Page 66 of Poe: Nevermore

Hands clench my wrists so hard the bones are grinding and I’m thrashing beneath IT and the force of my will nearly dislocates my wrists and I’m screaming and sobbing and begging to be released, I’m begging to die, I want to die so bad that I’ll cut my own throat, just give me the scalpel, give me the scalpel….

“Poe!Wake up!WakeUP!”

My eyes snap open at my name, but I still see those red eyes, that horrible impish grin, my blood everywhere….

And then someone was holding me tightly in their arms, their lips pressed against my forehead, and they whispered to me and begged me to wake up. Shuddering and weeping, I twined my fingers into Frost’s and leaned into him, letting his warmth flow into me like a sedative. Slowly, his words began to register in my head and hold meaning. “Shh,” he whispered. “Shh…it’s okay. It’s over. Let it go, darling. Lenore…please let it go, Lenore…you’re so strong. I can’t stand to see you like this. Please come back to me.”

Ever so slowly, I stopped crying, but when I did, it was too late. I extricated myself from his arms, using both of my hands to massage my shredded muscles. My face burning and wet with icy salt water, I turned away from him on the bed and tried to ease the pain. “Poe…” Frost whispered.

“Please don’t say anything. Please don’t touch me,” I gasped, gritting my teeth, grinding them together in agony. I could feel Cujo tearing into my stomach again, ripping me apart, devouring me.

Behind me, Frost watched me a moment, then I felt the warmth of his hand on my shoulder and I flinched. “Frost, please…” I gasped, clutching my stomach as I shifted anxiously away from him on the bed. Not far, but enough to make a point. The look in his eyes was for the briefest second ashamed and hurt, so much so that it was as if I’d slapped him, but that quickly faded to desperation and concern. He reached across the space between us, gripping my hand on my stomach. “Poe, let me help you. I’m begging you. Please! I can’t see you like this and do nothing.”

I studied him fearfully for a very long moment and my eyes were just beginning to fill with tears as I prepared to reject him yet again when another shot of pain, one that felt like I had been ripped in half, shredded through my muscles. I brought the hand he wasn’t holding instantly to my mouth and bit down on my knuckles as hard as I could, my face contorting with the pain and the effort to hold back the scream. Frost didn’t wait for my permission. Within a moment, he had pulled me against him, his arms wrapped around me like a boa constrictor, his fingers digging into my afflicted muscles, trying to rub out the pain the way he had seen me do so many times now. After a long minute, during which the tears fell freely over my cheeks and high-pitched squeaks would occasionally escape my control, the pain subsided and I shuddered, slowly opening my eyes again and breathing freely once more. I looked down at my fist and grimaced at the gory teeth-marks and blood on my knuckles, self-inflicted scars. I swallowed hard and shivered. Slowly, cautiously, Frost pulled the quilt up over us, bringing it up nearly to my shoulder. Then he reached across me for a box of Kleenex, from which he drew a wad of tissues to wrap around my hand. I let one last soft sob escape, then laid my hands over his on my stomach. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“There’s nothing to thank me for,” he returned quietly. He was still gently massaging my muscles, his shoulders, chest, stomach, and arms all pressed tightly against me.

“You took the pain away,” I whispered, then hesitated. “And…I wouldn’t be learning to trust people if not for you.”

Frost didn’t say anything for a moment, just holding me close. Finally, he whispered in my ear, “You know I would never hurt you, right?”

I blinked back tears and looked over my shoulder into those brilliant blue eyes. “Everyone hurts me, Frost. One way or another.”

He swallowed hard and so, so softly, so gently that I almost wasn’t sure he did it, he kissed my hair. “It doesn’t have to be like that, you know.” I didn’t say anything, but turned away from him once more to hide the fear and misery in my eyes. I wanted him like I had never wanted anything before. I knew he cared and wanted me, despite everything I was and was not. I was shattered. I was not able to be the kind of girl he deserved. But Frost wanted me anyway and I cared about him more than I had ever cared about anyone. Finally, he whispered in my ear, “Let me in. Don’t hurt yourself like this. It will kill you if you let it.”

I choked back my tears and whispered brokenly, “I’m not strong enough to survive it.”

Frost didn’t say anything for a very long time. He barely even breathed. At long last, he confessed quietly, “I saw the scar when I found you…after your foster-father…cut you up. I needed to see how bad the wound was.” I gritted my teeth and tightened my eyes shut to hold back a sob. Frost stopped rubbing my muscles and instead laid his long hands gently across my stomach, warm through my T-shirt. “I think you’re much stronger than you give yourself credit for. That scar is several years old. You’ve made it this far.”

I shuddered and mentally built up the strength he said I had, then whispered, “I was seventeen.”

“What happened?”

Taking a very long, deep breath, I twined my fingers into his. He squeezed my hand and I wondered at how perfectly our hands fit together despite how much smaller mine were than his. I thought about Edgar’s words.He was made to save you. “When I was seventeen, I dated a boy named…” I nearly choked on the name, finally forcing it out. “Lex. We only went out for about two weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Aaron were out at a Christmas party one night and Lex and I were at their house alone, watching a movie. It was dark in the house, the only light coming from the TV. I was cold, even though Lex had his arm around me throughout the movie. That was the only doubt I ever had about him. He never made me feel warm. I always felt cold when I was with him. And he’d sometimes have…mood swings. Once, I was over at his house and he was shooting targets in the backyard with a BB gun.” I shook my head in shame, the tears already coming to my eyes. “It was so stupid…I should’ve seen it right then. He didn’t realize I was watching him and this cat was trying to get through the backyard to the neighbor’s house and…Lex shot him. Shot him with the BB to stun him and then broke his neck. I screamed when he did that and he saw me…tried to explain that the cat was getting into the neighbor’s house lately and stealing food, but I didn’t believe him. I’d trusted him, though, and he still seemed to care about me, so I’d let it go.” I swallowed hard and shook my head. “No one had ever really cared about me before, Frost. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know how people worked. I knew from my foster-father that they could be cruel, but I just wanted someone to care. I didn’t know.” I tightened my fingers in his, trying to regain my composure. When I came to the conclusion that it simply wasn’t possible, I went on. “When the movie ended, he turned and kissed me. It was my first kiss. At first, it felt good. Really good. But then…he wouldn’t…stop.”

One of Frost’s hands clenched into a white-knuckled fist and he drilled it slowly into his temple. I shivered. “Are you okay?” I asked shakily.

“No. I think I’m going to be sick, but don’t stop. Just tell me.”

I gritted my teeth and made a silent promise to myself that I’d tell him everything before the night had ended, and went on. Without that promise, I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to finish. “I tried to tell him to stop. He was holding me too tight. He didn’t listen. I kept trying to tell him he was hurting me, but he refused to stop. He was pulling my hair out by the roots…. That’s what started my habit with biting and peeling my lips. He bit my lip and made it bleed badly enough that I needed stitches. I couldn’t stand the sight of it and kept trying to rip off the scab. And every time I ripped it off, it would bleed and scab over again.” I paused, feeling Frost slowly grow tenser and tenser. “Frost, you don’t need to hear this.”

“Yes I do. In any case it doesn’t matter what I need. You need to tell me this just as much as I need to hear it,” he replied, his voice like a thinly drawn wire.

Once more I took a long, shaky breath. “He pushed me down on the couch and lied over me, crushing me. I didn’t stand a chance. He was over a foot taller than me and strong…strong like you wouldn’t believe. I bit down on his tongue to try and make him stop long enough for me to scream. He pulled away like I thought he would, but I barely had time to get a scream out at all. He hit me hard enough to break my jaw.” I stopped for a second and shook my head, tears pooling in my eyes. “He broke my jaw and three of my teeth. Then there was really nothing I could do. I couldn’t make my voice louder than a whimper. I couldn’t work my jaw at all and I was choking on the blood from my lip and teeth. My mouth just hung open. And he laughed at me. He laughed.”

I felt like my insides were being run through a blender. I wanted to be sick. It was like I was living it all over again, but it was a thousand times more real than the nightmares. It felt as though something inside me was dying. I sobbed, finally letting the tears fall over my cheeks. Frost pulled me tightly against him, as if holding me together. I shook my head, trying to hide the agony that was surely written across my face like an open book. “Oh God,” I gasped through my sobs. “I tried. I fought him so hard. I did everything I could. I tried to scream throughout the whole thing. I tried to get away, tried to crawl away. I beat at him with my fists. I might as well have just laid there and played dead for all the good it did me. If anything, my fighting back just gave him more of a thrill.” I shuddered violently, wrapping my arms around my chest to try and make the sick feeling in my gut go away. It was like some disgusting parasite was crawling under my skin, eating away at my insides. “Oh God, Frost,” I gasped. “I can still feel it. I can stillfeel his hands on me.”

Frost’s arms gently rolled me over, pulling me to face him and holding me against his chest. He was so, so gentle. I barely even felt him. All I felt was the warmth of his presence and the barely-there pressure of his arms around me. I gripped the front of his shirt in my fingers, holding on to him as I would to a rock in the middle of a stormy ocean. “But…that’s not all.”

I felt Frost’s forehead rest on my hair, as if he was being weighted down by I told him. I shuddered again as I told him, “He tortured me. He…broke my bones. Sixteen of them…my jaw, all five fingers on one hand, my arm, my pelvis, and eight of my ribs. He cut me with his pocket-knife. The blood-loss alone nearly killed me. It was hours before he finally left, then hours before I was found. I didn’t try to move or scream after he left me. The pain was too much…I physicallycouldn’t. I finally passed out and woke up in the hospital.” I took a long, shaky breath, trying unsuccessfully to compose myself. But that wasn’t going to happen. The best I could do was keep from going into hysterics. “I was barely stitched up when I awoke to the door creaking open.”

“No…” Frost groaned. His voice showed traces of horror, grief, pity, rage and pure disgust all in one word.

“I opened my eyes and he was standing over me,” I whispered into his shoulder. “He raped me again, tortured me again. This time he’d stolen needles and a scalpel from the nurses’ station. He forced the needles into me, all over my body. All along my arms, my legs, my chest…. Then he took the scalpel. He cut me open from my sternum all the way down to my waist. My muscles were so badly torn up that I couldn’t sit up in bed by myself for four months. I was on pain medications and muscle relaxants for over a year and I still sometimes need them. On bad days and when I run too much, the muscles cramp up and ache. I think they always will. The doctors said they would.”

He shook his head in rage. “What the hell would make him do something like that?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“He’d done it before,” I answered quietly. “He told me when he was…he told me I wasn’t the first. He’d started torturing animals in his backyard when he was just a little kid, then it got to where it wasn’t enough. He needed to hurtpeople. I think his mother abused him and he came to truly hate people, especially women. He’d raped dozens of girls before, tortured a few of them too. He came after me twice and was so much worse with me because…he said I was his…” I shuddered, desperately wanting to take a shower and scrub my skin raw. I felt sick, contaminated. “I was his favorite.”

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