? What have YOU done to her?" The man removed his white hood and revealed his face. He was missing an eye. He was bald, with a smooth complexion, but not much older than me. A scar went down from his right eye all the way to his chin and multiple scratches from the top of his chin all the way down to the base of his neck. They looked self-inflicted. His one good eye had deep blue color, visible even under the faint light of the remaining burning candles. When he spoke, his voice came out deep and raspy.
"You think you saved her, but in reality, you have condemned this girl to a life of endless torture. As if she has not been through enough. I offered her the chance of an escape, the chance to rise above any of us for our own good..."
"Shut up freak! Answer my question, what have you done to her?"
"We merely showed her the way to a painless life." I was unable to hold my patience any longer.
"Move the girls out of the way."
"My children will not leave my side."
"You've dragged your kids into this shit?"
"John..." Julia tried to intervene but I pretended I didn't hear her. The man continued.
"I do everything I can for my children John...just like I am sure you do everything for her. She called for you, you know...she kept repeating your name through the night. She must love you." He sounded almost condescending but all I could receive was sarcasm.
"What do you know about love?" I asked and I saw the man's expression become openly sarcastic.
"You insult me, John. You treat me as if I am a heartless monster when in reality the true monsters here are you. See John, I do what I do out of love. The Lord commanded me to do so, promising to keep my people safe..."
"Well that didn't fucking work did it asshole?"I gibed back, but the man ignored my comment.
"...But you," he said and pointed to both Julia and me, "you have acted with anger, with hate. You attacked unarmed women and little girls, you shot them dead one after the other without any regard for who they are or what they do. You came here to take by force what's not your property! How lovely! How righteous you have all been!"
"You are the ones who took one of our own!"
"I offered this poor child an escape. A night to explore her womanhood limitlessly, before letting her soul rest in the hands of the Lord, away from the horrors of this world! But I guess that's not good for you or any of you... you parasites seek to condemn children to a life in this world just because you fail to put up with your own selves...shame on you!"
"Is this what you will do with your daughters as well?" The man's expression became softer as he spoke and stroked gently the heads of the two girls.
"My daughters have asked for the honor of this grand release already...but they are not of age yet." I was speechless. I had no clue how to react to the words that came out of this man's mouth. There was also something else about him. Somehow I could see something familiar under his scars, details that time had not whipped away.
"John, don't listen to him. Remember, we've got to take care of Daphne, he is not a priority."
"Shut up slut! You filthy, pussy-loving, whore! You and those you are alike are the reason we've been cursed like this for the rest of our days on this earth!" The man pushed the girls aside to spit his words on Julia's face, giving me a clear shot. I aimed for his knee.
BANG!
"Aaaaaahhh!!! Curse you!!!" he screamed as he collapsed, unable to walk. I approached him and I put the rifle's barrel in his mouth.
"JHON NO!" Julia is right, our first priority is to treat Daphne and Nadia. We will deal with this crazy son of a bitch later.
"What about the girls?"
"We'll take them with us as well. They should be able to decide for themselves if they want to stay with us or not at least". I couldn't be sure whether this was a good decision or not taking into account what the other girl did, but I was not able to make up my mind at this point either. "Call for aid on the radio...we cannot handle all of them alone" Continued Julia. "Let's tie them up."
"Right." I approached the two girls being extra careful. They maintained an empty look in their eyes and kept staring at me the whole time, as I tied their arms and legs.
"Do not despair daughters..." phrased the man as Julia rolled him over to tie his arms behind his back. "The Lord will take care of us...you'll see..." He smiled gently as he said those words, trying to hide his pain and discomfort. The two girls did not let a single word out.
I approached Daphne who was still lying unconscious on the table. Her lips were dry and her hair oily and tangled. She had bruises around her throat, indicating she had been choked repeatedly. Her cheeks were swollen with shades of purple and red, burning hot. I pulled one of her arms from underneath Julia's coat. The bruises made an appearance over her arm as well, along with bite marks. Julia came next to me and lifted her coat to take a closer look at Daphne's body. She bit her lower lip and wiped the tears escaping from her eyes with the backside of her palm. Daphne had whip marks across her breasts, belly and thighs some of which were still bleeding, the bruises and bites expanded through these areas and intensified. I turned to look at her face again.
"Is she...is she going to be... is she going to be alright?" I couldn't hold my tears any longer.
Over the past five years, I had seen horrible things happen to people either by hollows or wild animals. Humans had been responsible for a number of brutal murders and other monstrosities but seeing a person this close to me, who endured such vile, repulsive atrocities by human hand, had a whole different impact on me.
"I can't be sure John. I can't be sure if she's ever going to be a hundred percent healthy after this either. I mean..." Julia was struggling to stay calm as well, "from what I can tell by looking at her, she was raped multiple times, by both of these men...maybe by women as well."
"Christ! What are you saying?" Is this what he meant? Did we only save her to live the rest of her life suffering? No! No! Shut up! She will be fine...I'll make sure she will.
"Do ya get it now?" said the man in white. "Do you?! How is she going to get through this...John? Will you help her? I've seen your type before, I used to be like you..."
"Shut up..."
"I was married once. Then she fell sick...I promised her I'd be there for her. I promised myself she'd get better. In the end..."
"I said shut up..."
"...I just waited for her to die and when she did I wanted to get lost from this world" I grabbed him from his robes and punched him twice. His laugh came out as a siss.
"Hahahaha... You wish to get lost too, John?" I kept punching him. His laugh became hysterical and he continued, with blood flowing out of his mouth. "Hahaha... ye! Hit me! HIT ME!" I broke out on him, striking his face again and again until I was out of breath. I was not trying to kill him, I just wanted to make him suffer. "There you go...that's it..." His face was bleeding and swollen everywhere. He spat blood and a couple of broken teeth before he continued seemingly unbothered. "You can hide all you want from them John... but you can't hide from me... you and I..." His sentence remained unfinished as he fell unconscious from Julia's strike at the back of his head.
"We are leaving. Try to pull yourself together for her sake...ok?" said Julia. She was calm but her tone was bold and left no room for disagreements. I looked at the two girls who still had their empty eyes fixed upon me. This time though, I could swear I saw the signs of pity in their look. I sat on the floor, with my back against the wall. I looked at the lifeless body of the little girl that lay a bit further. Julia and Peter untied Daphne from the table.
"I'll take her..."
"No," said Julia and cut me off. "You've got holes to dig, big and small. You know where you'll find us when you are done." I didn't argue, I just stood up and walked outside to start digging.
How did it come to this? How did I become like this? The shovel kept getting heavier and everybody I buried, branded my mind and soul. I won't be able to let any of this go...I will never go back to normal. Daphne... fuck... It doesn't matter what becomes of me. She is the one that needs to overcome the greatest damage. You stupid, imbecile...even at this moment you can't help thinking about yourself first...Is this who I am? As I buried the body of a little girl and finished up, the words of the man in white echoed in my head. Maybe I am the real monster here after all... and monsters are either driven away or slain. I kneeled next to the buried bodies as the shadows of the trees started forming and enveloped the area.
"I am sorry mom...I'm sorry dad... Io...everyone." I let my tears run down and looked at the sky above and the forest ahead. "I am sorry for everything!"
Later...
"John... she'll be fine with us, please try to get some rest." Julia's voice had the sound of a heartwarming whisper. I could not open my eyes yet or move from where I lay. My eyelids were motionless, just like rotten window blinds. I could feel my limbs, but I was too weak. John remained silent. "It's been three days already. You haven't eaten or slept properly...let alone the stench...is this how you want her to see you when she wakes up...?" Her voice cracked. He must have given her the look he usually gave me. I didn't remember him being intimidating or scary, but he made it clear simply by looking at you that the talk was over.
"IF she wakes up..." he said quietly but with unmistakable tension. I heard Julia moving away and then speaking from a bit further.
"You know, Daphne is not the only one we may mourn for... just reminding you buddy." Is she sobbing? What the hell happened? Where am I? I tried to speak, but I barely managed to open my lips. I made an attempt to breathe a bit more heavily to show him I was awake but I failed miserably. John touched me on the cheek and moved some hair away. His hands moved downwards to reach and hold the palm of my left arm. They were rough and dry, but his touch was warm and gentle.
"If you can hear me, girl... you are going to be fine." He paused. "And when you wake up, we'll deal with the son of a bitch who did this to you. 'Till then, I'll be right here sweetheart."
I focused as hard as I could to move a finger on my left hand. Just enough for him to feel it as he held it. Come on... come on... move... move... just a tiny little movement... move... move... MOVE! I felt John's palm relaxing and loosening the grip. Did I make it? Alright again! Come on, move index! That's it! I felt it! It barely bent but I felt it. John must have seen it as well.
"Are you doing this...? He whispered in my ear. "Try again if you can hear me." Alright now, focus girl. Let's do it twice this time... come on! I heard John gasp and suck his nose. One of his palms moved to my forehead and he gave me a kiss on the cheek.
"That's my girl! Rest up now, I'll be here when you wake up again. Move your finger if you got that." This time it was even easier to make my body respond, but mentally I felt exhausted already. As I felt his palm envelop mine, I tapped with my finger twice on it.
"Good...good girl." He whispered gently again. "Save your strength now. I'll let the others know, rest up." I heard him standing up and taking some heavy steps away from me. It was soon silent and I was left alone with my thoughts.
Thank you John... My world, for now, was pretty dark for different reasons other than being unable to open my eyes yet. I tried to clear my head and maintain calmness. Sleeping is going to be a natural state of being for a while I guess. So were the nightmares though. I may have kept my eyes shut, for the most part at that table, but neither my body nor my soul was able to overcome what I went through. Pain and exhaustion were temporary, I knew that -or I just hoped so- but the deeper trauma was going to haunt me forever. Guess I'll have to learn to live with this too... fuck... why... why would people do such things...? I felt my body ache, images started to pop in my head as if my reflections lit up the wick of some type of candle, illuminating a horrifying corner deep in my subconscious. Shut up! Kick those thoughts away! I tried to think of something cheerful. I brought to my mind one of the days I spent watching movies on the couch of my old home with Socrates. It was peaceful and warm for a bit, but the memory of the night he and Minnie died crushed the memory like a sledgehammer. I remembered how I picked up the rifle and shot him to save John, how he cracked open from the impact of the bullet and his blood rained down upon John's face...I was unable to tell whether I was still awake or dreaming. The memories were too vivid to be able to tell the difference. Is this how I am going to be...? Am I permanently damaged? Am I never going to be clean or pure again? Who cares for broken stuff anyway? People tend to throw them away. They throw away stuff that is dirty beyond cleaning as well. Most people do...most people used to do so. In this world things are different... I guess people compromise even if they are not expressing it out loud. But does that mean people will always compromise with me? 'Cause I am damaged? Dirty? Broken? Fuck... fuck!
I had fallen into a deep, muddy pit and had to make it my home. It didn't just feel sad, it was more than miserable. I felt pity for myself... shameful. I could not blame those people who did what they did to me. They did what they did. In these crazy times, each of us does what we think is right. They were not the ones who were wrong, I was not wronged...I was wrong. John is not like most people though right? He said he will be here. I felt a tear going down my right cheek, my train of thought collapsed and suddenly there was nothing there to feel. He will be here... he has to.