Heal Me (Reapers Reign, #3)

by Maree, Aleisha

  “Around,” I answer coldly.

  “Right, well ok then.”

  “Yup, I'm here now.” I push out through my teeth pulling into my hoodie and cap, further hiding her in my eyes.

  “We see that, brother.” Smirking, he leans back pulling his smokes from his pocket. Pulling one out he brings it to his lips as he flicks his Zippo. I watch him as he drags on it, the end flickering red-orange. The smell of the smoke, mixed with Zippo gas, fills the air. I feel my eyes rolling back in my head. I need to get high, pissed and a mother fucking blowjob.

  Chapter Ten

  Timberly

  I'm a hot mess, a shitty hot mess. He left, he just left. Shaking in despair, I try hard to pull myself together. Why can I be smart to the dirtbags that abuse me and sass back to them and the horrid woman who is my mother? I talk to Red just fine also but this man, this guy, I just can’t seem to do it. He screams fear, hurt, lust, crazy, the whole works. He scares me, thrills me, excites me and loses me all at the same time. How am I to fix this, me?

  Looking at Red through my tearstained eyes, I see the pain etched on her face. She goes to speak, and I shake my head. “Not yet,” I whisper out, falling into her arms. I weep as her big arms wrap me in the embrace of love, her bosom comforting my shattered soul, rocking me back and forth. She hushes me, soothing me as we rock away the dark and replaces it with light.

  The smell of him lingers in here. It engulfs my senses, takes my soul on a journey and my mind down the road of self-doubt and disappointment. Pacing is what I need to do so that’s what is going to happen. No, I need walking, I need to walk it off, breathe in the fresh air. The chill of mid-afternoon will do me good. It helps, it will help, well it has to. I stop at the door, looking back. “Red, how do I be what he needs?”

  She stands, passing me the bag that holds a promise and I’m unsure if I can be the person he needs it places a pressure on me he has so often spoken of his desire for me and the fact that he’s like stalked me and now has thought of all the small things. Overwhelming much. Yes it sure is, “Start by being just you, that’s what he likes, send him a text, his number is in there.” She kisses my forehead and I close my eyes, breathing in his smell one last time because I'm not sure what awaits me when I get back to the hell that I call home. Not after him flying in there today like a bat out of hell.

  Pulling myself into my hoodie as I walk into the apartment block, blood running cold in my veins, I head straight to my bedroom to hide the phone. But on heading downstairs, the house is deathly silent; is anyone here? Anxiety spikes as an uneasy feeling settles in the pit of my stomach. I search the kitchen and lounge room for someone, anyone but nope there is no one. The table and chair is over turned a small picture on the wall is crooked and a hole in the wall next to it little bits off plaster lay on the floor. Running my hands through my hair sweat beads down my spine. Ok so I need to shower and think. I chant out as I walk up the hall way stepping over the small coffee table and broken dinner plate and coffee cup. Its deathly cold in here tonight I need to warm my body up.

  My mind flicks to where the fuck they could be. It’s not like mom to not be here, or a drug lord, for that matter. Weird. Pushing open the door to the bathroom, in that moment, I see her in the bath, beaten and bruised, blood pooling around her head which sinks dangerously low back in the water. Just her lips and nose stick out of the water. Is she dead? Shock races through my body; I don’t know what to do

  Shaking, I run to my room to pull the phone from the floorboards and do the only thing I think of, text Ghost. But before I can do that, the taste of bile rises up in my throat and spews out all over the floor in front of me as the image of her in the bath, dead, floods my mind’s eye like a horror movie of images just stuck on replay. The blood, the bruises, the needle jammed into her vein, her lips deathly blue, her eyes huge and bugging out of her head. Fuck... This is so bad. my hands reach around my long black hair as I pull it back from my face sticking to my skin that is now clammy laced in sweat. Her bruises mirroring my own; how fucking ironic.

  I pull myself to my feet. I need water and to calm the fuck down before I even text Ghost. Shit, will he even want to come here and help me after today? I may have pushed him too far today with my problems and my fear of letting people in. “Anxiety is a bitch,” I say out loud to... well no one but myself as I run the cold tap. Splashing it out over my face, the cool ice water stings my skin. I rake my wet fingers through my hair to pull it back from my face.

  Filling a glass with water before leaning against the counter top, I raise the glass to my lips, taking a long gulp of the cool water. I close my eyes as it slides down my throat. I relish in the calming feeling as it slides all the way down to the bottom of my belly. It makes me feel something other than hate. Opening my eyes, the glass slips from my hands, shattering on the kitchen floor as my eyes land on the men standing before me. Their faces are masked but I know them. Their eyes I see daily, those four sets of eyes haunt my dreams.

  Before I can even find words, the baseball bat holding masked man known as Drake, comes out full swing and cracks into the side of my head. I'm falling as the world around me goes black. I'm out before I even hit the cold floor of my home of horrors. This time, it’s not from a panic attack but an attack on me from the actions of the devil dressed in a mother’s clothing.

  Darkness....

  Literally and physically, that is now my reality, before I could always hear his voice. Each time I passed out, Ghost was there; now though, there is no Ghost just the eerie sound of silence. The side of my skull hurts from the bat cracking against it and knocking me unconscious. Shit, even the back of my skull hurts. My whole body feels bruised. I try to move my hands and my arms are aching. Why can’t I move them? I realize then that they are tied together. What! Why! Panic creeps in. Willing the fuzziness to recede and part the clouds of sleep mixed with the feeling that floats around you from being unconscious.

  Trying hard to shed light on what happened and where I am and why it’s so freaking dark, I open and blink my eyes. Nothing but endless darkness greets me. Something is tied around my face. I can feel the bristly fabric rubbing against my skin and each time I suck a breath in, I can feel it pull into my nostrils. Anxiety dances deep in my stomach as the panic of having the one fundamental gift of sight taken away from me.

  I don’t move. I lay still and breathe, trying to mentally catalogue my body, from the tips of my toes all the way up to the last strand of hair on my head. My shoulders ache and my skull is pounding, sending out a horrid thud through my body. The fabric, or mask, that is tied around my face, whatever that is, it’s taking away what oxygen I do need, just letting small, hot amounts to reach my lungs, just enough to keep me alive.

  Fear is rising inside me. I'm struggling against the tell-tale panic and anxiety readying to take my body, grip it and threaten to claw its way out. I need to be bigger than Timberly the girl who passes out at the very thought of attack. I need to shove it way down deep and suppress the panic in order to assess my predicament rather than lose myself to the terror that is raking through me. I can feel it tingling through my senses.

  I need to remember what Red used to say to me when I first started working for her. When a panic attack, anxiety and self-doubt would grip me and take me down deep to the dark place of my soul that always had me guessing why. Why I was so timid and broken a shell of a human who shook at the smallest sound, shied away from people and their stares and glares, or never let a soul in on the fear of passing out.

  ‘You need to focus on your senses, Love, not the fear of the unknown or the what ifs.

  Fear never helps, Love, it only hinders one’s soul.

  Touch

  Smell

  Sound

  Always when struck with the dark, or the lonely place that your attacks send you to, always focus on these three things. Assess and judge, figure out and find, before you know it, you will be in control again.’ Why haven’t I thought about doing this when
I am with Ghost. Fuck my mind works backwards.

  So Timberly, it’s time to focus and access the senses you can feel around you. Breathe girl, I tell myself, breathe and just feel.

  Touch: I can’t seem to touch my body as my hands are tied but I do know that my skull is sore and my body, mainly the base of my spine and the left side of my ribs, is sore. It hurts to breathe in air.

  Smell: I can smell the pungent scent of fear rolling of my body deep from my core. But I can also smell men, and stale smoke and beer.

  Sound: The gritting sound of tires rolling over gravel, the creak of brakes being pushed down to the floor of a vehicle and that said vehicle rolling to a stop.

  I’ve been kidnapped. Me, Timberly Roe, a nobody has been kidnapped. It’s laughable. I pass out at the first thought of something new and uneasy coming my way and now I’ve been cracked in the skull with a baseball bat from a guy who has had his dick in me more times than I’ve had hot dinners.

  Moving around slowly and as quietly as I can to not draw attention to the fact that I'm awake, I need to really sort my head out and try to rein in the small control I have. The last thing I need is desperation and the fear of the unknown to grip me and rip me in two when I feel, in the pit of my stomach, that this is really fight of flight time and I wanna fight because, for once in my pitiful life, I need to just let go. But shit, it’s hard to do anything with my hands that are tied behind my back and a searing pain rushing over my over heightened body.

  I now have to hold my shit together long enough to figure out what the fuck I can do. I'm going to have to dig deep and pull out the wild Timberly that I know sleeps deep down there somewhere in the pits of my soul. Awaken the beast and let’s get to it. Ha Timberly you’re so confident and strong sugar in your head! But I have a man who seen me and legit wanted me. So, for that alone I'll fight. He made me feel strong. I know he did when I was wrapped in the blanket of darkness. His voice filled my mind and gave me a sense of strength.

  Tears prick my eyes as I feel the cool wind wash over me as the door of the vehicle rips open and a hand grabs my ankle. It pulls me with such force over the floor that a searing pain licks my bare skin of my back. Trying hard to blink the tears away, I can’t but I refuse to lose myself in the fog of tears. Be strong, Timberly.

  My heart flurries to an unnatural beat and a trickle of hot sweat seeps down my spine. I wiggled and tried to kick out at whoever has their filthy hands wrapped around my ankles. My bound wrists protested, stinging as the rope around them bit down and gnawed into my flesh like twine-beasts. My ribs screamed out in pain along with my head. There was no give in the rope restraints nor in my captor’s grip, so I stopped trying to fight him and made the inward decision to preserve my energy. I tried to swallow, no saliva, I tried to speak out wanting to ask why, no voice I tried to remember why what I had done and to who for this to be happening to me then it hit me like a wet fish to the side of my face; Ghost, the beating, they hurt me the night before so he hurt them that day and they hurt her well killed her and now they took me. Great, I already thought I lived in a hell I couldn’t handle and now I'm tied gagged and now a damp piece of fabric of some kind tied tightly around my face I can barely breathe.

  “Get up, Move bitch.” A voice slams out hitting me like a semi-truck jabbing something sharp into my ribs.

  “Won’t fucking say it again, bitch, I don’t like repeating myself.” He spits out to me.

  “Well dick, bit hard when my hands are tied behind my back and I can’t fucking see.” I snap back at him pulling my legs back bending at the knees to gain the momentum I need to flick myself forward I can feel my bum resting on the edge of the vehicle bed can’t be too far to the ground.

  Nope wrong my horizontal body suddenly and rather too fast for my brain to catch up went rather vertical in one swoop. Laughter washed out over me as a pair of boots found their way into my ribs searing burning pain like a hot poker dug into the right side of my body as another pair of boots found the left side of me kicking back and forward between them like a soccer ball. Dust flying up around me getting under the fabric and coating my dry lips and getting inside my nostrils sneezing and screaming out in pain as the movement burned through me. Hands vice like fingers griped around the crown of my head and pulling me too my feet, my toes dangling barely touching the ground as tears of pure gut wrenching pain lashed out over my body ricocheting down my spine stopping at the tips of my toes for a split second before it flew back up through my body like a pinball machine ball darting through my body from one bone to the next on nerve to the other pain laced nerve.

  Just like that, he drops me in a pool of hair and dirt to the hard ground below me. My skull bounces off the ground hard, mind-splittingly hard, before settling back down. The pain rushes through me as tears stream from my eyes. I have no control over them now and blood? Is that blood I can feel and taste sliding from my nose over my top lip settling on my bottom warm and sticky? Darting out my tongue and diving it back inside my mouth I taste the metallic tang, yes, yes it is.

  “Get up, bitch.” Trying to curl my body like a caterpillar and shimming myself to my knees. At least from my knees I may be able to get the rest of the way up. “I said get the fuck up” his tone septic

  “I’m fucking trying, dick bag!” I holler out in the direction I hear his voice coming from. With the fabric stealing my sight and taking away any fresh air I so desperately need, plus the damn binds taking my hands, it's kinda making it hard to do as they seem to be scream at me to do.

  Finally, I make it to my knees. Just as I raise my leg to stand, my captor grabs me under my arm and pulls me hard up and shoves me forward, the ground unsteady beneath my feet. The air whips around my sweat-laced body, sending out shivers over my skin. Confusion, mixed with a sick feeling and the taste of blood, does nothing to quell the panic that’s taking up residence inside my belly. My legs stumble in the direction that he wants me to go. I hate this shuffling forward in the darkness, not having my hands really creates a sick sense of dread deep in me. You don’t realize just how much you need them when they are taken away, that and sight. I wish I had that right now also. Drake will fucking pay for this. That’s a promise that I make to myself if I get out of this alive. I shall make him pay for it all.

  My heart thudded harder and faster than it had ever before as hands pushed me. Stumbling, I carried on forward... to where, I don’t know, but I didn’t stop, I didn’t ask, I just did, gathering all the strength I could from deep down below because this shit is real and it’s happening. I couldn’t let fear slip through my defenses and threaten to take me down the rabbit hole of the dark. I needed to stay present. Full blown terror was sliding through my brain like a slippery little fish. God knows what amount of horror is lurking on the other side of this fabric covering my face. I don’t have a clue where I am, how I got here, what direction we came in, nothing, so I don’t think this is still necessary and it’s dark, at least it was when I had walked home. Home, god I never thought I'd say this but at this moment I miss it, I miss the horrors that was my home.

  Whipping my head to the side of me as a sound pulls me from my thoughts, I can hear the faint whimpers and moans coming from behind me, little snippets that I'm not alone. I'm not the only girl here.

  The pushing in between my shoulder blades stops and so does that mean no more walking, shit nope big mistake stopping “Move” a smack to the tender part of the back of my skull has sent me wheeling forward. I didn’t stop again fuck that I just kept walking forward my feet shuffling out over the dirt and stone laced ground. I’ve lost a shoe. I can feel every little stone as they hit the soft pad of my foot.

  My movements must have slowed as my mind travels through the things that’s missing. My shoe, my sight, my smell, my touch, my everything they have taken it all them and all the men before just take, take and take. “Faster, bitch.” something cold wedges against my spine the captor behind me dug it in and dragged it painfully slow up my spine, leaving a n
ice long rip through my hoodie and the flesh of my back, exposing me to the cold air, and as the air kissed the fresh new mark up my spine, a sting broke out in its wake leaving me sucking in air so fast and deep that I choke on it.

  With my hands behind my back, I try to move faster, negotiating the ground as best as I can for dips, rises and falls stones and whatever else with no sight, bound hands searing pain and an evil son of a bitch behind me with what sounds like a scared chorus of women behind me as well.

  “Step the fuck down.” The man behind me grabs my bound wrists, giving me some sense of balance and guidance as my toes try to navigate the steps in front of me.

  “Again.” he hollers.

  “Again.” I obey.

  “Again.” I seem to manage the steps fine without falling and for the man behind me to have a painful grip on my binds which is sending the ropes to bite deeper into my already torn flesh. But I am grateful for it as I didn’t want to face plant again.

  “Last step, bitch.”

  “Enough of the bitch, thanks,” I grit out into the air in front of me anger rolling through my veins.

  “Ha! Say what, bitch?” his voice greets the back of my neck so painfully close to me that I can smell his dirty breath.

  “The bitch, can you give it a rest,” I say. “I get you don’t like me but hell,” I say to him, false confidence suddenly spilling from my shaky body, the tell-tale white dots of a panic attack kiss the dark that is my eyes. Oh fuck no, don’t pass out, Timberly, I beg myself as his hands grab a fist full of my hair and he rips my head painfully back to near snapping it from my shoulders.

  “I'll call you what the fuck I want to, BITCH!” he emphasizes the last word a tad too much and my anger, laced with pure anxiety, takes over and I dig my heels in.

  “Fuck you!” I spit, spinning on my heels and slamming my head forward fast till it cracks with what I hope is a head next to mine. All I want is to inflict some pent-up rage on this fuck bag. But nope, my head meets a chiseled and smelly chest, and as quick as I hit him, I'm falling backwards and falling down the last of the steps. My knees come up over my head I can feel my hair fan out behind me and before I know it, I'm flipped right over and lying face down on a cold concrete floor.