MADMAN'S HAVEN

20

(🎶 You Don't Own Me - Lesley Gore)

The mirror in front of me reflected the mess from the earlier violence caused by the no longer trustworthy pair of hands.

I was a lot more aware by now since the shock left my body along with the drunkness a couple of hours ago.

The party went on after the perfectly told lie about me falling over the sink in the bathroom. It was just a clumsy accident, I said, the type that happens to all of us in the state of drunken stupor.

Everyone believed me, since they never would even think about someone in our association being able to throw a fist at a woman. If they only knew how wrong they were about that.

Unfortunately, the rest of the night was as good as destroyed for me. My head ached in pain and all I wanted to do was cry of surprise and a thousand emotions.

My life was turning its back on me, I began to realize. Everything just went wrong in my presence. But I had no more tears left to cry, no more strength to even get rid of. I couldn't get any weaker than I already was. So Donald's attempt of tearing me down was just a negligent action of self-unveiling.

One part of me was actually glad about what happened. He choose to make a move at the most perfect moment, when I couldn't care less about what happened to me, and even before he got me dragged deep into his affection that turned out to be just monstrous and filled with danger.

I knew who he was now, and what he was capable of, and somehow that made me feel stronger for being able to realize and immediately act back with power, even if there was not much left in me.

I was the pure description of destruction and misery, but everyone around me seemed to be blind enough just to see the facade outside filled with fake smiles, pretended sobriety, and self-control. Even Donald bought it, the manipulative and dangerous human reader with psychopathic traits. He couldn't manage to see right through me, even if that was his proven speciality.

I whiffed out in pain as I padded the ice against my swollen cheekbone. It was already bruised up in purple and red blossoming colour. The tears streamed down, not out of sadness but out of throbbing pain.

I would never be able to hide this, and the thought of telling another lie to my colleagues made me feel ashamed. I didn't want to tell them that it was an accident caused by heavy alcohol consumption. That would only make me appear as irresponsible, and weaker than they already believed me to be after what happened there.

I had to come up with something else, because there was no way that I could tell the truth.

In this case, Donald was the man of power, and I was the inferior woman, which wasn't a profit for me at all, because in our society, I could never get people to believe me if there was no evidence, which there wasn't. I would just drag myself deeper into dreary trouble, and fill Donald with more fury if I went to the police. It was just not worth it.

An unpleasant feeling reached my stomach and my heart began to pound from physical reaction.

What would Brandon say about this? I couldn't lie to him. I would never dare to, nor did he deserve my disloyalty after what I had promised him so many times by now. I would never lie to him again.

After the situation with Brandon on Christmas Eve, I paid a visit to Dorothy's office right away.

I had promised him that I would try my best to convince her to put me back in his care to be his treater again, and thankfully I succeeded with my mission of persuasion.

Dorothy was censorious and strict, but with her knowledge about Brandon's history of treatment, and that I was the only one who managed to get into him, she agreed after our long and professional meeting that it was probably for Brandon's best to have me back in his care.

I didn't know how to feel about the decision, but I didn't have much of a choice after Brandon's clear statement. Maybe someone would call it a threat, but I knew that wasn't his intention. He just didn't know how to ask about it any other way, not after everything I said to him about three months ago, the moment before I left him into his loneliness of what I thought would be forever.

He had been through so much in a very short amount of time, and after the electric shock treatment, it wouldn't be very unfamiliar if he was out of control of his actions, so I didn't blame him for that.

He proved to me enough that he would never hurt me, especially from his freak out after cutting my neck unintentionally. He deserved another chance.

It was easy for me to forgive him since he forgave me for everything I put him through. The cut was just an accident, and it lead to something beautiful that I would never regret.

Our intimacy was worth every ounce of pain.

He already imprinted my heart and soul, so the only thing left to mark was my flesh.

It was a minimal incision that turned into an even smaller ulcer, right above my collarbone, only for the most inspecting eye to notice.

Hopefully, the tiny scar would be with me all my life to keep reminding me of his glorious affection, and what he was really capable of doing for love.