Always You || Patrick Cripps

33.

Georgia's POV

The memory of that night flooded my mind like water rushing into a sinking ship. Waking to the sound of breaking glass.

His hands tightening around my throat.

The sound of my cries out for them to stop.

The back of his hand across my face.

Bruises. Bruises everywhere. Each one I could feel as I rolled around in my bed.

I was having dreams, nightmares even. About last night and every aching detail. But my body couldn't seem to resist. As if I was already too broken, I couldn't be bothered to protect myself any longer.

I remembered it all clearly. From trying to run away to sitting in that alley waiting for Pat to come get me.

All the awful details that I wish would fade from my memory.

I couldn't seem to fathom how a night out with my friends turned into my worst nightmare. Having no control over what was done to me.

Not being able to get myself to safety. All I wanted to do was protect myself, but eventually I gave up the fight when I realised I was getting no where.

The moment I found a phone to call Pat with, I had never felt more relieved. And finally hearing the sound of his voice over the line was the best feeling.

Knowing he was coming to get me, I felt better but it wasn't enough to get me out of my horribly traumatised state.

But now I was left to put myself together again. One step at a time until I got back to where I was. Unfortunately with the way I was feeling, it wasn't likely I was going to get there anytime soon.

I never knew I could feel so much pain. Emotional, physical, it all piled on.

The moment my eyes opened from my deep sleep, my heart sank when I remembered it wasn't a dream.

As I looked down at my body, remembering each bruise and scrape corresponding to a hit that I remembered too clearly.

There were moments my brain felt electrocuted, so violently defocused and the pain, the emotional pain, was so all encompassing I simply existed as a matter of will power.

They say you come out of these things stronger, and I guess that's true, but you come out wiser too. I will still have my loving heart.

But with each hit I take, it gets more and more difficult to act like I'm not hurting.

Like a horror movie it played again in my mind as if somehow my brain was unwilling to let the images go and in it's attempt to analyse them it made me see it all over again.

Simple ideas, simple things I had to get done today slipped through my mind like so much sand in an hour glass.

I stared out of the window at the scudding white clouds and longed to be amongst them, soaring and carefree. I knew the more I tried to suppress it the more it would play again, but I couldn't help it.

In moments I was back in the alley with the cold blackness pushing in on me.

It is my tears that keep my soul alive in the furnace of this pain. They cannot extinguish what has been, yet only carry me forward until a time comes when that searing pain is distant enough to forget more than remember, and maybe one day erase itself from my brain.

Not only was I still experiencing the aftermath of this traumatic night. There were other things on my mind as I sat up on the edge of my bed.

I was having to hold myself up with both arms. As my body was too weak and fragile to hold the rest of my weight. I had already noticed a dramatic change in myself that I didn't want to see.