Dysfunctional Affair

by James, Hadena

  When she isn’t busy writing or running her business, Hadena enjoys playing in a steel-tip dart league. She loves to travel throughout North America and Europe. Her favorite cities to visit are Chicago, Illinois and Berlin, Germany. She is an avid reader, with her favorites being classic literature; Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, Gaston LeRoux, and Jane Austen; modern favorites include Clive Barker, James Patterson, Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. Her favorite book is “Good Omens” by Neil Gaimen and Terry Pratchett. She writes all of her books while listening to music and the bands tend to get “honorable mentions” within the pages. Some of her favorite bands are Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, Rammstein, U2, Marilyn Manson, Oomph!, and Rob Zombie.

  http://www.facebook.com/hadenajames

  hadenajames.wordpress.com

  Coming in March

  Tortured Dreams

  People love a good horror story, especially when it is real. I have a Ph.D. in History. I wrote my thesis on the evolution of torture as a crime deterrent in the Middle Ages. I didn’t set out to write that as my thesis, but like everything else, a thesis evolves. It went over well and I am currently turning it into a book for the layman. My name is Aislinn Cain and my life is a horror story.

  Currently, I live in Washington State. I attended the University of Washington for grad school and haven’t returned to my roots yet. Those are firmly planted in the Mid-West. Missouri, to be exact, and to be more exact, Columbia, Missouri, home of the Tigers, Shakespeare’s Pizza and Sub Shop.

  I do intend to return. My studio apartment is too small and there are way too many people in Seattle for my taste. I don’t go out much, but then I never really have. I don’t like crowds. I don’t like being forced to meet new people.

  Physically speaking, I’m healthy as a horse. I am 5’3” tall, I weigh 130 lbs, I have a kickboxing rig set up in the studio apartment as well as a Tread climber. I work out for an hour every day.

  Mentally, I’m a slightly broken. I suffer from a severe anxiety disorder that almost kept me from getting any degrees, let alone my Ph.D. Then, there is the pesky personality disorder that lies somewhere in my fractured psyche. They call it A-Typical Sociopathic Tendencies. I lack the ability to feel empathy or sympathy. I am hard to get angry, but once there, it is almost uncontrollable rage. I ignore most of what society considers “reasonable”, replacing it instead with a set of morals and values that I can understand. I do this because if I don’t, I have no morals or values.

  But my mental condition is something to be understood later, when everything has been explained. To try to understand it now is to try to do a jigsaw puzzle without half the pieces.

  My skin is too dark to be considered fair, somewhere in my Scottish ancestry there must have been an Italian or someone else of Mediterranean descent. My hair is brown, unless dyed burgundy. My eyes are brown, like the color of good coffee. I chew my fingernails and I smoke too much. I like caffeine and I drink a ton of soda, hence the exercise routine. Never know when you’ll need to run a mile, so to work off the soda and cigarettes, I exercise every day.

  Currently, I have a black eye, a chipped tooth and am recovering from my shoulder being out of socket. This explains why there are three other people in my normally vacant apartment. My best friend, Nyleena Clachan, who doubles as my cousin, is fretting in the kitchen, cleaning it like the Queen of England might drop by for a visit. The other two are men.

  If Adonis was built like a body builder, this guy would have been the model. The man could probably wrestle a dragon to the ground bare handed. He is at least 6’5” tall, with tanned skin, close cut blonde hair that is so blonde it looks white. His shoulders are probably the same width as I am tall. His legs could crush a cinder block. He has blue eyes that seem kind and belie the overly accentuated body. The bones on his face seem hard and sculpted. I knew women that would kill for cheekbones like his.

  The other is his exact opposite. He might be 6’0”. He has dark hair, almost black, but not quite. He has eyes darker than mine. Skin a shade or two lighter and about two days worth of stubble growth. He is wearing a T-Shirt announcing some brand name beer. He is in faded blue jeans with spots that are getting thin enough they will be holes the next time he washes them. His tennis shoes look as old as me. He is thin; there is muscle, but not as large or as defined as his companion. To be honest, he looks like he has just cleaned up after a six week bender. His shirt is even wrinkled.

  I had been introduced to them both three days earlier, while I lay in a hospital bed. I had been recovering from a violent attack. Someone had broken into my apartment. They had explained to me then that his fingerprints had matched those involved with a number of rapes in the area. I was willing to bet money, that it was all going to be past tense.

  I am not a good victim. I look like I should be. Quiet, petite, alone, but looks can be deceiving. My would-be rapist had figured that out pretty quickly. A cleaning company had been through the house, but the blood was still visible in the area that served as my bedroom. Currently, I was sleeping on the couch, since my bed had still not been replaced.

  However, we’ll come back to all of this. This is not where my story begins. It begins 18 years earlier, when I am eight years old.