by Quil Carter
Julian let out a breath, his eyebrows raised like he was having trouble taking it all in. “And I thought my home life sucked. It must be like you’re the only person not taking the crazy pills, huh?”
The relief was so powerful I almost threw my arms around him. It was a demeaning thing to feel, but fuck I felt such crippling gratitude towards him, enough to feel my eyes burn with tears.
No one who hadn’t been through what I’d been through could understand just how much it meant to me to hear these words. I know I didn’t know him, for all I knew he was a serial rapist and I was about to have a gun held to my head, but I was weak, suicidal, and incredibly depressed and lonely, and any scraps, no matter how small, was devoured by this starved and dying dog.
“That’s exactly how it feels,” I whispered to him, my voice thin and defeated. “You… have no idea what it’s like living there.” Like my words were internal triggers, I became re-aware of the pain in my backside and Silas’s cum.
This resurrected inside of me all of the horrible feelings that had been temporarily buried due to Julian’s arrival. As if an earthquake had uprooted them, they rose to the surface like diseased carcasses and punished me for ignoring their presence in the first place.
The first feeling was an overwhelming sense of being filthy. I felt like Silas had defecated on me, that I was covered in shit and piss and would contaminate all those near to me. And not only that, I felt like I was a whore, his whore. I was a used condom tossed out the window, a trash can. I was no longer a living thing, but an object for him to soil and wreck whenever the mood took him.
And the devastating feeling that these thoughts brought, led to the despair, the hopelessness, the gutted sensation of realizing you weren’t worth a thing, that you were nothing but a slave for him to use how he wanted. And whereas pre-Fallocaust there would’ve been police men for me to go to, or extended family to shelter me when I fled… I had no one. I was screaming at the top of my lungs for help but every person around me had their backs turned and their eyes focused solely on Silas as he smiled down from his pedestal.
I hastily grasped all shreds of control I could find and desperately tried to push away these outward signs of my inner devastation. But it was no use, as Julian watched me, his dark blue eyes wide and the expression on his face one of shock and empathy, all I could do was bury my face into my hands and clench my teeth until they hurt.
“You… you don’t have any running water here, do you?” I asked through my locked teeth, my words sounded more like a desperate whine than anything coherent.
“No… s-sorry…” he said back. There was true regret in his tone, like he would rob an old lady just to get me that running water. “I have about five blue containers full of water though.”
That was good enough. I rose, and when I winced from the pain, I was horrified to see Julian’s face drop. There were too many other horrible emotions going through me to feel anything new however, so I asked him where the containers were and walked towards them.
“Want… want me to get one of my big pots so it can be a bit warm?”
“That’ll take too long,” I said. I lifted up one of the jugs. Julian held out a hand to stop me but because of my chimera enhancements I could lift it easily. I then walked to the bathroom, plugged in the stopper and pored in the entire jug into the tub. Strangely, even watching the clean water pour into the empty porcelain flooded me with despair. I felt as if I was going to contaminate it, that my beaten, soiled body didn’t deserve anything clean.
“I’ll… I just need…” My words failed me, I just ended up staring blankly at the water.
“Don’t worry about it…” Julian said. He was standing in the door way. “I’ll leave you to…” Now his own voice trailed, and I knew why. My hand was submerged in the cold water and steam was rising up off of the surface. I was making my touch as hot as I could to warm up the water.
“I’ll just… be out in the living room,” Julian said after picking up his train of thought. “Take as long as you need.” He closed the door after himself, and though it may have sounded rude, I cared not and locked the door behind him. After that was done and the water heated up, I found a bar of soap, covered in cobwebs but do-able, and a stiff washcloth that smelled sour, but I wasn’t picky.
I then peeled my clothing off of my body, the dried blood making me have to literally rip the fibers from my skin, and got into the warm bath.
I sat in it, and my face crumpled when I felt the sting down below. It wasn’t because it hurt, but rather the stinging was a stark reminder of just how much Silas had damaged me.
And when I looked between my legs and saw the blood dying the water trapped between my legs a rosy pink, I took in a sharp inhale, and the resolve I’d been holding onto with a death grip, broke.
I struggled onto my knees, and began manically dousing myself with water, but if I thought that was going to calm down the anxiousness growing rapidly in my chest, I was wrong.
Another mistake was made… I looked down.
And I saw on my hand, a slick of thick opaque on my palm.
His cum.
I recoiled as if it was burning hot, and dove my hand into the water. I washed it off, but the damage had already been done, the swung hammer of panic hit its mark, breaking me to pieces and plunging me deep into despair.
I began to cry, which fuelled my hatred for myself, and out of anger I balled my fist, already swollen and purple from my previous abuse on the brick walls of the alleyway, and punched the tub with a frustrated sob.
“E-Elish? Are you–”
“Fuck off!” I screamed before I could stop myself. And the fact that I’d just screamed at the only person who’d been there for me, threw me further into this never ending tunnel of misery. I grasped my hair with my hands and sobbed, then laid another hard punch onto the porcelain.
There was a splash in front of me, and my stinging eyes opened. The sobs temporarily stopped breaking my lips when I saw floating in the water, a disposable shaver. I looked up and saw that it had fallen from a shelf above the bathtub, that and several flakes of white paint.
I reached out and grabbed it, and there was not even the slightest hint of hesitation in my movements. I took the black shaver with blue stripes and the words Gillette and cracked it open to retrieve the thin, yet razor sharp, blades.
Then I took the bar of soap and sliced in several grooves, then I embedded the razor blades into the bar. All of this done within a minute, my body perfectly still, and my previously vocal displays of despair gone with the promise of relief.
I knew I’d have to press hard… but I could do it.
I’m sorry, but I just need peace. I have to find some peace or else I’m going to… I just can’t… my rope has been reached. Everyone has their limit and I’d hit my limit years ago. I think the day I saw Cristo get murdered, was the day that limit was reached. Now? Now I was on borrowed time and I knew it.
I put my hand on my leg, palm up, and with dry eyes but wet cheeks, I put the makeshift suicide tool against my wrists, bit the inside of my cheek, and with what I hoped was a good enough amount of pressure, I dragged the razor across the thin skin of my wrist.
The pain was… a relief. I don’t know why, perhaps because it signalled the end of a horrible life, but it flooded me with the only respite I’d gotten in a long time.
I looked down once I’d cut a good two and a half inches, and leaned my head against the wall of the bathtub as I watched the three lacerations on my left wrist fill with blood, then begin to drip pearls of ruby red onto the crystal bathwater.
Then I took the now bloodied bar of soap, and repeated the act on my right wrist. When I was finished, with the three slash marks on both wrists my reward, I closed my eyes and waited for the darkness to find me.
How much time went by before I felt my head droop with dizziness, I didn’t know. It was another relief, but for some reason I didn’t wish to open my eyes, perhaps I feared that I would back ou
t of it when I realized how close I was inching towards death.
Or maybe it was as simple an explanation that I was drifting away, the only thing keeping my fingers on the fringes of consciousness the intense stinging pain that was making both wrists throb.
Should I say something before I die? Say goodbye to my brothers and my sister? A last fuck you to Silas? I have no parting words for them, only a flicker of admiration that they were able to withstand Silas, whereas I thrashed and struggled until I broke my own neck.
My brow scrunched, the lightheadedness beginning to claim me. I wanted to pass out, I wanted to fall into unconsciousness so it could be over. Fuck, just let me die already. I didn’t want this to take…
There was a knock on the bathroom door. And in my state this alarmed me. It was Silas… Silas had found me.
Then my swimming mind made a connection that my own inner misery had severed.
Julian.
I’d… how could I have possibly forgotten…
“Elish?” He pounded on the door again, his tone was desperate. “Elish… you’re… you’re too quiet.” He rattled the door handle and I heard him swear. “Elish? Please answer me.”
My mouth opened and closed as I tried to form words, but the words were floating around above my head and my arms were weighed down, too slow to grasp them properly.
“I’m… okay,” I whispered. Or perhaps I had said that in my head. I wasn’t sure.
“Elish…?” This one was yelled, screamed. He pounded on the door again, and the door handle rattled as bits of ceiling sprinkled onto the dirty bathroom floor. “I’m… I’m breaking down the door. I’m sorry.”
Then there was a simple explosive bang, and as the door swung and slammed into the wall, my eyes opened to allow a sliver of reality to leak through.
And as Julian screamed NO! I saw that I was lying in a pool of red water, my hands on my lap, palm up, with blood leaking out of deep red, almost black, lacerations.
“No… no… no!” My shoulders were grabbed and I was wrenched up, the water splashed around me and he grabbed my hands. “Oh fuck… oh fuck. Get up, please get up.” He began to shake me, and my eyes opened, making him cry in relief.
I’d… I’d forgotten… “I forgot you were here,” I said weakly. Julian turned around and grabbed an old matted towel and threw it around my shoulders. “I’m sorry. I forgot you were here.”
“You need to… please try and sit up, I don’t have… I don’t have the strength to pick you up in there. Try and stand at least… please, Elish!” He was frantic, and though it was getting harder to hold onto any solid reality, an insurmountable guilt took me.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. He pulled my shoulder and I tried to force my knees to make me stand. “I don’t want you to see… see this.”
The moment my strength was able to lift my legs several inches off of the ground, Julian grabbed me and pulled me out of the tub. He steadied me on the rim, the red bathwater spilling over the edge and splashing onto the floor, and then he hooked his arm around my back.
Then I realized what he was doing. “No,” I whimpered. “You have to just leave… Please just leave.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Julian said breathlessly. He pulled me to my feet then hooked my arm over his shoulder. “You can order me all you want… I’m not fucking letting you die.” He walked me out of the bathroom, the cold biting my wet skin and making my wrists give another throbbing sting, and sat me down on the couch.
Then he dashed off, and came back with a tea towel. He kneeled in front of me and he wrapped both wrists in the towel, then put pressure on the wounds with both of his thumbs.
I didn’t want this. I didn’t want another failed attempt, failures failed. It wasn’t hard to kill one’s self… could I not even do that right?
“I shouldn’t have left you alone,” Julian said, his tone a desperate whine. His eyes shut tight and I heard him sniff. “Why did I leave you alone?”
Guilt continued to sweep me. How could I do this to my new friend? I just wanted everything to go away. I was just… “I just don’t want to be miserable anymore,” I whispered. I looked down at my throbbing wrists, the outlines of Julian’s thumbs now red like a chalk outline in a murder scene. “I’m tired, Julian.”
“I know,” he said quietly back. He sniffed and grasped my wrists harder. “I know you are… I am too, but it’ll get better.”
I managed a faint, dry laugh. “No,” I said, my head slowly shaking back and forth. “Not with Silas… never with… Silas. You can’t escape him. I can’t… I can’t do this. Not know that I’m fifteen… I’m just his fucking…” My eyes shut tight and my shoulders slumped under the heavy feeling of hopelessness. “I’m just his whore.”
Julian removed one hand and turned his head around. I watched as he dropped my second wrist and rose, then kneeled down in front of a black duffle bag that looked full of cloths. He came back with a plastic bottle, and when he knelt back down I saw the words Stopper in blue writing across the front.
“Please, don’t…” I pleaded. “Just get out of here. I’m done, I’m fucking–” Julian lifted his hand and put it over my mouth – and his eyes grabbed mine and held them.
“I’m no stranger to parental abuse, Elish,” he said. This was obvious, the bruises were apparent on his face, as was the bandage. “I can’t say what I’ve experienced is like you but… please… if not for you… for me. Because right now…” His voice broke and his eyes lowered. I’d done this to him. I’d hurt the only guy who’d shown he cared for me. “Because right now, in my life, following you and watching you has been the only reason I’ve been keeping myself alive.”
I followed a tear that slipped down his cheek, all the way down until it fell and landed on top of the bloodstained tea towel. “So do it for me.”
Do it for him?
“I don’t… know who you are,” I whispered.
Julian reconnected our eyes, a navy blue and my red-stained purple, and he said something I’d never forget.
“Then live and find out?” he said back, and with that, he managed a faint smile. “I’d love to be your friend.”
My friend? “You don’t want me as a friend…” I said bitterly. “Everything around me is toxic and negative.”
“I don’t think everything is–”
“Everything,” I said, finality in my tone as my teeth clenched tight. I couldn’t help but look at the powder hardening in my wounds with disdain.
Another failure. I will live to see another god damn day.
But then, as quickly as it came, the anger fizzled and died, and before I could hold it back, I let out a sob. “That was my only escape,” I cried. “Why did you do that? Why? Why can’t you all just let me go?”
Then Julian’s arms wrapped around me, and I heard him make a shushing noise. “Because life is beautiful,” he whispered in my ear. “And even if you don’t see it now… I’ll make you see it.”
But that just made the anger return. “Stop with that Disney bullshit!” I cried. I tried to jump to my feet but my legs gave out, I ended up stumbling back into his arms. “That’s not life, that’s not my life… my life is him, everything is him. He controls me, he rules me. I can never escape him. I can never fucking escape him!”
“Then we’ll run away… we’ll overthrow him… we’ll do something!” Julian said quickly. He put me back down, and framed my face with his hands. “Let me help you.”
Let him help me?
“Why?” I whispered. There could be no possible answer, nothing that would make sense… why would some stranger want to risk his own life to help mine? I was nothing.
Julian fell to silence. “Because I feel like I already know you,” he said quietly. “I grew up with you. I see you on TV those times Silas brings you to the announcements; I see you at Stadium, I read about you in the newspaper… I feel like you’re already mine to protect.”
He pulled away from me when he knew I was steady, and I looked
at him like he was insanity encompassed. “That’s crazy,” I whispered, but even though I wanted to continue to push him away… the strings connecting us were already starting to strengthen.
I remembered how I felt when I saw that tin. I remember feeling like… I wasn’t alone.
Like someone out there cared.
Julian… he…
“You really care?” I asked.
In spite of the situation, Julian laughed, and whether it was blood loss or my own mind snapping the last of my sanity… I laughed too…
… until it dissolved into a cry.
Julian put his arms around me, and held me tightly to him. “I care… I’m sure I’m nuts, because you even look dangerous, in a Siberian tiger, beautiful-but-deadly sort of way… I just want to fucking see you smile again, prince. I feel like it’s my job to make your life easier.”
This time, my body loosened under his hold, and instead of recoiling back from human touch… for the first time in a long time… I relaxed.
Call it desperation. Call it being lonely and sad enough to take a leap of faith on someone I didn’t know… but I felt the first flicker of attachment, the first hint of myself opening up.
“You’re probably a crazy rapist,” I whispered, and because I truly was losing my mind, I laughed and Julian laughed too.
“You’re probably delusional from blood loss,” Julian said as he broke our embrace. He looked at me, with a warm smile on his bruised face, and his hand rose to touch my cheek. “You’re a bit pale… but I think… I think you’ll be okay.” He sighed with relief, then his navy blue eyes scanned my face, taking me in like he’d only just now gotten the chance. “You… you have a beautiful laugh; you know that? I’ve never seen you smile… let alone laugh.”
“What’s there to smile about?” I asked. “The only time I smile is when I’m daydreaming about running away to the greywastes, far away from Silas.”
Julian’s face brightened. I found it curious how his smile seemed to make the room lighter, it seemed to… make the dark spot that was me lighter. I was realizing that he had a rather animated face, you could tell what he was feeling from just seeing what expression he was making. “I’ve always dreamed of escaping into the greywastes,” he said with a laugh. He rose and began rummaging through that black duffle bag he’d gotten the Stopper out of. “If you ever decide to escape, bring me with you! I can cook; I can clean. I have many hidden talents.” He came back with a roll of gauze and sat beside me on the couch. I relented with a hidden sigh and allowed him to start bandaging my wrists.
