Bozena and Sveta (Neuripra)

by Poppet

  For the first time in my life I feel like a piece of meat.

  “Now you know how I feel. Keep using me and I'll return the favor. Love me, and I'll return it. The choice is yours. Love, or fucking?”

  I try to answer, but can't, because much to my dismay I'm sobbing. My heart's breaking, my body hurting and stinging and aching, my mind left with nowhere to run.

  Stop.

  Stop!

  “Why? We're just getting started. Want to know how I feel every time you treat me like your walking boytoy? This is what you do to me every time you use my body without touching my soul with yours.”

  He speaks with calm steadiness all the while fucking me dry.

  It begins to pull, and chaff.

  “It hurts when you're not horny, doesn't it? Stop using me Zena. Stop using me and I'll stop fucking you. You fuck me! Every time you fuck me without using your heart, you slice a piece of my soul off. Pay-back's a bitch. Like you, like me. Two whores. You turned me into your whore, well now I'm using you like one. Do you like how it feels?”

  Don't do this Sveta.

  Please don't do this.

  Let me into your heart or I'll fucking rip you open to get to it.

  Chapter 14

  Božena:

  You're breaking my heart.

  “Am I?”

  I'm numbing, the only thing I feel is the severe ache in my chest. The chasm opens and swallows me, rending me into nothing but an empty well of heartbreak.

  Choking on my running nose and blubbering eyes, I wail.

  I can't help it.

  There's nothing left in me but the searing pain where my heart should be. Simultaneously I am paralyzed with terror. It weakens me to such a degree it's hard to hold onto bladder control.

  Numb burning is all over me, in every muscle, leaving me feeling like I have no bones. Shoulders shaking with the intensity of my sobbing, I'm oblivious to the room, to him, the tears are so hot and endless I'm blind, and can't feel anything anyway.

  I'm so alone.

  Just me and this shameful pain that lives inside me, waiting to ruin my life every time I laugh.

  Every second I'm happy I'm physically aware of the happiness, and am terrified it will be ruined, so I cling to it, but already know it's a dying moment, dying because I'm living in it and everything good is destined to be stripped away.

  You can't depend on anyone, or anything, because nothing is stable and secure, except this pain. It's the only constant in my life.

  Waaail!

  Dread throbs in my solar plexus, tensing me so much I can't breathe, shuddering me into heaving spasms.

  A hand grips me and I yank forcefully away, curling tightly into a fetal ball.

  Gripping my arms hard around my knees, I keen, whimpering death cries into my skin, the sobs despairing and heavy, long blasting gasps of internal agony. Tighter and tighter I grip, trying to still the shakes rumbling through me. I'm trembling so hard the whole bed earthquakes beneath me. It makes me so cold, and lonelier than ever.

  Waaaail!

  Only when the tears fail and my throat is raw, my eyes swollen almost shut from the crying, does it dawn on me that I'm locked in his arms, he's curled as tightly around me as I am inside myself.

  I had shut down. I completely lost the world there.

  Shuddering with random inhalations that are so deep they border on hysterical sobbing, I cough, sniffing hard, desperately needing to breathe.

  He tucks me in tighter, warming me, rubbing my arms, kissing my neck, shhhhhing at me.

  “I'm sorry, Angel. I'm so sorry,” he murmurs.

  I try to speak, but the desert in my throat turns it into a hacking choke.

  He lifts up, looking over my shoulder, and fireballs of orange flare down my skin from his stare, “Will you be okay if I leave you for a second? Let me get you a drink and tissues.”

  I nod, flopping weakly, spent.

  I just want to die.

  Give me physical pain over emotional pain any day, and I'll walk out of that burning building with a smile on my face. But attack my heart and I'm carnage.

  I feel half out of my body, my head is pounding, my neck cramping, my limbs shivering like an addict ten days overdue for a fix.

  My ears are so blocked from the crying that I only hear him when he's in front of me, lifting me and offering me a glass.

  I want to be difficult and resist, but I can't fucking breathe. Sitting up, trembling, I clutch the glass tight enough to break it, using both hands to steady it, and guzzle half of the cold water down. It just fuels the mucous machine and immediately I can't breathe, at all, period.

  The glass is forced from my fingers and soft tissues are shoved into them.

  I blow, and wipe, blow and wipe, sniff, cough, wipe my eyes which dribble constantly with incontinence, and blow my nose again.

  My head is so clogged I feel like I have a severe case of the flu. A soft touch glides up and down my spine, catching my hair and snagging it every so often, needling my scalp.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No. Do I fudding loog ogay?” I nasal out, definitely sounding like I have a cold.

  The lights slowly come back to life, filling the room with a tranquil glow. Only now do I see the etched concern on his face, the worry in his eyes pouring hellfire out to wisp down his cheeks.

  His left hand is clenched into a whitened fist, his jaw tight and the muscle jumping, but the hand caressing my back remains baby soft.

  Reclaiming the glass from him, I drain it, leaning to put it down on the bedside table. Strong hands force me down, making me lay on the bed, and he twists me to face him, face to face, pillow to pillow.

  Determination steels his expression, “Okay. I get that you can't talk about it. I get that it's too damn painful. So I'm asking you to let me in to see it. Let me go everywhere in your head so I can see what happened. I know you're damaged, fucking traumatized, but I need to understand it Zena. Please let me go where you refuse to show. Help me to help you.”

  I'm too exhausted to care. I feel like half my soul is missing and I can't seem to feel anything in my emotional place. It's raw and empty. I'm not upset, angry, nothing. He's broken the last piece of me off.

  So I give him a shrug. There's no escape anyhow. Where the fuck am I going to run to? I'm in the middle of nowhere with a bastard.

  Staring unwavering at him I want to spit at him for what he just did to me, but I don't want him to get angry and hurt me that way again. It's easier just to play the game until I can get out of here. And then I never ever want to see his fucking brute face again.

  “Say yes, Zena.”

  “What difference dud it mage? You'll do whatever the fugg you want to anyway.”

  As you are so fucking delusional you think you know what's best for me. Go ahead, look for your loot, then when you've finished defiling my mind and memories, you will have left nothing untouched by your hateful ego.

  Fucker.

  Tension exudes from him, and quite honestly I don't care. So I just stare right back. And stare. And stare.

  *

  Sveta:

  Listening to her cuss me out mentally, I ignore the vitriol and slip into her head, the lava flowing from my eyes and releasing compulsion into hers.

  She's so miserable and conflicted she doesn't even feel the moment I take over and she loses control.

  Some memories she's buried well. Others are floating like scum at the top of a pond, bubbling and brewing, just waiting to disturb the ecosystem.

  It starts with the terror delivered in childhood. She's young. Screaming, blood, horror so absolute which she's too young to understand. She only understands the emotional aspect, and it immobilizes her.

  Crying, pleading, but no mercy is given to her even though she's an itty bitty 'lil thing.

  And then I see the real depth of her trauma. The one who bore her hates her. She is cold, offers no hugs or solace, no comfort or safety, she blames her. Why have children if you
hate them? I guess by then it's too damn late to send them back, isn't it.

  Lazy, ugly, stupid, are words repeated often, reinforced. Pinching nails, harsh slaps.

  So enraged by what I'm seeing, I jump ahead.

  She's hiding in a cupboard, crying as quietly as she can, waiting for the danger to pass. It's suffocating and hot and she slides to the floor, emotionally exhausted, putting her tiny nose at the crack under the door, trying to get air.

  Swallowing hard, I jump ahead again to avoid what I don't want to witness. A helpless child makes me the most dangerous man on the planet, and I need to move forward or she'll feel my rage.

  “Stop hitting me! I'm old enough to understand!”

  And that unleashes the mad woman. She goes a hundred shades of bipolar: slapping, smacking, hitting, shoving, scratching, her hand finding the wooden hairbrush and she slams it down again and again, not caring where she's connecting.

  Zena refuses to break. She holds onto those tears. The pain growing, the bruises building, the hits accumulating, but she won't cry.

  This goes on for nearly three hours, until Zena can no longer feel her skin. She's just throbbing everywhere, her skin livid and ruddy with red pain.

  “Cry you little bitch! Cry!” her mother screeches at her.

  “Why are you hitting me?”

  “Because I want you to CRY!”

  Blown apart, I snatch away from her teenage moment, diving into the one connected to it. I'm noticing a thread of mangled wire in here, connecting the trauma together in the same dark region, in the furthest reaches from her consciousness.

  She's sitting an exam, about to vomit, so feverish her vision keeps blurring. She's shaking so bad her pencil is stuttering loudly into the deathly quiet of the examination hall. She pushes her other hand onto her wrist, trying to hold the pencil down on the paper.

  Every inhalation heaves her stomach and she holds her breath, thinking she's going to puke. She reads questions over and over again but can't make sense of them, can barely focus through the blur, all she can hear is the tapping of her pencil fading further and further away.

  I need to get up. I'm going to vomit.

  She raises her hand, waves of heat pouring over her, every second feeling hotter and closer to puking.

  It's against the rules to leave the examination hall. She'd have to forfeit the exam.

  She nods, afraid to open her mouth, afraid she's going to spew if she does.

  Weakly lifting her schoolbag, she wobbles to the doors, pushing through, sliding down the steps like a drunk.

  I have to call mama. I can't walk home like this.

  Barely able to focus, she lurches down the walkways leaning heavily on the brickwork for stability, making it into the phone room.

  She speaks but can't hear what she says. She can't hear what the lady is saying. The world is a tunnel so far away.

  She's given the phone and dials home.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello mama...”

  “It's okay honey. You just fainted. Sit up and put your head between your legs. That's it. Your mother's on her way.”

  Shaking, hot and cold, she just breathes.

  I feel awful. What's wrong with me?

  Eventually she sits up, thanking the lady, and is so horrifically embarrassed because she's never fainted before, and can just imagine her dress coming up, making her look foolish and stupid.

  Blushing, she picks up her bag, insisting she should wait outside for her mama.

  The sun makes her feel a hundred times worse, the world tilting every so often.

  Relief at the car coming up the road, halting in front of her. She opens the door, still afraid to speak, finding forming words really challenging.

  “Get in! Hurry up! I can't just drop everything for you!”

  She flops in, nerves now rising with fear, tripling her agony and desire to vomit.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Her mother grabs her face and sinks her long nails into her cheeks, “Have you been taking drugs? Are you on drugs? I hate you! Sometimes I really hate you.”

  She raises her hand as if to slap, the world recedes into a moment of terror, and the woman's raging eyes.

  Feeling ill from her memory, I leave that one behind, moving forward.

  “I'm sorry to tell you this. You have suffered the worst kind of abuse. It's akin to soul rape.”

  “Why?”

  “You exhibit symptoms of severe post traumatic stress disorder. It's well known now as a cluster of symptoms exhibited by children with parents who have NPD. NPD is Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”

  She looks numbly at the pretty lady. The significance not hitting home at all.

  “Božena, your mother is incapable of love. Physically and emotionally she cannot form intimate bonds with anyone. We've examined your childhood in depth and I am beyond a doubt that you were physically, mentally, and emotionally abused, in the worst possible way. You have formed SS with your abuser, because she was also the only home or person you knew. She lies, she will believe her lies as the absolute truth because she rewrites her memories almost immediately if they make her look bad. In every instance she has to look like the wronged victim who altruistically comes to the aid of her accusers and abusers, even if it's a fictional fabrication.”

  The lady smiles gently, as if it will soften the brutality of her words, “She turns the abuse around in her head, accusing you of doing wrong. What she accuses you of - she is the one guilty of, but she can't handle the guilt, so she switches the roles around. She fabricates a reality and builds on it until she feels superior. And nothing that you say or do will ever reason with her. She will never see your point of view, she will continue to call you a liar, because in her head that is the absolute truth. It's the only way for an NPD personality to continue functioning. If she ever knew the truth it would destroy her. It would break her. She is the original Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the rage is insane. It comes out of nowhere with such vehemence you will never even know what caused it. There are triggers, and I can help you understand them, but it would be best for you to distance yourself from her because she will simply continue to damage you. She can't help herself.”

  I almost laugh as I skip ahead and the doc says to Zena, “No you are not nuts. I am positive you are not nuts.”

  Blown away, I withdraw from Zena's head, having seen enough glimpses of her stepfather flirting with her friends until she had none left, her mother attacking her, attacking her stepbrother, to the extent she pulled him out of bed and put a gun to the eight year old's head... returning power to herself by playing the victim and taking poison. After the doc's analysis I see it for what it is, a desperate attempt to have the attention focused on herself again.

  Without constant attention she starts to get abusive, even if it means abusing herself to put her back into the full focus of everyone around her. She is the worst kind of attention seeker, she will force you to feed her energy, be it by cunning, force, attack, or self abuse.

  She was one fucked up lady.

  Sitting back, I stare at Zena. She's so pale, her eyes glassy with hurt. Now I understand why she doesn't want to open her heart. The one person who is supposed to love her, didn't. Love was conditional. Snatched back and used as a pawn in her mother's twisted psychosis.

  The patterns are all there, I saw them when fast forwarding.

  And to be honest I'm damn grateful she went to a shrink, because now I understand in layman's terms exactly what Zena went through and why she is the way she is.

  I can see why she doesn't believe words as being sincere. Everything she heard she either knew was the twisted truth, or used as manipulation to lure her into a place where she would give her abuser the power they wanted. And in the grips of that power the rage of that woman would surface and annihilate her emotionally.

  Everything her mother ever told her was a lie. That's the condition of a NPD manipulator. Nothing is ever the honest truth be
cause they twist everything in their own head immediately, so they come out of it looking like a martyr crossed with Superman.

  It's called Narcissistic for a reason, because that person is never to blame, never at fault, to turn that focus inward is their persecution so they project it outward, immediately lashing out at the person poking too close to the truth. The truth is like a boil which explodes puss out, infecting everything nearby with 'narcissistic rage'.

  They don't care how much they hurt others, just as long as no one hurts them or exposes their fragile reality, and they will attack in every single way, spreading lies and deceit, so that they never again look like they did anything to warrant the behavior from the people around them. 'They were wronged'.

  I want to hurt her for Zena. Luckily for her she's already dead. A snake bite. She was found dead three days later by a neighbor, as Zena had long since stopped going back for more abuse. At least she listened to the wisdom of her psychologist on that one.

  I know her whole life now, and unfortunately saw the truth about how she feels about me, Darise, and Jowendrhan, while there. I also can't believe how 'wrong' her mother's reactions were.

  Since when is your child fainting a sign of drug abuse? Instead of taking her to the doctor, getting her checked for diabetes and having a general check up to see what could have caused it, she got into shit for being sick. She wasn't the kinda kid who would walk out of an exam, that alone was a sign it was serious.

  Every time I think of her mother I just want to smash her into a wall and pummel her face in. What a demented bitch. She was so violent but refused to even acknowledge she had a problem. Projection is very dangerous in the hands of a narcissist. It puts lives in danger, constantly.

  None of this was her fault. She was blamed for things she never did, it kept her always on the defensive, no matter how hard she tried the shit just got deeper... until she was suffocating.

  Sitting closer, I caress her wan cheek, beseeching her to look at me. “Babes?”

  She does, eventually.

  “Zena, none of it was your fault. None of it. Your mother was quite simply insane. Crazy. In any other time she would have been institutionalized. Her only saving grace is she was born in an era when women were schooled and could work. Narcissists excel because they have to be the best. It makes them look normal.”