Page 31 of Lost in the Light

My gasping breaths only become shorter as I try to make sense of where I am. This isn’t the club. The rooms there weren’t luxury, but they were clean and well lit. When men are paying for you, they want to be able to see the pain they’re inflicting very clearly on your face, after all.

I try to move my legs from the edge of the bed to stand and try to get away from this new nightmare, but pain shoots up through my core with just the slight movement. I look down again and cry out when I see juts how much blood is between my thighs.

Why don’t I remember what happened to me? Why don’t I know where I am? Tears slip down my cheeks, but I refuse to give into the sobs that want free too. I don’t know where I am, but there’s no security looming over me like there has been at the club for the last six months. I have to keep it together and take this chance to escape. It could be the only one I get.

I push through the pain and slide my feet from the mattress, planting them on the floor. As soon as I sit up, my head starts to spin so violently that I can’t stop the nausea that rushes over me. I just about manage to lean to the side before I vomit all over the rough, wood floor beneath me.

When I try to stand, I realize I must have been drugged. It’s the only explanation for the way I’m feeling and the fact I can’t remember what was obviously a brutal encounter. The monsters must have drugged me and brought me to this place.

A sob bursts from me as I plant a hand on the rotting wall and lean over. The despair is so thick inside of me that I feel like it’s suffocating me. I let my head hang down as I fight to gain back some control of myself, but I’m in so much pain and so very broken. It’s been six months of being abused, beaten, and broken in so very many ways and I just can’t take anymore. Not a minute passes now when I don’t regret not taking those damned Vicodin pills the second I was able. All I can focus on now is the hope that I will find a way to end it all and just make this pain stop.

Eventually, I manage to get enough air in to stand up straight. I take a deeper breath and force myself to calm down, and push back the darkness that seems to be my closest friend lately. I have to get out of the room. If I can just escape I can find a way to end it all. A bridge or a roof to jump off. A knife. Anything. I just need it all to stop.

I stumble clumsily to the only door in the room and brace my hand against the wall as I rip it open. It’s actually unlocked! I want to cry in relief at that small mercy, but I know I don’t have time. I need to find a way out.

I lean against the door jamb and push my back against it enough to keep me up, as I turn the corner into a long, grimy looking corridor. There are doors down both sides, but the space around me is oddly quiet. It’s strange. For so long all I’ve heard constantly is yelling, screams, and desperate sobbing. Night and day those sounds never stop. This silence makes my ears ring loudly as I move down the corridor shakily, fighting with everything I have left -which isn’t much – to stay upright and ignore the pain I’m in.

I glance down at my legs as I feel a trail of warm blood reach my right ankle from between my thighs. I realize I’m bleeding way too much. Maybe that will be my way out. Bleeding to death’s just like going to sleep, isn’t it? That seems easier than any of the other options I’ve considered.

I freeze as I deliberate the idea of just finding a place to hide and allow the inevitable to happen, but I rethink it quickly. If anyone finds me, I’ll have lost my chance all over again. I can’t mess this up this time. I have to end things properly.

I start to move again, but I’ve barely gotten a step away before I hear heavy boots on the hard floor behind me. I turn in a panic and see the beast behind me. Bull, I remind myself. That’s what they called him. What was he doing here? I hadn’t seen him since the day he left me at the club.

My body starts to shake harder as he locks his eyes on mine and a smirk fills his face. A squeak of fear slips free as I turn away from him and try to run.

Of course, it’s futile. Whatever I’ve been drugged with is making me so dizzy and clumsy I can barely remain upright. Before I know it, Bull has a handful of my hair in his hand and wrenches me back so hard I fall to the floor with a loud cry of pain.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re goin’?” he growls as he looms over me.

“Please,” I cry hysterically. “Kill me! Just k-kill me!” I don’t care about living anymore. Any fight or hope that I may have been clinging to before is long gone. I don’t care about anything but just making all of the pain end. I don’t even know who I am by this point. I barely even fight any more, when the men come for me, or drag me away. My fate is sealed, and fighting only makes it worse. Hope is nonexistent for me now. It isn’t like I have anything left to fight for anyway. I’m not me anymore. Hell, I’m not even a person anymore. I’m a shell with nothing left inside. They’ve taken everything from me – my strength, my fight, my free will, my hope, and my soul.

“Afraid not. The boss has plans for you. Didn’t say I couldn’t hurt you though,” he sneers. He grabs the tops of my arms and I just let him. All I can do, as he slams me hard into the wall, is close my eyes and pray to anyone who would listen that he’ll make a mistake and end me this time.

“Addy! Wake up, shortcake.” The sensation of being shaken slightly, brought me back to the present, and I opened my eyes with a gasp, sitting up quickly and looking all around me.

“You’re okay, baby. We’re at the penthouse in the city, remember?” I looked to my right and found Adam perched on the edge of the bed, right at my side. Eli was on the bed at my other side too and both of them were holding one of my hands.

“Yeah…I…I remember,” I said, my voice still sounding hoarse from the fire, and shaking because of how hard my entire being was vibrating.

“You were crying. That’s why I woke you,” Eli explained as he moved a little closer and wiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb. I pulled my hands free of both of their grips and swiped my face with the backs of my hands. I must have been crying a lot since my face was soaked with tears.

“Sorry. I’m okay,” I whispered, my throat too sore to speak any louder.

“Deep breaths, Addy,” Adam prompted, and I did as he said, taking deeper breaths to try and calm down. That nightmare, or flashback – whatever it was - it had been so raw. I had felt every emotion. I had felt the throbbing pain in my body. I had felt the despair and the hopelessness. I’d wanted nothing except to die.

“C-could you make me some tea please, Eli?” I asked as I held in my tears and tried to appear calm. Eli was still pale and looked completely exhausted. He hadn’t shaved, the stubble thick on his always clean shaven face. “My throat…it really hurts.”

“Of course. Green or chamomile?” he asked as his worried expression softened and he smiled a little.

“Green tea would be good. Thanks.”

“I’ll warm you some soup too. You need to eat and take your pills.” I nodded in reply and he stood and hurried from the room, seeming happy to have something to do.

As soon as he pulled the door of the bedroom closed behind him, I looked up to Adam and just crumbled. My face scrunched as the first sob broke free. Tears streamed and I just lost all of the composure I’d been clutching on to.

“I’m here, Addy. Let it out. I’m right here,” Adam soothed as he lifted me from the bed and set me in his lap. I leaned into him, comforted by the way his huge body surrounded me as he wrapped his arms around me.

“I…I w-was somewhere else…somewhere worse,” I whimpered through my tears. “I don’t know wh-where it was but I…I was so lost, Adam. I wanted to die. All I w-wanted was to…to die.”

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