Page 54 of Overcast

The padsof my fingers dig into the plastic bucket, trying to heave myself out of the water that Emric currently has my head under.

It begins to fill my nostrils because I’m already out of air, as panic repletes my veins and throughout my whole body.

This is how I’m going to die—it’s official.

By drowning and thinking about the fact as Emric’s large hand sprawls over the back of my skull to keep me underneath.

I was never a person who thought about death much, I was too busy wanting to live. I spent my whole life taking care of myself, and I had dreams of being someone. Never decided on what, but I won’t get to when this is all over.

I’m disappointed that I didn’t fight harder for a better one. I let Dad order me around. I allowed Hollis to be the last man to touch me intimately. I didn’t go to parties or dates, never daring to throw myself out there to experience all the things I should have been doing in college.

I’m practically a dead person already walking in a way.

One with zero answers to the repeated and tiring questions that Emric keeps asking me over and over again. Not even sleeping removes them from my brain.

Yanking me back by my hair, I begin to choke and seize for air as my back hits Emric’s chest.

“Be a good girl,” he growls in my ear. “And tell me what I want to know.”

My lungs struggles to expand, to heave in oxygen that my body so desperately needs. Not another second goes by, and my skull is shoved back inside.

This was my morning greeting.

Hauled off the couch, my leg and side still rhythmically pounding in pain as he forced me on my knees in the kitchen.

And we’ve been doing this ever since.

He relieves me again, brushing my hair away from my face as a coughing fit wrecks my frame.

“You can do it,” he urges. “One piece of information, and we’ll be done.”

I shake my head—for so many reasons, the identical ones I’ve previously stated and because I can’t even throttle a word out if I wanted to.

“Still nothing?” My lips part, needing help, for the water to be sucked from my lungs, but he crams me back into the bucket, further this time to make his point.

My palms find the edges again, and I push up as hard as I can, but nothing happens.

He’s too strong for me.

My left leg is pulsating at my knee and knocks into the side of the bucket to get free.

Everything hurts.

I try to hold the rest of my breath, the small amount I have. Tilting over to the side, to tip the whole thing over, my body doesn’t move—but Emric’s does.

I feel his brush up behind mine, his pelvis aligning with my butt as he hovers over me.

More thrashing, jerking, jilting around, but it’s no use, and I’m done.

I’m exhausted from struggling against him and trying to get free when I know I stand no chance.

He’s not going to get what he needs, and I’m never going to become anything.

It really shouldn’t be that much of a shocker to me.

In grade school, half of my teachers forgot about me if they didn’t have the class roster in their hands. I always sat in the back so that no kids kicked the back of my chair. I liked to observe everyone and study who enjoyed what and who was friends with whom. I knew more about everybody than anyone else because I was a shadow and who pays attention to those?

My head is lugged backward again, except I slouch over. Emric holds me up by my stomach and pulls me into his hard body.

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