Page 9 of Vile Emotion
If I let go of that, I have nothing and there’s nothing worse than that. Nothingness isn’t something I am searching for in this life.
I could give it all up. I could search for something else in life. Take care of Ricky and find myself someone else to love… but I won’t.
Before I could further ponder I got distracted by the groaning coming from her lips.
“Edwin!” She shouts and sits up in a panic.
“Who’s Edwin?” I ask her even though I know who that is to her and Juliana turns to face me as I lean in from the shadows, letting the light from the moon hit my face as it sneaks through the window.
Juliana doesn’t say a word, she just watches me as if she’s ready to run away.
“Nobody…” She whispers back.
Her brown eyes widen and the moonlight shows that she’s sweating but I don’t care, as long as it’s out of fear for me and not no damned Edwin. That loser she was with.
“Listen to me and listen to me very clearly, Juliana, I don’t want to hear another man’s name leave your lips. I’m the only one that you tremble in fear of. Whether you wake up drenched in sweat or not. Let that be clear for you, there is no Edwin in this house.”
She’ll learn…
8
After I yelled Edwin’s name, it was hard for me to go back to sleep so I didn’t. Instead, I stayed up and knew that I was being watched by Alaric. My heart didn’t stop beating into my chest as I waited for him to leave the room but I knew he wasn’t going to.
Now, it was morning and the sun was coming up but I didn’t know when I actually fell asleep. It was scary how that happened. The same man that I feared, I ended up falling asleep with him watching me rather than watching him to see what his next move would be.
I couldn’t tell what time it was but I turned and realized that he must've lifted me out of the floor and placed me in the bed. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Why was he doing that?
I inhale a breath in and exhale as I refuse to think about the many ways he could get rid of me as my nerves take over at the meeting with my son for the first time in my life.
As the water pelts against my skin giving me the only comfort I will ever receive in this lonely mansion, his words… Alaric's words hit my ear again.
I don’t want to hear another man’s name leave your lips.
They weren’t words of a jealous man, they were words of a man that wanted to take everything away from me. He wanted me to go down with him, to die with him…and there was no way to ever come back from that.
I was Alaric’s and he was my nightmare. One I wouldn’t wake up from. Not if he had anything to do with it.
WhileI shut my eyes and didn’t want to think about anything else, in my head, there was the same notion, the same feeling of what I dreaded the most coming every time my eyes shut.
A man wrapped his big hand around the back of my neck and he cut off my circulation. I had nothing and nowhere to go or look as my body refused to move.
I wasn’t in control of anything that pertained to me.
The therapist in prison says it’s just me giving my nightmares a body… a body of man but she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see it. It isn’t that simple.
She says I’m afraid of men but really I am afraid of myself. Afraid of the person I could become because of the predicament that Alaric put me in.
While in prison, I learned to defend myself, to fight and just when it was becoming too much where I thought I was losing myself, he pulled me out.
Alaric Crowne keeps on taking and taking from me even when I have nothing left to give. He wants me to stay alive so he can continue to stay dead.
He doesn’t get it. My guilt has already killed me just like I had my hands bloody because of his family. I wanted to protect my son and that’s why I gave him up. I had to.
Alaric didn’t understand. He was another Black boy growing up in the foster care system, something I was very much against. Something I stood against when I could but when things got worse with Edwin. I gave it up.
Edwin. Edwin. Edwin…
He was the reason I was enduring everything that was happening right now.
