by CM Wondrak
I couldn’t say why, but I found myself muttering, “Do you believe in repressed memories?”
That got her attention off what she was saying, and Aubree rolled to her side, staring at me. The light was off in her room, the only bit of light shining on us from her laptop. Outside, the world grew darker by the minute.
“Of course,” she whispered. “Why? That’s so random.”
“Do you think it’s possible for those memories to come back, or will they always be repressed?” I fiddled with my fingers on my lap, slow to meet her questioning stare. She was deep in thought, I could tell.
“I suppose, I mean, I don’t know why not. They’re repressed for a reason, but if you dig into them or have some triggering event, I would assume they’d come back to you.” She paused. “Not that I’m an expert or anything. I just watch a lot of TV.” Aubree stared at me, no longer focusing on her stuffy nose or the feeling of losing her crush. “Where’d this come from?”
It was a while before I said anything, and I took my time in replying, hoping I didn’t sound weird, “I think I… I think I might have some. Repressed memories, I mean. There’s a lot in my childhood I can’t remember.”
“There’s a lot in my childhood I can’t remember either, but that doesn’t mean the memories are repressed. It just means we’re getting older.”
I rolled onto my side to look at her, mirroring her in how she laid. “Can I tell you something? You need to promise not to tell anyone else.” I didn’t know who Aubree would tell; her friend circle had gone down to zero after what she did, and then only expanded to include little old me. The truth was she had no one to run to, no one to tell.
“Of course,” she quickly whispered. “I promise. I won’t tell a soul.” The curiosity practically oozed out of her now. As it turned out, I was quite the distraction from her current misery. Not sure if that was a good thing or not.
“I told you what happened to my parents,” I started, to which she nodded, eyes suddenly wide and interested. “Well, I guess that’s not the whole story. Kayla told me something tonight, and I just can’t get it out of my head.”
Aubree scooted closer, her voice hardly audible as she whispered, “What?”
“I was kidnapped ten years ago,” I spoke, the words carrying a weight even I could not understand. “I don’t know for how long, and I don’t remember any of it, but Kayla said the police suspected the man who took me to have staged the crime scene. There wasn’t enough evidence to nail him on it though, so the official verdict was a murder-suicide. They could only nail the guy on kidnapping charges.”
“Fuck” was all she could say, not that I could blame her. It was a lot to unload on someone, but maybe it would get her mind off of Kyle.
Or maybe it would just make things worse. Who knew?
“I don’t know why she didn’t tell me this before,” I finished, shooting her a look. “I mean, I have the right to know what happened, don’t I?”
Aubree heaved a sigh. “Tenley, I don’t know. Don’t you think your aunt kept the truth from you because she thought it would hurt? You obviously don’t remember what happened for a reason. You might’ve been… abused.” There was such a long pause there, before she finally finished with the word abused, that I knew that wasn’t what she was going for.
Here, abused meant raped.
Which, okay, now that I was thinking about it, was the perfect reason for eight-year-old me to repress those memories and anything that had come before, but… no. No, that couldn’t be right. That just couldn’t be right. I had no idea why I felt so strongly about it, but I knew it in my heart that she was wrong.
He never hurt me.
I didn’t say anything for a long while, too lost in my own thoughts. I should automatically hate Enzo Lee, the man the police suspected of murdering my parents. The man who kidnapped me. And yet, yet I didn’t. I couldn’t. It was almost natural, believing a man I couldn’t remember at all to be a good man, knowing in the deepest parts of me he would never hurt me.
“Is the man who did it at least in jail?” Aubree asked, bringing me back into reality.
Looking at her, I said, “I don’t know. I would assume so. I didn’t really ask much about him because I was so confused about it all. Kayla said I had doctors who told her my repressed memories might not ever come back, that my mind was doing these things to protect me, but…”
“But what?”
It was on the tip of my tongue, right there, but I couldn’t say it aloud. I couldn’t say it because I knew what Aubree would think if she heard it: she’d think I was insane, that I’d lost what little sanity I had. That I was weird and gross and so fucking stupid. But I couldn’t help where my mind went or what I wanted to say.
But what if it’s not me the repressed memories are protecting? What if I wanted to protect him? Was something like that even possible?
Instead of saying the truth, instead of telling her what I thought, I said, “I don’t know. I just wish I could remember. I don’t like not knowing.” That much was true, not a lie at all. “I wish I knew his face.” That time, I didn’t know whether I was talking about the man who kidnapped me and possibly killed my parents or the stranger.
If they were one and the same, what would I do?
I knew what I should do: I should go to the police. I should tell them that he was back, that he was following me, that he might’ve killed Kyle and made it look like a suicide, like he’d done to my parents.
But I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t.
Aubree reached out to me, setting a hand on my arm and rubbing it softly. “It’s probably better that you don’t,” she said. “I can’t imagine what all that is like, but I know you’re better off not remembering it, Tenley. You have a life. You’re free. The man who took you is a bad man, and I’m sure he won’t ever come back in your life. Your aunt might be overprotective sometimes, but I know she would rather die than let anything bad happen to you. She loves you.”
If I could’ve rolled my eyes at that, I would’ve. That was just not a necessary sentiment, not here, but whatever.
“Yeah,” I muttered, feeling a frown tug at my lips as I moved my stare back to the laptop near our feet. “You’re probably right.” I didn’t say anything more, because I didn’t want to.
Aubree would never understand, could never comprehend where I was coming from or why I felt the way I did. To try to explain it to her would be like trying to explain colors to someone who was born blind; there were just some things other people would never get, no matter how articulate you were in your explanation.
She would never understand my connection to a man whose face I couldn’t remember, just as I would never understand how badly she felt Kyle’s loss.
The room was black, until it wasn’t. Silent, until it wasn’t. I was dreaming of a place that was dark and cool, but it was the furthest thing from uncomfortable. In fact, I thought I rather liked it, being there, wherever it was. I felt safe.
But then the dream was stolen from me, just as it always was, by my phone vibrating, lighting up the darkness of Aubree’s room. I groggily picked it up, holding it to my chest as I blinked down at it, my eyes quickly becoming adjusted to the sudden light. A restricted number. When my heart saw that, it swelled in my chest.
He was calling me. I had to answer.
I had to, but I couldn’t do it here.
I glanced to Aubree, finding she was still asleep, snoring softly, and I slowly got up, tiptoeing out of her room and down the hall. Her parents were asleep; their room was further down and their door was shut.
My feet took me down the stairs, nearly tripping over each other as I stumbled along in the darkness, holding my phone close to my chest, feeling its buzzing inside my very soul. The excitement coursing through me was not something I was familiar with, and yet I welcomed it all the same.
How could I not? I’d been dying to hear his voice again, and now… now there was so much more I needed from him.
&nbs
p; The truth. It was time for the truth. All of it. No more pieces and parts. No more half-done puzzles. I needed the entire picture in front of me, the blindfold yanked off my eyes. I needed to hear it from him, not Kayla. Not Aubree. Not my own mind fumbling as it tried to piece it all together.
I needed him.
Standing in the dark living room, I brought my phone to my ear after hitting the answer button, my breath catching in the back of my throat. I felt like passing out, almost, like this was too surreal. It’d felt like an eternity had passed since I’d spoken to him, since I’d heard that low, rough voice and let it wash over me the only way it could.
“Hello?” I whispered the word out in a hurry, sounding far too eager. I’d thought about keeping quiet, but then it might cause him to not say a word too, and I couldn’t have that. I needed to hear him, to listen to that voice.
I heard him exhale a loud breath, and then a miracle happened. He spoke, and I felt the heat flood me immediately: “You haven’t been a good girl, Tenley. You’ve been bad. Bad girls get their toys taken away from them.”
Their… toys? I didn’t have any—and then it came to me. He was basically admitting it without outright saying it. In this instance, my toy was Kyle, and he was admitting to me that he’d taken Kyle away from me.
So he did do it. He was a killer.
My heart beat impossibly fast, but not because I was afraid of him or what he’d done, what he could do. My heart beat like a wild thing in my chest because I wasn’t scared. Because I loved hearing the possessive tone in his voice, how he ruled me completely, even if I didn’t remember his face.
It was him. It had to be him.
“I thought you’d call me again,” I admitted, “not…” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say anything about Kyle, because I didn’t want to talk about Kyle. I just wanted to talk about him, how badly I needed to see him, to shed a light on my past and the truth. And then, once that light was shed, that light could go fuck itself as I lost myself in the darkness, just like I always wanted to.
“Not take control? Tenley,” he said my name again, his rough, scratchy voice falling over me like a lover’s embrace, “I always take control. You should know that by now. Just because I’ve been waiting doesn’t mean I wasn’t always in control.”
I had the strange urge to fall to my knees and declare that he had absolute control over every part of me, but I managed to resist.
“You wanted to make a point, but you should know I’m a very jealous man,” he growled out, a chill sweeping up my spine in the best way. “I don’t take boys sniffing around my property laying down.”
It didn’t take me but a moment to realize that when he said my property he meant me. Me. I was his property. I was his. I didn’t know why that shocked me, since I’d already declared that I was his good girl, but hearing it again, hearing him put it like that… it was definitely something else.
“I’m not afraid to put down anyone who comes between us,” he hissed, and I swore right then my thighs clenched together of their own accord. It was like listening to him go on and on was the best reward for being naughty. I’d used Kyle, and now Kyle was dead, but dare I say it was worth it, just to have this conversation.
Maybe that made me just as fucked up as the man on the line, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care one bit. I was tired of pretending I liked being invisible. This man… he saw me. He saw me, he knew me, he owned me—and there wasn’t a better feeling in the world.
“You’re my good girl, no one else’s,” the man whispered, and I swore I could feel him standing behind me in the darkness of the house. He wasn’t, but I so desperately wished he was. If he was here… if he was with me, I’d throw my phone down with no hesitation and go to him. There was no fight in me when it came to him, only submission.
“If I’m your good girl,” I paused, my mind racing with all the possibilities of where this could go, “why haven’t you shown yourself to me? Why do you only call?” I stopped myself from saying what I really wanted to: why don’t you come and claim me once and for all? I need to see you. I need to know you. “Come to me. Let me see your face.” Make me remember.
The phone was quiet for a while, for a long while, for so long I wondered if he’d hung up or if the phone had cut out. I lifted the phone away from my head to see the call was still connected; he was still there on the other line, just silent.
Something I said must’ve gotten to him.
When he finally broke his silence, he spoke a warning, “Once we cross that line, there’s no going back. Are you ready for that?”
There was only one way to find out. “I am,” I breathed out the words in a hurry, the anxiety of the unknown creeping along like an unwelcome friend. I needed to see him, needed to know the truth of it all. I couldn’t take it any longer. If I was to live the rest of my life in the dark, with the darkness, it would be done willingly.
“Then come to me, Tenley. Come outside.” And then he hung up before giving me the chance to speak.
Come outside? Right now? I moved to the window of the living room, peering out into the front yard. I saw no one standing in the darkness, no lone black figure. I crept around the house to the back door, slow to find the deadbolt in the blackness of the house and unlock it before slipping outside. The Laurence residence had a decent-sized deck off the back of their house, and just off the deck, on the grass, stood a figure that blocked out all light from the moon.
A man.
But not just any man—it was a man who held onto a cell phone, a man whose shoulders were wide and thick, a man whose posture was rigidly straight. I didn’t recognize him, but at the same time, I knew it in my gut. I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
It was him.
My feet stopped the moment I saw him, the cool night air blowing between us. Though there was still a good distance between us, at least fifteen feet, not to mention a few wooden steps, I could see his face. Chiseled, scruffy, intense as fuck but handsome in the way the bad guys always seemed to be. Maybe it was the fact that they were willing to do anything to get what they wanted; they were automatically more attractive than the heroes who had to abide by the world’s rules.
He tilted his chin up, allowing the moonlight to graze the side of his face. Pale skin, hardened lines around his mouth. He was older than me. Maybe in his late thirties. Older than Kayla. But that didn’t matter, not to me. Age was just a number; wasn’t that what they always said?
Probably not for this instance, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care because I knew I gazed at the man—at the only man on this entire planet—that could make me feel whole. The only man who understood me. The only one who wanted me for me and would do anything to keep me, even if it meant getting caught and going to jail for ten years.
“It’s you,” I whispered, barely able to contain myself as I stared at his face. His face, framed with dark hair and even darker eyes, brought everything that had been simmering to a boil, the pot that was my head overflowing.
I sat on the bed that was mine in the darkness, nothing but a single lightbulb overhead to illuminate the space in an old, yellowy color. The air tasted wrong down here, but I didn’t care. As stale as it was, I was fine with it, because it meant I got to be here with him.
I liked him. I’d always liked him. He’d been around since before I could remember, coming to my birthday parties and holidays and even random cookouts my parents had. Some days he showed up just to play with me in the backyard, on the swing set. My parents didn’t like that, but I did. Shouldn’t that be all that mattered?
Sounds of a door unlocking and opening entered my ears, and I felt my body grow giddy with anticipation. I hopped off the bed, running to him when he finished coming down the stairs. My small arms went to hug him; he was so tall, so much taller than me. So much bigger than me. He was even bigger than daddy.
I felt his hand rub my back, and I closed my eyes, inhaling him. This might not be home, but I was home. With him, I would go anywhere, d
o anything, and I would feel safe and secure. Mommy and Daddy never made me feel like this.
He peeled me off him, grabbing my hand, his large fingers curling around mine as he led me to the bed. We sat down on the edge of it, the metal creaking beneath us. He wore a suit, what he said he always wore to his job. Mommy always went on about how handsome he was and why he wasn’t married, but I knew. I knew why.
He was going to marry me.
“Tenley,” he spoke, his dark eyes roaming over me, taking in my cherub, round face and the dirty dress I wore. It was the same dress I’d come here in; he had other clothes for me down here, but I never changed. He said it was okay if I didn’t want to.
I grinned at him. I liked it when he said my name. It felt like a hushed secret, something only he and I could share.
“Remember what we talked about this morning?” he asked, reaching up to lightly run his fingers on my forehead, catching my blonde hair and tucking it behind my ears. Side after side, and the soft touches sent shivers down my spine.
Nodding once, I bit my lower lip, keeping quiet. I remembered, but I didn’t know why he kept bringing it up. I didn’t want to do what he said, didn’t want to lie. Mommy and Daddy always told me lying was bad, but he said it wasn’t. He said sometimes you had to lie to protect the ones you loved, and didn’t I love him?
Yes, I did. I loved him. I loved him more than anything in the world.
“When the police come here, what will you tell them?” he prodded, needing to hear me say it, I guess.
“I don’t remember how I got here,” I said, holding back a giggle. Practicing lying felt weird, but he wanted me to. He told me to. I had to lie, for him.
“Yes,” he said. “Good. And when they ask you if I’ve hurt you?”
My head shook, my hair flailing about. “I’m fine!” I practically shouted my answer, watching him meet it with a smile. I liked his smiles. They made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and I didn’t think I ever saw him smile like that at Daddy or Mommy.