by SM Olivier
I laughed, knowing I had succeeded in easing her worries… some. “Wayne’s a wise man, and he’s right,” I insisted. “Now go to sleep. I have to be up soon. Dream of your men. Dream of a man between your thighs and another one in your mouth.”
She gasped. I knew had I shocked her with my “dirty” words. Typically, I was very private and guarded about my sex life. She was such an open book, and not only was my book closed, but it had a big lock on it. And what good had that done me?
Maybe with the world ending, I could recreate myself. Possibly, Avery Hope Harris could be reborn. Avery Hope Harrison allowed others to create her. Perhaps she could rise from the ashes that Trevor and Marlon, my first monster, had left her in.
Chapter 9
“Avery, sweetie,” I heard his voice croon to me. “You want to be famous, don’t you? Take your top off.”
I looked down at my thin arms. They were shaking.
I was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, a stark white screen at my back. It was the background of the shots I’d just taken. The wooden floor was worn beneath my bare feet.
I was wearing a white button-down shirt and a navy-blue pleated skirt for the back-to-school advertisement I’d just modeled for.
“No,” I insisted quietly. “I don’t want to be famous.”
“Avery,” he commanded, his voice harsher. “Take your top off, or I’ll bring Emery in here.”
I looked at Marlon. It had been said that Lucifer was the most beautiful and talented angel in heaven. Before he’d fallen from grace, he had been one of the most favored angels of God.
Most people imagined the devil as ugly, with red skin, horns, and a forked tail. But I believed he looked like Marlon Gains. A handsome, dashing man with hair so blond it almost looked white. His eyes were a bright blue that would rival the sky on a sunny day. Very fit, he took care of his body. Yet when he smiled, you could see the devil lurking within.
“No, please don’t,” I sobbed.
“One…Two,” Marlon began to count.
With unwilling fingers, I unbuttoned my top and pulled it off.
“Now your bra,” he insisted.
He had been so friendly to me at first. He’d given me advice, listened to me. When he got my cellphone number, he would text me sweet messages. He always brought me my favorite candy. He was always telling me how beautiful and smart I was and made me feel special. Then one day, he changed.
“Please,” I begged him. “I don’t like it when you take pictures of me like this.”
I was so confused the first time he’d asked me to take off my top and pose in my bra. He showed me the pictures of the beautiful models dressed in less than the modest white cotton bra I wore. I’d thought it was okay.
Eventually, I knew it wasn’t okay. It started with my shirt. Then it was my skirt. It progressed to my bra, and now Marlon wanted me to remove my undies. He hadn’t touched me yet, but I knew it was a matter of time.
“Then I’ll get Emery in here. She wants it more,” he harshly said as I hesitated. “She’ll do anything to become famous.”
I had to protect Emery. I couldn’t let him take pictures of her like this.
Once, I had felt beautiful, now I felt ugly, humiliated.
I sobbed as I took off my bra.
“Good girl.” He smiled in satisfaction. “Put your hands on top of your head. Let me see those beautiful, perky breasts.”
I sobbed and placed my hands on top of my head. The cold, air-conditioned room made my skin erupt in goosebumps, and I felt my nipples go erect. Shame washed over me.
“Now you’re panties.” His voice was filled with a strange huskiness.
He was one of the most sought after photographers. Magazines called him to ask him who he would shoot for their advertisements. I had been so honored when he wanted to shoot me by myself. All my shoots, until recently, was done with Emery. We were sought after by so many.
The camera clicked numerous times. I caught the gasp at the door and met Emery’s wide eyes. She looked horrified.
“Run!” I screamed.
Her scared and horrified expression spurred my actions. I realized I didn’t need to stand here and listen to Marlon.
“Close that damn door,” Marlon screamed at her.
She ran. She didn’t look back. Marlon was distracted. Then I ran.
I ran and ran, with him screaming at me to return. He forgot to lock the door this time. He couldn’t stop me from leaving. I needed to tell Dad. I couldn’t allow that man to humiliate us and take advantage of Emery.
I knew if I didn’t say something soon, he'd make Emery do it like he made those other girls.
My breath was coming in gasps, but I couldn’t stop. I ran down the stairs, past the startled people, out into the parking lot. The hot black asphalt burned against my tender, bare feet, but I had to keep going.
Suddenly, someone slammed into me from behind. I fell with a scream.
“No!” I wailed. “No more! Please! No more!”
“Avery,” I heard an urgent male’s voice in my ear.
I thrashed around, trying to get him off of me. I needed to tell someone! Wild sobs wracked through my body as I felt pain in my legs and arms. The asphalt bit into my nearly bare skin, followed by the night’s cold breeze.
Wait. Why was it cold, and why was it night time? The sun had been shining just moments ago. It had been so hot!
“Avery,” the male urgently whispered. “Little warrior, wake up.”
And just like that, the vestiges of my dream wore off. I was suddenly aware of the male body lying on top of me. So much bigger than mine, so powerful, but gentle. I could smell his spicy and masculine scent coming off of him. The same smell I had been breathing in since I put on his t-shirt earlier.
“Axel?” I asked in hesitation, with mortification and realization sinking in. My throat was raw. It hurt. I must have been screaming again.
I gazed around as best I could and saw that I was on the ground in the middle of the woods. I could feel the pain in my feet and the sharp sting along my legs and arms. I had run in my sleep. I hadn’t run in almost six months, and before that, it had been years.
Suddenly, I heard a loud, shrill scream, followed by deep bellowing yells. The sounds were… eery, creepy, non-human, yet too human-like.
“We got to go, little warrior.” Axel popped up suddenly, and without another word, he scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder.
He took off running like I weighed nothing.
The screams tore through the night air once more. I felt Axel tense beneath me, but he continued to run.
“Who is that?” I asked him shakily, knowing the answer but hoping I was wrong.
“The infected,” he responded, not even sounding out of breath.
“I’m too heavy. Let me run. I don’t want to weigh you down.”
“Hush, you weigh nothing.” He was firm with his words, gentle even, but I knew better than to insist he put me down again. He ran for what felt like hours, but I knew it couldn’t be that long. I didn’t know what building loomed ahead of us, but I knew it wasn’t the hotel.
How far had I run? How long ago?
We arrived at the building as another scream sounded closer. With quick movements, I was set down. Axel leaned my back against a wall. I could feel the cold night air rapidly cooling my overheated body. The remnants of my dream had left me shaken, and my heart threatened to beat out of my chest.
With a click, I heard a door open behind me, right as I saw the first infected break the treeline.
“Axel!” I hoarsely cried as I pulled him into the open door with me.
He quickly slammed the door closed as the first infected smashed against the door. The door rattled on its hinges, and I stifled the scream that rose to my throat.
“Avery, I need you to find things to put in front of the doors and windows,” Axel said softly but firmly. “They become more like predators at night—their sense of seeing and hearing i
ncreases. I don’t trust the door, but the windows look shatterproof. We found that, sometimes, if we went out of sight, we become out of mind. If they can’t see us, hopefully after some time, they’ll wander away.”
I nodded numbly, wincing as my feet reminded me of my nightly run. When I’d first started running in my sleep, I used to wear shoes to bed. I hated waking up, not knowing how far I had run or where I was, with my feet all torn up. I had no sense of preservation when I was in that frame of mind.
I surveyed my surroundings and realized we were in a pharmacy of sorts. I noticed the coolers of sodas near one of the walls. It wasn’t too big and looked like it was on wheels, so I laid down on the ground to unlock the wheels.
“Good thinking,” Axel softly praised as he helped me shimmy the soda cooler out of its spot.
He took the unit from me and pushed it towards the front door like its weight was inconsequential. I hobbled towards the register, hoping they had those little flashlights I could use to see better. The illumination from the street and the coolers gave me some light but not enough to see clearly. Searching around, I successfully found a little flashlight that put off a surprising amount of light.
As I walked down one of the aisles, I saw some large poster board and duct tape. I poked a hole through the middle of the packaged tape and slipped it over my arm before grabbing an armful of posterboard.
On my way back to the front, I noticed a stand of car air fresheners. He said they had a keen sense of smell. What if we confused them? Masked our scent? I didn’t know if they could smell through the glass, but I was willing to give it a try.
I limped back to the windows, trying not to jump as a hoard of infected began banging on the doors and windows. Their screams felt like ice water being poured into my veins. I tried not to look directly at them in fear of freaking myself out more. I had to pretend they weren’t there so I could remain calm.
I grabbed handfuls of air fresheners before I began laying the poster board on the ground. I tore off strips of duct tape and placed them on the posters. One by one, I started putting them on the windows, with the air fresheners attached to them. I flinched each time I felt the vibrations against the glass, but I continued systematically covering the windows.
Axel returned to my side and began helping me until all the windows were covered and were at arms’ height above Axel. With no words, he then picked me up and carried me towards the back of the store. Light filtered from a hallway. I hadn’t even noticed he had propped open a door.
I wanted to protest about him picking me up, but, truthfully, I was full of embarrassment and in pain. No matter how many times the police, perfect strangers, or my dad found me, I always felt fear and mortification. No one knew what it was like to be prisoner to your own mind until they’d experieinced it themselves.
When someone saw a person with a broken leg or a large bruise, it was typical for them to garner sympathy. When a person suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, stress disorders, or any other mental health issues, no one could see it. It never gained the same automatic sympathy.
I’d lost count of how many times people looked at me like I was attempting to gain attention. Endless people behaved as if I could magically think happy thoughts and be miraculously “cured.”
It was like breaking your arm and asking someone to take you to the hospital, and they, in turn, looked at you and said no, questioning why you broke your arm in the first place, that you should’ve been more careful.
In the real world, something like that would never happen.
With my mental health issues, I’d heard people tell my dad that I should’ve been locked in the room at night. People had suggested sticking me with drugs, not knowing if that would help me or give me long term side effects. Ultimately, the number one culprit to my running was stress-induced. They suggested I eliminate my anxiety. As if I’d willingly sought it out.
If anyone could tell me how to avoid stress, I’d love to do just that. It wasn’t like I was on the street corner like a hotdog vendor yelling, ‘Stress, stress, come give me your stress!’
Tae Kwon Do and meditating helped me a lot, but my disorder was so unpredictable. I ran at twelve years-old. I ran off and on for two months after I lost my daughter and Trevor. I dove into my training with a vengeance. I tried to wear myself out.
This time, I imagined that the combination of the infected, not feeling safe, and thoughts of Marlon tonight had triggered it.
Axel sat me on a countertop in a large one-person bathroom. Somehow, he’d managed to get everything to help me clean up while I hadn’t noticed. This was becoming a habit of his.
“I’m sorry,” I finally croaked sheepishly. “How far did I run? Are we near the hotel?”
He carefully began cleaning my wounds. I hissed as I noticed the multiple lacerations on my legs, arms, and feet. He put a bucket beneath my legs and proceeded to pour peroxide on all my wounds.
“I’ll try to be gentle.” He frowned as he noticed my hiss of pain. “We’re only a few blocks from the hotel, and I say you ran about three miles tonight. I−” he began, then shook his head. His eyes hooded so that I couldn’t look into them. “You nearly outran me, and I’m fast.”
He said it with zero bragging, more like fact.
“I never knew how to take things by half measures,” I said self-deprecatingly. “I couldn’t just do gymnastics, I had to be the best gymnast in my school. I couldn’t just do well in school, I had to become valedictorian. I only made salutatorian, but I was okay with that. I couldn’t just do Tae Kwon Do, I wanted a gold medal from the Olympics. I can’t just sleepwalk, I have to sleep run.”
“How often does it happen?” he asked as he moved onto the multiple lacerations on my arms.
Something in him made me want to confess the secrets only my therapist, my dad, and the judge knew. Mom had died by the time I admitted to Dad what happened. Dad put me in therapy right away, and the judge put Marlon in jail.
BJ thought I had been stalked. Emery thought I had lured the handsome, talented photographer, costing her career. I was a minor, so barely anyone else knew the truth.
I hadn’t talked to my therapist in over a year. I didn’t want to rely on her anymore, but I’d been foolish to believe I hadn’t needed her.
Somehow, I knew if I talked to Axel, he wouldn’t tell a soul. In fact, I had a feeling he carried around his own secrets that were locked in tight.
“As soon as we were born,” I began to explain as I closed my eyes and leaned back against the mirror, “the world wanted to see the identical twins of the great Isabella Harris. A gossip rag even offered my parents half a million dollars for our first infant photos. Mom convinced Dad it would be an intelligent way for them to start our college funds. So my mom did a photoshoot with us, donated half the money to orphanages and fostering organizations, and the other half went into our accounts.
“By the time we were a year old, another magazine wanted us to do a birthday party shoot. Again, half the money went to children charities, and the other half went into our accounts. We continued to model over the years, but Dad said no more than two photoshoots a year because he wanted us to have a normal life. But at around twelve, Emery started insisting she was old enough to decide how many jobs she could take. Dad bumped it up to four shoots, if they didn’t interfere with school.
“I didn’t want to do it anymore, though. I loved gymnastics, school, riding bikes with my friends, and hanging out with them. I hated the attention we got, even on military installations. But they didn’t just want Emery, so she begged me to model. Exotic-looking twins sold more copies of magazines. I reluctantly agreed, and somehow, someway I caught the eye of Marlon Gains.
“Suddenly,” I said grimly, “he wanted to take pictures of me… just me. He said Emery could be hard to work with, and I followed directions well. He gave me treats, made me feel special. I wasn’t just the Harris Twin or the other twin. I was Avery, only Avery. Very few people ever made me feel
like I could be an individual.
“I loved being a twin, but I’ll be honest… it sucked not having my own identity at times. I hated when people automatically assumed I should be like Emery, or questioned my sexuality because I wasn’t girly like her. So, I was flattered when he told me I had that it factor.”
I closed my eyes. “Eventually, he was asking me to remove my clothing for him. He threatened to do it to Emery if I didn’t listen. One day, I’d had enough and ran and ran. When his assistant caught up to me, he threatened my family and me.”
I heard him mutter a curse, but I continued.
“Not too long after that, Mom and Dad found out about Emery’s eating disorder and pulled us out of modeling until she got better. I began to sleep run then. I would wake up miles and miles away from home sometimes. A friendly farmer found me in his pasture the first time. He called the cops. The cops called my mom, since my dad was deployed. It happened two more times, before I started getting afraid to sleep, which only made it worse. Mom started getting ill, and I thought it was because of me. I always tried to make my parents’ lives easier because BJ was a troubled kid who missed his dad, and Emery always needed more attention.”
Opening my eyes again, I looked down. “I asked my sister at first to sleep with me. I tried to tell her that what Marlon had done to me had affected my sleep. She insisted I had seduced him, that I was now regretting my actions. She blamed me for our loss of careers.
“Trevor, Corbin’s brother, my ex, was my best friend. I finally asked him if he could sneak out of his house at night and sleep with me. Most nights, he did. I ran a few times, but he was able to stop me before I even left the yard and placed me back in bed.
“After a while, I thought I was getting better, but then Mom got diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. I was devastated by her prognosis. Dad came home, so Trevor couldn’t sleep with me. That stressed me out, and I started running again. Eventually, I told Dad. Dad pressed charges. The judge found Marlon guilty, since I wasn’t the only girl he’d made pose naked and worse. We moved. Dad changed our names, yet stress and not enough sleep can still trigger them.
