Unknown- A Criminal Minds Fanfic

Chapter 38- Nightmare

Hot breath on my face that smelled too strongly of mint pulled me out of the blackness.  There was a figure looming above me, one bright bulb swinging behind his masked face, and the motion flashing across my eyes, my vision switching from light to shadow, was enough to make me nauseous.  I barely had time to formulate the thought in my pounding head that I should keep it down before hot acid forced it's way up my throat, and I did my best to lean over the side of some sort of chair I was strapped into as it came up.  The leather straps cinched tightly around my wrists and ankles made it nearly impossible for me to move more than a few inches, and the bile splattered all over my sleeve, mixing with the blood coating my left shoulder.  My shoulder wasn't injured, my head was and blood had dried down the side of my face in a crusty trail from where my stalker had bashed me on the head...

Morgan!  I craned my head to see around the shadowed figure occupying most of my line of vision, but the steady beat in my head only increased in intensity, the bass sending flashes of light across the flickering shadows.  I struggled to catch a glimpse of someone else, hear another person struggling to breathe through the panic, but I was utterly alone with my stalker. 

The flashes sent pulses of pain raging through my head, only worsening my roiling stomach, but I passed out before I had a chance to puke again.

A yell tearing from my throat jerked me into consciousness again as sparks of pain exploded through my side.  I forced my eyes open and the bulb was still swinging above my head.  It made me nauseous, and I would have vomited if there had been anything left in my stomach. Instead dry heaves choked their way through my body, my stomach and throat and chest burning inside and out with the force of it.  The noise I was making grated on my ears and my head had resumed pounding, both with the my own movement and my thundering heartbeat as I caught another glimpse of the man standing over me.

He was white, I could tell that much by the sliver of skin visible between his blood-covered gloves and dark shirt, obviously male, and strong judging by his stature looming above me as I cowered. 

The fabric of the chair underneath me was slick with blood, vomit, sweat, and who knows what else under me.  I didn't remember being put here, but the smell of mold mixed with sour milk brought back the faint memory of bile burning it's way up my throat however long ago that had happened.

"Charlotte," the man crooned, and I forced back a shudder but it sent waves of pain through my body regardless as it traveled down my spine.

A moist glove, heat radiating from his skin underneath it, clutched my chin as he forced me to look at him.

"Blood really brings out your eyes, you know," he said in a low voice, and I stiffened as his other hand brought a steel instrument into my line of vision. 

Pain split across my cheek, I could feel my hot blood seeping out across my icy skin, but the only noise that came out of my mouth was a soft strangled cry, animalistic enough to make me question if it had actually passed from my own lips.

The knife glinted again and I felt a blossom of pain puncture through my skin to the bone of my shoulder, and then it lanced down my arm and through my chest as he continued dragging the knife across my skin, angled to follow the line of my clavicle before finally stopping at my sternum, right above my breasts.  A scream split from my lips as my skin split, blood flowing from the deep line now etched over it, but then he went back and cut again, tracing the same spot.  I passed out before my own screams had even stopped ringing in my ears.

It could have been minutes or weeks later before a ripping sound dragged my mind from images and voices floating in a mist.  A chill slipped along my stomach, drawing all the numbed aches, muted twinges and blistering pain back to the surface.   No, no, no.  My clothes were already shredded but I could not handle him taking them off. 

"Don't touch me!" I yelled, my voice raw with panic as I struggled in a feeble attempt to get away. 

I knew it wouldn't work even before he slapped a hand over my mouth.  The coppery scent of my own days-old blood filled my nostrils and a metallic tang forced itself between my lips.

"Shh, shh, shh," he said calmly, waving a finger at me.  "This will hurt a lot less if you don't...struggle.  So stubborn," he tsked, and my scream was muffled by his hand as he pressed the blade to my stomach. 

Pain followed the leaking blood as my skin separated, right where my ribs ended in the middle of my chest and across the soft flesh of my stomach before the blade cut clean through my jeans and the waistband of my underwear, ending at the jutting bone of my hip.  He had barely started tracing it again with the knife when the pain pulled me back under.  

I lost track of how many times I passed out and woke up.  I could no longer separate reality from whatever my pounding fevered brain had created.  His voice stretched low and long and loud and then sped up to a high whine that made me cringe.  The whine never seemed to fully disappear, it'd just fade to the background occasionally before coming back three times louder.  I moved as little as possible, everything hurt so much it felt like I was floating on a cushion of pain.

The man's voice changed again when a much more familiar face started hovering at the edge of my vision, blurry dancing shapes inching behind it.

"Spencer?" I asked, my voice barely a rasp as my eyes focused on fluffy hair I had messed up once before, when we had gone undercover on one of the first cases I had worked.  I knew it was just a fever-dream, but a small spark of hope in my chest dulled the edge of the cutting pain coursing through the rest of my boy.

More voices blurred in and out, like a badly tuned radio that echoed my slamming heartbeat through my skull instead of crackling with static in my ears.  The echoes turned into words, a face I thought I recognized coming into focus.

"Hey.  Hey, McDowell.  Come on, kid, look at me," Rossi said.  Rossi?

I tried to shout, but all the came out was a low groan before words turned to unintelligible shouts that made me shy away from the hands belonging to them that were pulling at me.  I squirmed, kicking my suddenly freed leg out at the shadowed figure in front of me, but it looked different from the shadowed figure that had been holding a knife last time I was awake.  More yelling as I struggled, thrashing out as the rest of my limbs were released from their bonds one by one, and then I heard a cry of pain that I'm pretty sure hadn't slipped from my cracked lips.  I hoped I got at least one good hit in, I wasn't going to go easily.

A part of me heaved in relief though when a sharp stab in my neck finally, finally, sent me into the blackest unconsciousness I had ever been in.  I was grateful all the pain was over, even if it meant my stalker had succeeded and driven a knife through my neck, like I had seen him do in so many of my nightmares.