‘’I just wanted you to see me, to talk to me,’’ I whisper, lost in my own head and the surreal haze that’s surrounding me now. I feel like this is a dream and if I could rewind and go back a few minutes then I would. I sound like a crazy person having a mental break, maybe I am. Booze and Alexi’s head games pushed me to a place I never thought I would ever go. He broke me.
‘‘You know maybe you should just pull the trigger if it makes you feel better. Maybe it’s the only way out of this.’’ He smirks again and I focus my tear blurred vision on his face, breaking in two. A face I came to love and hate at the same time and now a face that sends the fear of God into me.
I don’t know if he’s being serious or playing with my head as he has that mask of deadpan on his face, and I cannot read him from his calm demeanour or lack of emotions at this moment. I want him to shut up and stop talking b
Light flickers painfully through the gap in my lashes as I try to open my eyes. Completely disorientated and aware of noise and chaos around me, but it all seems so very far away. Strangely calm and floating inside a weird, weightless bubble of blurred reality, with sounds muted and distant.I reach out to touch my head, disembodied with a heavy limb, aching so badly all over. I feel like my skull has been split wide open and throbs gnawingly, but a warm hand stops me mid-air. Bringing me to a focus.‘Hush now there, darlin’, just relax. Momma Jo got you. You take it easy young lady and let me check your stats like a good girl. Don’t you move, ya’ hear. I won’t be just a tick.’ The caring honey laden voice of a southern woman washes over me and stills my movements soothingly. I flinch when her feathery touch awakens my arm, as though somehow it hadn’t been part of me until that second, and my limb tingles as I drift in and out
‘So, what now? He just lets me get away with threatening him? I get handed to you and forgotten?’ My voice is harsh yet low and I whisper hoarsely at him, aware that the door is open and you never know what night staff are still close by.Even I don’t believe that will be the outcome. Alexi is one to exact revenge and punishment for far less crimes. He won’t forget that I pulled his own gun on him and held it to his heart. He would never allow me to go without some sort of reckoning for such gross behaviour. I mean the guy flipped over me throwing salad at him; I have no doubt pointing his gun at his heart is a far worse crime. That comes with a far worse punishment.‘He knows you weren’t trying to kill him. You were scared, upset … drunk.’ Mico turns his attention back to me and just looks helpless. Smoothing the edge of my bedclothes in an awkward manner and tapping his thumb on the over bed table at the foot. That inf
‘Can you just not?’ I snap at Lorraine, the other waitress in this hellhole, and shove her out of the way with my arse as she lounges in the hatch in my way for the millionth time today.I am already tense and irritated by my day and having her fat ugly face hanging around me is making me even more so.‘What’s eating you, sugar?’ She drolls lazily, that fake New York twang she tries to mimic, even though she is from Texas and eye rolls at me. Her frizzy, over processed nest of almost white hair over pudgy fake tanned and badly applied makeup is giving her an air of late fifties, rather than the forty-two she told me she is. I swear she’s on the verge of getting a fork in her eye today, and I am not in the mood to be dealing with a menopausal old hag with a laziness disorder. She needs to tuck her disgusting spotty food baby away as it overhangs, giving her a muffin top on the trousers she has on today, and I wonder why I am the
I get off the subway and slowly walk the four blocks to my apartment. Tired, dirty and mentally exhausted from a day’s gruelling shift, repetitive life, and generally just can’t be bothered anymore.I have been feeling this lack lustre and completely empty for weeks on end and cannot seem to shift the hovering grey clouds which follow me everywhere I go.I should quit, move on and find another job, but I’m stuck. Like I am superglued to the cesspool I accidentally landed in for some respite in the sun, and now I’m withering away in the heat of the day.I have no clue what I’m going to do beyond this and no energy in me to try. I haven’t been able to function properly in months, and every night I still dream about that complete monster, Alexi Carrero. Tormenting me, making me hate him over and over. Heart breaking to icy shards every time he walks into my dream with those soulless grey eyes and an evil smirk on his face.
I slide down and do something I have done since I was old enough to bathe myself. I keep going until I fully submerge under the water, hold my breath, close my eyes and blot everything of the world away to hear only the high-pressure thrum of being underwater.I can ignore my knees getting cold as they stick out to accommodate my laid down position as the respite from the world is always worth it. Even in an uncomfortable half sized tub that scrapes my bum with its cracked enamel.I taught myself to hold my breath for up to two minutes as a child, even though I have never learned to swim. I used to count the seconds out and make myself do it for longer and longer. It was my escape, my secret underworld which cleansed my soul of all the sins put upon me while hiding me from the reality of my life. I used to wonder if it would be as peaceful to drown and finally be free of all that tormented me.I can manage half that time now, seeing as I no longer do it ritually
I wake up with a throbbing face, shooting pain across my entire skull and forehead and the worst kind of headache from hell. I am on the cold, hard wooden floor of my apartment and for a moment I have no clue where I am. My body is stiff from it, and freezing from being here for a prolonged time in a very awkward position, like a dead animal.Disorientated and woozy, I turn on my side and throw up when the taste of blood hits the back of my throat making me gag, and I realise that my face is covered in it. Feeling out my features, I can tell that my nose is a mess, blood crusted around it, and it feels like it could be broken at the bridge where it’s swelling badly and near unbearable to touch. Tracing it tenderly, so very carefully with my fingertips and recognising the burning ache of a bone that has to be at least cracked. My face already feels puffy and even though it’s still so dark I can tell I am completely alone in my surroundings. It has that
My heart sinks as that age-old knowing fear takes a grip of my throat and I know my apartment will see a second break in before sunrise. I am too tired for this.This city is full of people with no scruples, and I am an easy target, especially in this state. I don’t have the energy to fight off two teens, even with my baseball bat and mace, not while I’m sick and messed up and close to falling down with fatigue. I have no one around here that would intervene in any way and the sad fact is … I have nothing worthy of protecting except myself.I don’t hesitate. I shove everything I own into my two holdalls, not that I have much to pack, then pull on some sweatpants and trainers and a hoody over my lighter pyjamas. I’m not waiting around for a second assault in my own home, and as the place already looks like Armageddon swept through, it’s not going to make much difference to me. They can come see for themselves it’s all gone and
I shake my head, stomach turning over as I put it back in my bag and hesitate, even though my heart is saying to leave it well alone. Something inside of me is fighting it and I’m not letting it go as I tilt my head back to let out an exaggerated sigh into the eerie surroundings. My inner stubborn is grabbing at my soul and begging me to end my own agony and reach out to someone I know will help me.‘Just do it! … It can’t be worse than this.’ I say it out loud to myself, telling myself off, shaking some sense into me.I know before I pull that card out that I have already made my mind up. I’m weakening, my health, my heart, my fight. It’s all been shaky since the day I left that hospital and I have barely been holding on for months. I am so tired of struggling to fight every day, and the thought of someone else taking control for just five little minutes is like a life savour in the stormy sea. Just five minutes of not