I couldn’t muster up the appropriate disgust for this right now. Because underneath the layers my emotions were muted. My panic. My sorrow. My fear. All still here, but manageable. They were quietly eating away at my insides, but it wasn’t as unpleasant as before.
Yes, before had been unpleasant if there was ever a word for it.
The truck stopped.
My breath might’ve too.
But no, I was still awake and alive when the truck doors opened, so I was breathing.
A pity.
I waited for them to climb in. Unchain me. Maybe hurt me. They hadn’t done that yet. It’d just been Craig so far. But the way they’d handled me was not giving promises to gentle treatment. It was a precursor to abuse.
But no one climbed in.
Because people started yelling. There was a flashing of lights. A thump of bodies against bodies. Grunts.
Ah, I must’ve been dead.
Or at the very least hallucinating.
Because this was it. The scene when the damsel is saved. But the scene was too late. Because the damsel wasn’t meant to go through...that.
If I was going to be saved, it would’ve already happened.
That was how it worked.
I read that people constructed different kinds of reality when the real one suddenly became too horrific to live through. That must’ve been what I was doing.
It made sense.
I was Polly, after all, wasn’t I? I excelled at creating realities different from the ones I existed in.
The doors were wrenched open.
Light stabbed at my eyeballs and I flinched away from it. I didn’t like that. It was too bright, too real, too urgent, it tried to tug me away from all my layers.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Fuck,” a voice clipped, the one curse full of pain and relief.
It was familiar.
Too familiar to be real.
Steps across the interior. Hurried. Urgent.
I kept my eyes squeezed shut, making sure there were no crevices where the light could come in. I didn’t want the light anymore. Not ever.
“Oh, baby, fuck.” The voice was still a murmur. It was soft. Broken.
Just like me.
Hands went onto my body.
I couldn’t remember if I still had clothes on, but a bare hand went onto my bare skin and that was not okay.
I flinched away violently, even though the hands were familiar like the voice. Because it wasn’t really those hands touching me. No, I was just pretending. Obviously, there were rougher, dirtier hands on me right now and I couldn’t handle that, so I was pretending it was the one I wanted.
Needed.
“Polly,” he whispered, voice strained and full of pain. “Polly, baby, I’m going to uncuff you now, that means I’m gonna touch you.”
There was a pause. An exhale. It sounded like he was struggling with something. Struggling to breathe. Struggling to keep himself together.
Ah, I knew how that felt.
“I’m not gonna hurt you, baby,” he whispered. Again, the words were broken. Fractured. Bleeding. “I promise you, you’re not gonna be hurt anymore.”
I didn’t reply.
Even if no one laid a finger on me for as long as I lived, it didn’t matter. The way I’d been hurt couldn’t be erased, and worse, it wouldn’t dull. It would continue to stab at me forever. I knew that.
There was more touching. I kept my eyes squeezed shut through it.
My hands were free now.
They fell down like lead.
I imagined they, along with my body, might’ve hit the ground.
But he caught me.
His body was warm. Hard and soft. He smelled like blood and death and comfort.
I wanted to nuzzle into him.
But it wasn’t really him.
So I stayed still.
He cradled me in his arms. I felt lips on my head and he began rocking me back and forward. “Baby,” he choked. “Polly, fuck. I’m sorry baby, I’m so fucking sorry.”
I didn’t reply.
What if I spoke and my words fractured this beautifully ugly reality?
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” he chanted.
But I didn’t believe it.
And I could tell that he couldn’t either.
We stayed like that for a long time. I wondered what was really happening, outside of this reality I’d constructed. Was someone really holding me with this love and tenderness, rocking me back and forward and clutching me like I was encased in a cocoon?
Of course not.
But it was nice.
I couldn’t move. It might tear this reality. Disappear it.
But he could. And he did. In one fluid movement, he was standing. We moved across the truck.
There were more voices. They were familiar too. Smells. Burned rubber. Smoke. Blood.
I would’ve thought blood didn’t have a smell before. But I’d scented my own against my pain...before, so I knew it smelled coppery and wet. Like rancid meat and old pennies.
“Heath, is that—” someone began, and then his voice broke, I imagined as we came into view.
As I came into view.
I imagined I looked bad on the outside. Even if it betrayed an ounce of the hurt of the inside, it would’ve been bad.
“No,” the voice murmured. Or maybe pleaded.
I should tell him that didn’t help. Pleading did nothing but chip away at your dignity while everything else was carved off your body. Your soul.
“I’m gonna hand her down to you, Luke,” Pretend Heath said.
“Yeah, brother,” Pretend Luke said, voice quiet. Kind.
Luke was always kind.
The arms around me tightened just a little. A kiss on my forehead. “I’m gonna let you go for just a second, Polly, I can’t climb down with you in my arms. I don’t wanna hurt you. Luke’s gonna take you. He won’t hurt you, ‘kay?”
It was nice he was talking me through it.
This was all so very nice.
Well, nice amongst the horror, of course. But I didn’t focus on the horror. I focused on the nice.
The arms squeezed tighter, but not actually tight. Like someone trying to hug an egg without breaking it. I guessed maybe he didn’t realize I was already broken. Maybe in this reality, I wasn’t broken.
That would be nice too.
I was jostled slightly, and the move sent a pain so sharp and so visceral it stabbed through all my layers and got me in my safe place. Or what I thought was a safe place.
I didn’t cry out. Or even flinch.
Interesting. I didn’t have a good tolerance for pain normally.
But normal was dead. Buried. Never to be resurrected.
My eyes were still squeezed shut but I was in new arms. They felt different. Still warm. Still safe. But they didn’t smell so much like death. Maybe clean linen and the ocean. Clean would’ve been nice.
But I’d never be clean again. Not even if I scrubbed my skin from my body.
“I’ve got you, honey, you’re okay,” a voice murmured.
“Thank you, Pretend Luke,” I whispered, still staying still.
I knew it was a risk to talk in my faux reality, but I felt Luke needed thanks. He needed something. He sounded so hopeless.
His arms flexed with my voice. I didn’t blame him. It was raw and ugly. I guessed I must’ve been screaming at some point.
“Give her back to me,” a voice growled.
There was a pause. “Brother,” Pretend Luke warned. “We need to check her over. You gonna be able to hold it together? She needs you to hold it together.”