What happened to you?

What happened to you? A story of an abusee - Ch5 part one

My vision was going blurry again, and I wondered vaguely, in a remote part of my mind, how much blood I'd lost. Jonah would keep me bleeding throughout the night, not allowing me access to any aid.

I thought, this is it. I'm gonna be dead by morning. I could faintly hear Jonah's sadistic laughter over the buzzing filling my ears, and I realised that I wasn't going to die. Dying would be far too easy an escape from my hell. If I did die and go to hell, would I notice the difference anyway?

My thoughts went hazy, and Jonah's laughter seemed to mingle with someone's sobs. I assumed they were mine, as the person sounded familiar, before I realised my teeth were still gritted, my breath too ragged. Jonah was yelling now, I could hear, yelling at the sobbing, at the other voices - my thoughts went to earlier this evening - Ariel, her brother Carter; as I clung to the memories I could hear their voices in my buzzing ears. My eyes fluttered, and closed, everything going dark, but I could still hear Ariel and Carter, and someone that sounded like Carter but more baritone, and a mingle of other voices. I felt cold, and I shivered, as I tried to keep listening to those voices. Jonah was yelling at the voices now. My fingers twitched with a suddenurge to slap him for yelling at my voices. I tried to laugh at my newfound ferocity, but I merely huffed a sigh. It sounded like a death rattle.

Jonah's bear-roars were receding. I've lost too much blood, I thought. I never even got to see Ariel one last time, never got to finish telling my story to Carter. I wondered vaguely if they would miss me. I felt something warm press against my cold fingers. They felt too numb to squeeze back the grip that held them. Even Ariel's voice, the most prominent, was fading now. She sounded worried as she got fainter. That was funny, my hazy mind thought. Ariel was never worried about anything, except about me. Like the time I fell off the school gym apparatus, or the other day when she stole my watch. I huffed out a chuckle. Ariel shouldn't worry. When I was gone, she'd not have to. I made my cold lips smile, barely feeling like they were part of my face anymore - I'd almost forgotten I even had a body. I felt detached, cold and detached... my mind slipped into a black netherworld.

I woke up. That itself surprised me, the first time I opened my eyes after. When you believe and accept that you're dying, waking up alive is always a surprise.

My eyes were blurry, and filmed with a red tint, so it took me a moment to orient myself. I blinked the flim on my eyes away hard before I could see properly. I was looking at a ceiling, a white, clean ceiling. I was relieved it wasn't red or flaming - maybe I'd simply substituted that hell for this one though, I thought, as I looked to my right and saw only blurry white. Maybe I was going to live hell in a frozen wasteland.

However, I didn't feel cold anymore. I could even feel my body properly now, though my head was still blurry as I did a body-parts count. My legs felt heavy, my arms felt sore, my back and neck felt strained. But they were there. I closed my eyes again for a second, my mind slowly getting clearer. I could concentrate on my senses again.

I could feel somthing soft and cushioned below me which I lay on, though my legs felt kind of crusty and solid despite the pillowing. Another soft sheet covered me, and I realised I was in a bed.

I could smell disinfectant, and a citrus tang that comes with recycled air. I could hear the ticking of a clock, which was strange - I'd never had the luxury of a proper analogue clock, not since I lived in my mom's apartment.

I wondered for a moment if hell was lulling me into a false sense of security, and I opened my eyes to the left this time. More white; a bed table; a monitor that flashed lights in a pattern I couldn't quite force my mind to decipher; and a flash of red, dark red that pulled at my heart in a familiar ache. I blinked, forcing my eyes to focus - as they did, all thoughts of hell flew out of my mind. I raised one lead-heavy arm to poke the redheaded lump curled up in the white armchair beside my bed, my face falling into an easy grin as Ariel woke up, arms flailing like a bad ninja and eyes wide and unseeing. She suddenly focused on me, and in a second all I could see was dark red hair. It reminded me of a time not too far back, at school, when she'd thrown her arms aorund me in a running hug. It seemed like years, but I realised it was probably only two days ago, if that had been the sun shining through the white-framed window. The day after the masked formal.

My arms lay flat for a moment, before I forced them to pick up their lead-heavy selves and suddenly I was squeezing her back, my face buried in her red locks as I pressed her tight against me, taking comfort in the warmth and familiarity of my best friend.

"Ariel!" I whispered into her hair. "Where are we?" I could feel her swallowing before replying.

"In the city hospital." Her voice was thick, and she didn''t elaborate. One hand was stroking my hair, and I thought I could feel a wetness on my shoulder that indicated tears.

"Oh. For a moment I though I was in hell." I'd tried to make it sound like a joke, but I immediately realised it was the wrong thing to say. Ariel tensed beside me, then her body started shaking slightly, and I could hear little put-put sounds that I recognised as her crying. I rubbed my hand on her shoulder blade, hugging her tight and shh-ing her comfortingly, like my mom used to do to me. I didn't know why I was comforting her, but I knew I had to.

Ariel didn't make any other sound for a few minutes, when her crying abated to thick gasps of breath. I squeezed her in a tight hug once more before pulling back to look at her, my expression concerned and quizzical. Her eyes were puffy in a way that told me she'd been crying a lot, and her eyes spilled tears silently once more as she met my gaze. She caught my hands in hers, and held them between us, as she sat up to perch on the edge of the hospital.

[[Continued in part 2]]