Once I try to go forward, the pressure on my brain resists the effort. I feel Logan’s hands on my shoulders squeezing as he kisses my head. That gives me the strength to go forward. The sensation of a strange dream bombards me.
The image of me getting dressed up and then listening to the music in the car… It keeps evading me, giving only a glimpse of it instead of solid feel.
Then, the memory fragments and reveals horrifying images to me. I jerk in my seat as the pieces begin to assemble, but I can’t summon the courage to watch it up close. My lungs are burning as I hold my breath, eyes stinging from phantom terror.
The forced process makes me confused, and my head pounds. “I don’t remember details…”
I still can’t grasp why nothing seems to make sense to me. My pounding heart makes my chest ache with exhaustion. Agitated, my body begins to tremble.
Dr. Neil turns to my sister. “Raine, I think it’s time.”
My sister comes over and sits next to me, taking both hands in hers. She tries to tell me something, her blue eyes dampening in sorrow. I taste blood in my mouth, and freeze.
“Sandra, you came to visit me that Saturday. Do you remember that we had a barbeque? I did some gardening while our kids played on PlayStation. You read the book on your Kindle.” I shake my head, and I feel it rattle as my focus wavers. “Later, we had some wine, gossiping about neighbors. Our men worked in the garage on Rider’s new motorbike.”
She looks into my eyes, searching for something. I feel horror pulsing, as my stomach drops with fast-approaching misery, and I begin to tremble.
“Police officers found your bag inside the car, but not you. They recovered three people from the car, but you were nowhere to be found.” The chills run down my spine, swirling emotions bringing pending doom. Spots appear in my sight.
“You were gone for three days, sweetheart,” she whispers, now crying.
I gasp in shock, blinking repeatedly. A soul-deep tremor grabs my legs in its freezing grip, keeping me in shackles.
“Three days later, we received a call from your neighbors about an intruder. They saw someone in the dark house, moving around. Since you had no lights on and walked around there like a ghost, they thought that you might be a thief.” Raine gets choked up.
“We were so scared for you. How did you survive the crash with no injuries sustained? You had no recollection of what happened, and you were in shock for a while. You closed off from us. We assumed it was too scary for you to talk about it, so we let you be. You cried and slept a lot, and then raged and screamed. I thought you knew… I had never imagined that you didn’t remember.”
The earth’s spinning fast and I slide down to the floor, desperate to make sense of it all. I hold off the pressure waiting to burst, completely lost and disorientated. I try to get rid of the weighty drowsiness.
To get away, I retreat. Silence. Finally. I breathe in and I’m pulled into the whirlpool spinning me around in circles. Desperate, I try to grab onto something substantial, but it slips through my fingers like smoke.
“Cassandra, I need you to remember that night.” Dr. Neil tries to help me focus, only I am too terrified to face the truth. Bloodless hands shake in fear, and my mouth becomes so dry I barely can make a sound.
I am about to protest, but the memory forms like smoke in front of my eyes. Then it scatters, as if it never existed. Suddenly, I hear Raine’s voice. We clink our wine glasses and laugh at something. The vision solidifies, making me gasp. Sudden noise and loud talking wake me from the drowsiness. I’m sitting in the room with Raine, watching our children play.
“I won that race, you are the loser! Loser! Nana nana nah nah!” Nate dances around the room in his blue jeans and a favorite t-shirt saying “Double the Trouble” on it, laughing at his infuriated cousin, Arianna.
“That’s not fair, you cheated!” she shouts at him, offended by his arrogance.
She angrily leaves the room, and Nate shouts, “I’m double the trouble, cousin!”
Ethan laughs at him, then Nate grabs the remote control discarded by Arianna. “Hey buddy, you want to play with me? I’m the best racer ever!” Ethan jumps in excitement, dashing over to sit next to his big brother.
My heart contracts in my chest as a cold chill runs down my spine. My muscles feel like they’re crawling with ants, and my breath freezes in my lungs.
“Do you remember, Cassandra?” I hear the therapist again, as the vision of the past dissolves, leaving me frozen in bewilderment.
My eyes fill up with dreadful tears that has my skin feeling uncomfortable. Suddenly, I'm transported back to the living room again.
Raine’s cute dog keeps jumping on me and spilling the wine, leaving a stain on my new sweater. Ethan’s distracting me with his displeased cries as he bumps into track borders or crashes his racing car in the game.
“Now you look fierce.” Sam’s soiled hands draw foul lines on my face on purpose, and he kisses my lips just to make me more infuriated.
“I felt so drowsy, I wanted to go home, but I still had an appointment at the beauty salon. Sam dropped me off. He promised to come back to pick me up later.” I touch my lips to make sure that this is real, that I am not hallucinating.
“Soon, I realized that I had to withdraw some cash from the ATM.” The echo of the horrible explosion brings awful dread, and I whimper. Comforting hands envelope me in warmth.
“…when I heard the crash.” My ears fill up with noise.
“Is that when you saw it?”
The room gets so quiet, waiting for me to talk, but I don’t see or hear them anymore. I’m transported to that street, frozen in fear. And then everyone starts walking…frightened…needing to know.
The horrifying crash echoes, creating chaos. The shocked cries and screams resonate all around. I feel disorientated, unable to move for a moment. Incapable of denying the pull, I walk towards the disaster.
My brain shuts down, my arms are covered in goose bumps, and my heart tingles with chills. I feel cold breath coating my lips, and my fingers become fisted icicles that I can’t straighten. My shocked body fills with a heaviness that drags me down to the ground. Only my legs won’t stop. The eyes desire to see, and the brain needs to know.
A surreal image of disaster meets my eyes. The dark blue car is mangled into a tin can. The sight doesn’t make sense to me until I see someone’s shadow moving inside, screaming.
“Mummy….!” The voice, filled with horror, reaches my ears. The invisible thread’s pulling me by force, and I run towards it.
Nothing matters in that moment, except instinct urging me to get to the boy, to help that voice to stop feeling scared. I don’t notice someone grabbing and pulling me back from behind. The delayed screeching sound of the braking car from the right side of the road almost hits me.
“Mummy…I am scared, please! Aaaaah!”
I try to wiggle out from the hands holding me back. The child’s trapped in a mangled car, begging for help, but the furious red-faced driver aggressively jumps out of the car, shouting obscenities, distracting me.
“Stupid bitch, what are you doing?” All of a sudden, he stops, as if someone cut his air in mid-sentence.
Dark eyes lock on me, filling with compassion. I look at the stranger, with no concept of why I see empathy. I start to move towards the screeching sound again. The boy calls for his mother. My anxious heartbeats are trying to get to him.
Suddenly, the same angry man picks me up like a sandbag. I am dizzy, confused. He carries me away from the mutilated tin can. Over his shoulder, I see a small little face squashed, as if in a glass jar, one eye open and the other bloody mess. His little hand twists around his head. The green coat he wore... The sickening red substance paints the horrible disaster.
“Oh, dear God, there are children trapped,” someone cries out.
My heart painfully squeezes and twists. I look for the logical explanation but find none. Soon enough, I start to feel sick and dizzy, with emotions pickin
g me apart. Dismantling everything in its wake, I begin to drift. It is a nightmare. Wake up!
“So much blood,” they whisper, crying.
“Mummy, Mummy, please!” The voice grows weaker, getting further away.
The unbearable heart-wrenching screams calling me are not real. They can’t be! I reason with myself, as I start to move away from the sidewalk, trying to escape the twisted horror.
My mind becomes numb and I walk further away from the nightmare, looking for shelter to hide. I refuse to accept or understand. I’ll wait for my husband to come for me. Sam will bring back my children.
Then my little one finds me and leads me home. I smile.
I walk, and walk, and walk, finding the park, where I fall asleep, letting myself surrender to the darkness. I lay near the old tree, with leaves covering my body, like a blanket thrown over me, holding onto the memories.
“I left them there, I walked away,” I whisper, horrified, afraid to voice it out loud. A wrenched shriek releases the screams, the gruesome memories ripping through me until the emotional hurricane leaves me twisted and empty. I fall to my knees, defeated.
I lay my head on the floor, shaking. Agonizing howls rip through the silence. In the fetal position, I wait for the anguish to tear me to pieces. I don’t deserve to live, or be loved. Oh my God, what have I done? How could I be so cruel to ignore Nate’s desperate cries?
I look at Logan, who’s kneeling next to me. I tell him the truth that I was too selfish to admit. “You should take the twins and give them the life they deserve, away from me. They never will be safe with me. I know now how twisted I am. How selfish and dark. I don’t deserve you. I am an awful, worthless human being.”
I look into his shocked, tortured green eyes as I lay on the floor in surrender, the painful truth ripping away the last thread of will to live. I’m fighting the grief of the woman who walked away from her dying child’s helpless cries.
Nate left the world with his screams echoing around the street, calling my name to save him. Next to his twisted doll-like little brother, and his unconscious father.
How sorry I am, that I couldn’t follow you to the same end, I tell Ethan. My little bunny, forgive your mum, please. Once I hear the sorrowful cries of Nate, I close my eyes. I fall, enveloped by a heavy blanket of guilt.
How wrong I was to protect Sandra. Too scared to look in the mirror and face the truth. You are damn disloyal and weak, bitch!
Worthless.
Now you know, Sandra whispers. A sob catches in my chest, and we both merge the gap I wedged between us to feel this storm of agony and guilt. The truth binds us, the torment of loss merges us, drowning me, undoing.
Chapter 8
FACING THE TRUTH
~Cassandra~
Swirling destructive emotions are twisting inside me. The revolting slimy substance drags me under, and I feel nauseous and disorientated. I see their mangled bodies, hear their cries for help. My children’s deformed bodies were entombed in the car. Nate’s cry echoes in my mind, bringing painful stomach cramps, and I feel sick.
“Mummy!” A high-pitched scream.
The will to live has been sucked out of me. I hear Sandra’s grieving voice, and it makes me so outraged. Infuriated. I want to kill her with my own bare hands. Shut up! The floodgate opens, allowing all the pain to tear me apart. I curl up into a ball, waiting for it to end.
So much agony, I can’t breathe. The screams, the laughs, mixed up with cries and giggles, ending in a horrifying screech. It’s pure torment. Above the murky water, I hear someone calling me. The determined voice is luring me back. Logan.
“Cassandra, baby, look at me, please.”
Go away!
The agonizing screams fill up the water. It twirls like a hurricane inside. I force my eyes to open. Logan is trying to talk to me, and I attempt to push him away.
His hand brushes my hair. “Stop it!”
My eyes fill with tears, and I start to convulse as my muscles fight aggravating feelings. Someone sticks a needle in my arm, and I become numb. Weightless, I float in silence.
Dry leaves crunch underneath my boots as I wrap my cardigan around me. The chill of the morning invades my bones as a thick mist surrounds the trees and covers the ground. It is hard for me to see the path or recognize the place.
Then I see the metal plates embedded in the ground. Further away from the rocky mountain, I find Nate’s broken body arranged at an awkward angle. I fall to my knees, and turn the child around to face me. His face, illuminated by the moon, looks into the nothingness. The unshed tears are shining in his blue eyes. The features are frozen in a pleading expression.
My heart constricts in my chest. The horror gets caught in my throat. The symphony of the storm gathers in my chest, and the agony rips through me.
“Wake up, Cassandra. Please wake up, love. Look at me. It’s me, Logan. You are safe. It was just a dream. Breathe.”
Forcing my eyes to open, I see his warm and concerned face.
Fascinated, I reach up to touch his creased eyebrows, trying to smooth them. I travel to his jaw, the stubble tickling my fingers. Then I brush his lips, and he lets out a breath. My hand dips down, following his chin, to his neck. I find his heart and, mesmerized, I watch my palm rise and fall, sensing the powerful rhythm behind the muscles.
“I am here.”
Soon, I am enveloped in Logan’s hands and he studies me. Fire’s burning in his heart, and there’s a wild challenge in his eyes. It pulls me to him like a butterfly seeking to kiss the light.
“I’m awake,” I tell him, trying again to calm the rapid drumming underneath my palm. He lets out a relieved breath and presses his lips to my forehead. I close my eyes, content.
“Take a shower, I’ll wait for you.” His gentle tone propels me to the bathroom.
When we descend the stairs a short while later, I drop my head in shame. I follow him behind, no longer recognizing where my place is. I feel like the shredded layers of my skin makes me a person I don’t know anymore. We walk towards the kitchen, where all the family is gathered around the island, including my twins.
My gaze locks on their small forms. Only I’m incapable of moving, my feet stuck to the ground. Logan’s arm presses against my lower back, trying to propel me forward. I am dizzy with fear, my emotions wreaking havoc. Then panic joins the party, and I see spots. I can’t blink them away.
“It’s ok, Cassandra.” Logan’s voice anchors me.
Leif holds my hand and Raine kisses my head as I sit. Aisha brings tea, putting it in front of me. I watch it, confused why they are being so kind to me.
“Well, probably because we want you to cook for us…” Leif speaks up, making me wonder if I said it out loud.
“You are family. How are we supposed to speak?” Aisha tells me, frustrated, but Logan clears his throat. A warning. Great.
“Want some breakfast?” Lucas looks at me, waiting for me to respond as I try to understand the situation. But then he turns towards the fridge without waiting for an answer.
“Dr. Neil will be coming to speak with you.” Logan’s green eyes are full of empathy as he looks at me while I try to process his words. “She wants to discuss the plan of treatment with you. I want to be present, if you don’t mind.” I shake my head, but suddenly I realize he misunderstood me.
“Come, I don’t mind,” I croak, my throat dry. My lips feel glued together. So, I take a sip of the chamomile tea Aisha prepared for me to moisten them and warm my icy fingers.
“Here, take him. Leon’s desperate to get to you.” Raine puts my boy into my arms as I let out an alarmed squeak. I feel him catch my top with his strong fists. My son’s sweet smell invades my nose, and his closeness makes me happy. I missed him. I start to tremble.
“Please, I might drop him.” Tears stream down my cheeks as the fear of hurting him becomes a storm twirling inside me.
As if sensing my emotions, my little boy starts to cry. I focus on the cup in front of me, trying
to disappear. However, Leif doesn’t give two shits about my need to be invisible as he draws me into a hug, and so does Raine from behind.
For one precious minute, I feel cocooned in this peaceful embrace.
“I love you,” whispers Raine, but I can’t respond.
The guilt weighs me down. I feel undeserving of being around them. I’m so ashamed of myself, I can’t even look them in the eyes.
The doorbell distracts me from the depressing thoughts, and Dr. Neil walks in. I guess it’s time to face the music.
“Good morning, everyone, how have you been?”
Laisa looks at me for a fleeting moment before she meets Logan’s eyes, waiting for him to respond. “We are quiet today, nervous.”
Lucas makes her coffee, then we all go sit in the dining room, our plates piled up with waffles and maple syrup, grilled strips of bacon, and perfectly cooked eggs with a runny center. While we eat, they talk, and the tension becomes more bearable.
Later, as we settle down in the living room, Logan and I are left alone with the therapist.
“After yesterday, I reevaluated your condition and decided that changing your treatment method will benefit you more. There are few options we could use in the future. For example, Cognitive Processing Therapy, or CPT.”
“What does CPT do?” Logan questions while I sit, detached from the situation.
“It’s a twelve-week course, with sessions of sixty to ninety minutes. At first, Cassandra will be talking about the traumatic event. Discussing how those thoughts affect her life. Also, encourage writing about the car accident in detail.”
“Didn’t she already do that?”
It didn’t work.
“That could help to bring a better viewpoint to understand the grief. Cassandra will have a chance to examine how she thinks or feels about the trauma. We must figure out new ways to cope with it.”
Entwined IN YOU (In You #2) Page 6
