Page 12 of The Awakening
Closing my eyes tight, I try to awaken myself from this nightmare. Like a lucid dream, I know this can’t be real. Opening my eyes again, I see my father closing in on me fast. I continue thrashing and kicking, trying to free my broken body but getting nowhere as the hands on me grow tighter. A puff of smoke slinks its way through my nostrils, burning as it invades my sinus cavity. My eyes begin to water from the sudden intrusion, my legs becoming heavy as I kick nothing but the air in front of me. My father is just out of my reach, and my fear quickly subsides to inevitable defeat as I slowly stop the fight, knowing what’s coming.
I still beneath their grasp, inhaling deeply as I try to steady my racing heart that’s thumping hard inside my chest. The heat of the cigar is mere centimeters from my skin when I close my eyes, and I stiffen my muscles, awaiting the pain. As I close my eyes, I see him. Golden skin, sun-kissed blond hair, and hazel eyes. He calls my name.
Sloan. Want to go for a swim? His voice is quiet, barely a whisper. I don’t answer. I just squeeze my eyes shut tighter and focus on the figure in my mind.
Sloan, you can wear the bikini I love, and we can play truth or dare again. My eyes begin to sting. The image of Colson is so vivid in my mind it’s like he’s actually standing in front of me.
“Is this going to hurt?” I whisper, eyes cemented shut as I continue to wait for the burning of my flesh that’s yet to come.
They can’t hurt you unless you let them. Unless you show them, you’re no longer afraid of them. Show them who’ve you become, sweetheart. Fight. As clear as the image of Colson was, he quickly fades away. He’s gone and I’m left chasing the phantom of a beautiful soul that continues to save me, even in the afterlife.
A feeling of pure adrenaline and strength takes over as the power of my self-preservation takes hold of me. I open my eyes just as my father presses his cigar into my forearm. The fire seeps through layers of my skin, and I can feel the pain all over again. Except this time, I don’t let them see how much it truly hurts. Tensing my muscles, I harden my face, eyes dark with murderous intent. Years of rage, built up as high as the pyramids, are about to come crashing down on these three putrid human beings.
My father lifts his cigar from my now charred skin, looking at me as I stare back into his beady eyes. His face is twisted in confusion as he waits for my reaction, but I don’t give him one. His brows are pinched tight as he looks me over—a woman transformed into something other than his once weak daughter.
“You smell that, boys?” My father inhales a deep breath, as the smell of freshly burned flesh fills the air, but before they can respond, I answer for them.
“It’s the smell of decaying flesh and bones piled high. Your limbs scattered across the floor, eyeballs tacked to the wall, tongues ripped from your throats, and blood pooling around my feet. Lots and lots of blood. It’s what I’m going to do to you three in roughly eight seconds.” The room goes silent. The only audible sound is my heartbeat thumping in my ears as I create the most gruesome death imaginable in my mind.
I countdown aloud, as I watch my father’s face go from confusion to curiosity to the slightest hint of fear in a flash. An evil grin forms on my face, enjoying the flood of emotions playing across his face as I continue counting.
“Five.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Two.”
I tense every muscle in my body as I prepare to dislodge myself from their grasp, my scene of escape playing on a loop in my head. As I’m about to say my last number, a blinding light assaults my eyes, and I’m forced to close them as the sting of the brightness becomes too much. The hold on me begins to subside, and my equilibrium starts going haywire as the room morphs from a stale basement to a sterile white room occupied by nothing and no one, except for myself.
I’m no longer the victim of my father and his friends. I’m standing alone breathing rapidly as I look down at my forearm and no longer see an angry burn but rather an old, scarred circle; evidence that this moment truly did happen. Many, many years ago.
I hear a door click open. Lifting my face, I see Arno’s smiling face beaming at me. He’s clapping his hands at me, the loud echoing of his large hands slapping against one another fills the space as he makes his way towards me.
“What a fucking show, little one. To say I’m impressed would be a serious fucking understatement.” His voice booms through the room, as I continue to stand utterly still. He reaches me and bends down enough to see into my eyes, his hands resting on either side of my shoulders. My breathing has evened out, but something deep in my chest has me cemented into place. I feel as though a wave of black water has crashed into my soul, taking over as it soars through my body in a tsunami of darkness.
“Hey, little one, are you okay?” I can hear Arno’s voice, but my mind doesn’t send the signals I need to my mouth so I can respond to him. Instead, I nod once as I lift my eyes to his. My face remains stoic as he peers down at my zombie-like form.
“It’s over now. You’re free. Look at me, Sloan.” His voice is laced with concern as he shakes my shoulders in an effort to break me from the trance I’ve fallen into.
“Say something, Sloan.” Hardening my eyes on Arno, I open my mouth a moment as I inhale a long shallow breath.
“I’ll never be free of the chaos that is my life, Arno. It’s a black mold penetrating my soul, creating me into this monster until the only thing I want to do is kill someone.” His eyebrows rise at my last statement. An expression of uncertainty about how to handle my new attitude creeps across his face. Just as he’s opening his mouth to respond, I stop him.
“I will kill someone, Arno. And you’re going to help me.”
“She’s lost to it. The memory was too much, and she’s already become blind to the rage that’s been festering inside her for her whole life.” Arno fills us in on Sloan’s session from this morning. Dean and I were escorted out of the viewing room. The second her father started hitting our girl, the rage inside of us boiled over to a whole new level. Stefan, Jei, and Arno had to physically restrain us before we could hit the termination button to free Sloan from her nightmare. Under no circumstance are we allowed to interfere with sessions, no matter how disturbing they may be.
The sound of his fist cracking across her face and seeing the blood gushing from her nose had me seeing red, and not from her blood. I wanted to kill someone at that moment. I wanted to insert myself into her memory so I could rip apart her father piece by piece, while enjoying the sounds of his agony. I felt helpless, and my chest was cracking apart as she continued to endure blow after blow. No one hurts what’s mine. No one.
After being restrained and removed from the room, Dean and I made a pact that we would hunt down her father and torture him in more ways than he ever did to Sloan. He will beg for death after what we plan to do to him.
Arno, Dean, and I are currently in the viewing room. Sloan was escorted from the simulation room by Arno, but she insisted that she needed to shower. After leaving her at the locker rooms, Arno immediately came to fill us both in on her current state of mind.
“I’m not sure if she’s just in shock still and will soon break from her trance or if she completely shut off her emotional connection to her trauma,” Arno continues, his face etched with pain as he describes our girl. “She was blank coming out of the simulation. It was as though she knew the whole thing was fake and fought back against her father, altering the course of the memory entirely. Almost like she was in a lucid dream, once the pain became too much, she realized it was all a dream.” He stops talking, beginning to pace the room as he takes a few deep breaths.
“You think she created a barrier between her emotions rather than trying to control them?” I ask him, watching as he scratches his head while continuing to take small steps back and forth. He doesn’t answer me though, he turns to me, placing his hands in his trouser pockets and gives me a shrug. Dean lets out a heavy breath as he curses to himself. His large frame puffing out as his anger continues to fester within him.