by P. S. Power
She got up then and a bit warily, climbed into the shower. She didn’t feel watched this time, at least. Just a bit cold. She shivered with it, even though the room was the same temperature as always. Seventy-two degrees. That was where her mom liked the whole house to be kept. Normally that was fine for her as well. At that moment, damp from the shower, she felt a deep chill. A thing that went all the way to the bone.
It was bad enough that she moved to her medicine chest, to get her digital thermometer out. That took a minute, but after resting under her tongue for a while, it said that she was at a hundred degrees, even. Other than that, she didn’t feel sick or anything, so put the thing back. After thirty seconds she pulled it again, then washed it. The shivering made it hard to manage, given all the shaking she was doing.
Part of that could have been a reaction to the night she’d just had.
Jess wasn’t normally a weak person. She hid her fears behind sarcasm and dark jokes, but that was a coping mechanism that she used on purpose. Looking at her un-made-up face in the mirror she smiled. Not because she meant it. Just because hiding her problems was a way of life for her. She wasn’t going to break from what had happened.
For one thing, she wasn’t certain anything had. Even if it was real, after a fashion, her ass didn’t hurt and she wasn’t bleeding rectally. That had to be enough. Mainly because, after no more than a minute’s worth of thought, Jessica was truly certain of something. If she tried to go for help due to what any sane person would think was a rape dream, or a fantasy she’d had, her skinny behind would end up in a funny farm.
Maybe not, if her parents believed her. They… Probably would. At least that she’d had a bad dream. She didn’t know that it wasn’t just that. The only thing telling her it could be more was Malia. Who, apparently was back. At least if she hadn’t been a dream, too.
On that one she was fairly certain her little imaginary friend, the one that had killed a person using her body before, was real. At the very least she was a very real hallucination. Even if that was the case, then her advice might still be good. Trust no one.
Except her.
Jess decided to take that advice. The first part. Trusting a creepy little imaginary girl in a blue dress wasn’t going to be happening either. Not even if they were best friends. After all, her showing up right on the heels of the whole attack of the night before was a bit telling. Possibly. Sure, the dream, if it was one, had seemed real, which was still bugging her on a level that probably should have her back into counseling. Except for the fact that it hadn’t worked before. Either stretches time she’d had to go.
So, Jess knew that she was going to be forced to handle things herself.
The problem was, that left her with no one to confide in. Everyone was, in the end, everyone. Meaning the only person she had left, who she could really trust, would be herself. The girl who regularly had life-like flash backs, imagined floating naked werewolves and hallucinated demon ass rape scenes in her spare time. That didn’t sound like the type of person she really wanted to rest her future on, when put that way.
After a moment, putting everything out of her head as well as she could, she got ready for the day. There was shopping to do, then a date to go on. On her mental list she decided to get some lube, too. If things did turn to naughty back door sex, she really didn’t want to do it dry. It had hurt enough with that creatures’ slime all over his thing. Without that, she probably would have died.
Or at least wanted to.
That was just from a realistic dream, too. The reality was probably even worse.
Not that it was in her plans to do anything that daring with Nick. He’d been nice enough to her in school, years ago, if she was counting the boy saying hello a few times as friendship, but that wasn’t really the same as them having some kind of lifelong connection. Then, given everything, she was kind of glad about that.
Because the one she currently had, with Malia, was more than enough for her that way.
Chapter five: A dating life.
It was harder to get through the day than Jess would have figured it to be. After all, she was used to actually reliving traumatic things in her life. At least the one thing. Thousands of times, she’d killed a man, each one as if it were the first time, or at least real and happening in the moment.
Now she was acting like a bad dream, or hallucination, was just as intense and real. Then, even if her behind wasn’t bleeding and torn, she kept flashing back to those events as if they’d happened as well. There wasn’t the same sense of reality to it, but Jessica had to figure that her entity rape of the night before was being processed as if it had actually happened to her, instead of it being a simple dream.
Malia had mentioned something like that to her. That it had been real. Even if it also clearly wasn’t. Carlos had suggested that kind of thing as being possible, as well. That entities could influence people using realities that weren’t strictly normal or standard. It was an idea that sort of plagued Jessica, through the day as she got ready for that evening. A thing which, several times, she very nearly called off. It was only the fact that she’d never actually gotten to go on such a thing before, a date, that had her preparing herself. Like a girl.
After shopping, at Elroy’s only pharmacy, feeling odd as she bought two kinds of lubricant in small containers, along with condoms, just in case, as well as mouthwash, toothpaste and a tiny brush that could be packed into her purse without too much hassle, she spent her time carefully doing her hair and makeup. That and selecting just the right outfit to wear. The perfect one. As if she knew how to do that kind of thing.
She was, mainly, locked in her room, killing time for the early part of the day. Kind of avoiding her mother, who was in the house the whole time, cleaning, for the most part. That and cooking. The woman wasn’t as trim as her daughter, but the truth was that, regardless of how much food was actually made on a regular basis, she stayed decently trim. She ate, too, so it was either some kind of secret bulimia thing or something strange that was allowing her to stay that way. If Jess had bothered to eat even half as much, she’d be fat.
Given that she’d announced the day before that she believed in magic, or at least a certain kind of it, and that version, if not a proven fact yet, was at least a thing that Jess could see as being possible, that idea could be part of the answer to that situation. Her mother might just be thin due to an entity having done something to her to make that happen. If so, it was a pretty shallow way to use power like that.
Making money was, in the end, just a surrogate for the idea of survival. Staying pretty as you aged was all about vanity. Jessica thought about that, pretending she was deep for a few moments, as she carefully applied her face for the evening. A thing which, at four in the afternoon, meant she was finished way too early.
Also, that she was desperately in need of a distraction. It was doing that or going over being pressed against the wall as her ass burned. The rhythm of it coming back. Not being able to breathe hardly at all. Fighting hadn’t worked in the slightest either. It hadn’t been a real thing, that rape, maybe but, she was coming to realize, it might as well have been.
The whole thing left her feeling scared, too. Sad, but not for the reasons she would have thought about before in her life. After all, the rape had been an attack, but not one on her womanhood. It wasn’t an action meant to force her into pregnancy against her will, or a betrayal by a friend or acquaintance, even. No, she was kind of pissed, because even though she’d tried to fight, it hadn’t worked. Leaving her with a sense of being powerless. In most situations, real ones, the whole thing would have gone much differently. She’d struggled hard enough that, if it had been a regular flesh and blood man coming through her window and trying to do that to her, he might well have gone down in the attempt. Sure, she wasn’t physically all that strong or anything, but when the chips had been down, she’d moved like she’d meant it.
She’d been afraid, but also done her best. Which ordinarily would have been more tha
n enough to save her.
A thing that had, as far as she could tell, done nothing at all.
Then Malia had shown up, not having come to help her. It was tempting to claim that the little girl couldn’t have done anything. A thing which might just be true. She’d taken Jess’s body before, and killed a human in it. One that might, if things really worked that way, have been possessed by a different entity. That didn’t mean they could do direct battle without bodies, though. Jessica didn’t know how that might work at all.
There had also been a hint that Mal might not be allowed to do some things. Even ones that would have helped her pal out. That indicated someone else being in control of her. That part had been talked about the night before. The entities were very powerful, but once they agreed to work for you, they did it, fully and seemingly being unable to resist in any meaningful fashion. If Malia was under that kind of control, then she couldn’t be trusted. Which the little girl had told her, flat out. That she could trust her as a friend, but not if she was under the command of someone else.
So, instead of going over how she’d pretty much been demon raped the night before, for the fiftieth time that day, Jessica finally went out into the living room. Her mother was still in the kitchen, moving around with a purpose. She was dressed in a casual blouse and light-colored slacks, which weren’t too tight, but showed that Jess had been thinking about her in the right light. Her mother was well kept for her age. Too much so, given the fact that she constantly seemed to be snacking on things.
She was literally doing that when Jess walked into the kitchen. It seemed to be a fresh bread roll of some kind, with butter on it. There were visible herbs in the mix, and a soft scent of garlic. Sitting at the table, Jessica considered not saying anything about the night before at all. After all, the clearest thought on the matter was that there had been a realistic, but bad, dream or two.
Nothing about how she’d woken up later said anything different. Claiming that something more than that had taken place was, in the end, probably a good way to seem insane. Except that her mother was, as it turned out, kind of weird.
Before she spoke, she heard Malia speaking to her again. Inside of her head. Telling her to trust no one. Except for her. Her best friend. Forever.
As if that wasn’t a set up on a major scale.
Her mother smiled at her, seeming happy. As if she meant it.
“You look great, honey. I’d nearly forgotten that you have a date with Nick later.” She waved her hand, the one with the half-eaten roll in it. “With the things last night… I’d thought that might put you off of going out today.”
For half a second Jess just sat there, then shrugged.
“The part with the cult weirdos, or the one where an invisible entity ass raped me for about two hours, instead of letting me sleep? Because…” She shrugged then, her mother’s face falling suddenly. “Well, neither was fun, but I’d much rather hang with your boring friends than that second part. If it’s all the same.”
Instead of seeming shocked, there was a long sigh from her mom about then.
“Crap. I’m sorry honey, that’s horrible. We didn’t hear anything. Not that it…” She tightened her face and looked away. “That kind of thing can happen. Normally it has to be sent at you. Other beings, the entities, they don’t think of that kind of thing on their own. Given the timing, it pretty much has to be sent at you from one of the people who were here last night that set it in motion. Only, that’s hard to do in a short time frame like that. Almost impossibly so. Can you talk about it?”
Jess wanted to go silent, but made a face instead. It wasn’t fun or anything, but it also wasn’t in some ways, real. Not talking about a bad dream or even a hallucination would give it power over her that she didn’t really feel like giving away at the moment. Even if it had been real, she needed to be stronger than that.
“Yes, though there isn’t a lot to go over. I mean, it took a while, or seemed like it but it was pretty much an attack. I fought back, hitting, kicking and I think biting at one point, which did nothing. Then, you know, I was kind of tossed across the room, slammed into the wall and had my underwear ripped off. Then, well, I hit and stuff, but didn’t make any contact with it. It felt slimy.” She took a deep breath. “Thankfully. I mean, it was slick, you know, down there?” She wasn’t saying that it had a slick cock in front of her mother. Even using the word penis was too embarrassing.
For some reason her mother seemed to get the idea anyway.
“And then… It was only anal?”
“Right. Only that. Like a bad prison movie. You know, that’s pretty much my worst fear. Being raped anally, I mean. It didn’t speak or anything either. Not that I recall. It finished, after a really long time. Then, after blacking out, thinking I was dead, I woke up, in bed. I mean, the whole thing was real, only it wasn’t, at the same time. Later, just before I got up for the day, after some crummy dreams, Malia showed up. She looked the same as always. The whole little girl in the blue dress thing. She had a new red ribbon, though. She told me not to trust anything, that everything I heard or saw from then on was going to be a lie. Then had to leave, because he was about to wake up. I have no clue who he is.”
That was about the whole story. She had to go over it several more times, including the part with Malia, but finally her mom just sat down across from her and shook her head.
“That is… Not good. It wouldn’t normally be that… Okay. Someone sent that thing to you, probably with instructions to sodomize you. Clearly, that was supposed to break you, more than it has. Which is good. The not being broken part. You have to be strong. Remember, that kind of thing… It’s both real and isn’t. It will, well, you were really raped. Only you don’t have anything physical to prove that it happened. If it was done once, it might happen again. It probably will, until you find who did it and stop them.”
She finished her roll, clearly thinking about something.
“Malia showing up like that… She didn’t try to help you at all, from what you said. That… Well, she probably wasn’t asked to. Such beings have rules that we don’t totally understand, so that might mean something important, or that she was just standing there the whole time, wondering why you didn’t request her help. Try that, next time? It might not do anything, but it could. I don’t know who he would be, either. Whoever controls her now? Some other entity? Even the one that you were attacked by. Time doesn’t always run the same way for them. That’s the theory at least. So, she might have been there before anything happened, to her perspective. We don’t really know how that works for them.”
Jessica took that all in, then shrugged.
“So, great. I can’t even go to counseling over this attack or anything, can I? Not without lying and claiming it was some innocent guy climbing through my window. It was real though. I mean, until I woke up. Then…”
She waited for a bit, her mother making a tight, rather upset seeming face.
“Yeah. It’s not unheard of. Someone decided to attack you that way on purpose. Not just the rape, but as a hallucination, specifically. It’s psychological warfare, instead of something physical, so at least there’s that. We need to work out who it was. Someone who was here last night, most likely. You don’t know a lot of other people and while it’s possible that someone might have been punishing you to get at your father or me, the timing on that doesn’t seem right. It would be a little too telling for anyone that had come over to do it though. I mean, we pretty much had the main suspect list right there, if it was one of them.”
Jessica nodded. She wasn’t nice about the way she said it, but did it anyway. Being a pushover or ignorant of the possibilities wasn’t going to help her.
“Right. You, dad, Carlos, Roxy… Rick and that other woman. June. The one who clearly has a thing for dad? Malia might have been in on it as well. I mean, she kind of said something like that. That we were friends, but that she might not have a choice in what she has to do from now on. That… Well, there�
�s no reason for anyone to be trying to do anything to me, in particular that way, that I know of. Some kind of attempt to take me over? I was a host or whatever it’s called, once. Maybe I’m old enough now to be good at it? Special somehow?”
She grinned, not meaning it. Wishing she had a cup of coffee in front of her, even though she didn’t really love the stuff all that much. It made a good prop.
Instead of getting up to get some, since there was nothing in the crystal clear, very tidy, pot on the counter at the moment, she just locked eyes with her mother.
“It could also be Nick. I… Well, what are the odds of a guy just walking up to me and asking me on a date?”
There was a slow smile then and a head shake.
“Well, the odds for that are actually pretty good, Honey. That it doesn’t happen to you several times a week is the strange part there. Most of that is having lived here in Elroy for too long. If you move, or go off to college, then it will probably happen almost daily.”
Jessica drew a line over her right cheek, where her scar was. It was a straight line, angled downward and mainly covered with makeup, but her mother got her point anyway.
Rather than go into how she was always pretty to her parents, her mom smirked.
“That isn’t going to stop a lot of men from thinking you’re pretty. As it is, sitting no more than four feet from you I can barely make it out at all. Even if I could, you have to know that it makes you distinctive, not ugly. It’s almost like the kind of thing that they’d give a character in a television program. You walk around talking about how horrifically mutilated you are, even though the audience knows that most of them won’t even meet someone as attractive that day. That kind of thing. So, the point is, Nick asking you out isn’t that odd at all.”
Jessica smiled, trying not to think about being thrown into a wall on her date, later that night. It probably wouldn’t be happening. Hopefully not. That, on top of whatever had taken place the night before would be too much for her.