Page 36 of Sacrificing Zoriah

A scream rips from my throat, and I throw myself out of bed. I am wobbly, but alone. I calm down and realize I am drenched in sweat. Fuck, I hate nightmares. I can’t get Richard’s face out of my head. The more I have that stupid dream, the more it solidifies that he is the one who raped my mom and me before killing her. I think Doug is the other man who was hurting Mom, but he wasn’t as close as Richard was. I remember his smell the most. Fuck, and that disgusting grunt as he came or his laugh when he mocked me.

I go to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face before changing into new pajamas. When I pick my phone up, I have a few messages from Ben and Roman.

Roman

Have a wonderful day, mi amor. Call if you need anything at all, and we will come home.

Ben

There are leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry. You haven’t eaten much lately.

Roman

Going into the meeting. Ben is still available.

I sigh when I see it’s three in the afternoon. I slept all fucking day, and I hate it. I don’t feel rested; I feel useless. I shouldn’t have taken the day off. I should be at work in that meeting. Now, Roman is going to have his notes messed up because he cannottake notes and lead a meeting. Why in the fuck did I think this was a good idea? Oh… right… to reflect alone.

I go down to the kitchen with the goal of making something to eat, but I am still angry at everything. I am sad, lonely, and scared. I haven’t been alone in so long that every little noise is freaking me out. The longer I sit here at the kitchen island, the more the memories of his grunts play in my mind. I feel like I am going insane. It’s so fucking loud, and I can’t make it stop. Everything is seeping in, little by little, and I’m fucking drowning in the memories. I go to the cabinet and grab the first bottle I see. Whiskey will do just fine. I need my mind to shut up. I need peace, but I can’t find it. Maybe it’s at the bottom of the bottle?

I can still hear Mom’s screams as she tried to crawl to me. She got just close enough to hold my hand while I was being held down. I sobbed and screamed for her. For my daddy. For my big brother. I pleaded to God at six years old to make the bad man get off of me. I reached out and took her hand, and we cried together as they stole from us. My body remembers every second of that pain. I remember every tear that Mom cried, desperately trying to get to me. To save me. She was dragged further away from me, but when the man’s grunts stopped and he got up, she suddenly got free. She completely covered my body, and I still don’t know what made her do that. She saw something in David that made her lie on top of me to protect me from him. When the shot went off, I knew. I knew she was gone. I knew he took her from me, but I was convinced I could go with her. I remember just closing my eyes, waiting for us to be taken away to somewhere better. I didn’t know what death was, but I learned in that moment that it is forever. I knew that wherevershe went, I wanted to go with her. I can still feel the weight of her body on top of mine, but I know it’s not real. I know this heavy feeling is the alcohol. It’s so goddamn comforting, though.

I am vaguely aware of my surroundings. I think I am in the master bathroom. I must be, because I am holding Roman’s shirt. I press it to my nose and take a long, deep breath, inhaling his scent. It’s definitely his shirt. I have a mostly empty bottle in one hand and his shirt in the other. I don’t want to set either down, so I slowly try to get off the floor. The world spins, and I fall back on my ass, making me laugh.

“Well, I guess I’ll sit here,” I slur to myself with a giggle.

Chapter Ten

Roman

“Is there anything elsewe need to discuss?” I ask. When no one answers, I stand. “Alright, everyone. Thanks for coming. I’ll see you all next month.”

“I’m ready to just go home and rest,” I sigh as I gather my stuff.

“Mmmm. Yeah. Me too,” Corbin laughs. Corbin owns Kingston Cybersecurity. I invested in his company last week after seeing his business plan. He has a great head on his shoulders, and his plan has a lot of potential.

“Thanks for letting me join,” Jim says.

“You were a drunk, Dad. Not an idiot. You are just as qualified to do this job as I am,” Corbin says. Jim and Corbin both havea master’s in computer engineering. Jim never stopped working and learning; he was just drunk while he did it. Now that he is sober, he is having to relearn some things, but he is doing great.

We walk out of the conference room and run into Ben. “We have a big problem,” Ben says worriedly.

“What? What happened? Is she okay?” I ask.

“She’s fine, but she’s drinking… A lot,” Ben says. He turns the tablet around, and we see that Zoriah is on the bathroom floor with a bottle of whiskey. “She woke up from a nightmare and ended up in the kitchen. She sat at the island for a while crying. I tried texting, but she left her phone upstairs. She just hopped up and grabbed a bottle. She was in the kitchen for a while but ended up wandering around the house for a bit. Now she is in the bathroom. She’s tried to get up a few times, but that bottle is basically empty now.”

“Fuck,” Corbin sighs.

“We knew she’d break eventually,” I say. “I didn’t think she’d fall this hard, though. I hope I…”

“Nope. Don’t do that,” Ben says. “Don’t take on blame that you don’t deserve.”

“I’m confused,” Jim says.

“Zoriah is getting more comfortable with Roman regarding sex, and they had a pretty rough but very consensual interaction thismorning,” Ben says. “He’s about to try and say that he triggered her.”

“I doubt it,” Jim says. “We’ve tried to talk to her about her mom for weeks now, but she shuts it down. She’s admitted her nightmares are of both attacks when she was six and recently. She is connecting everything, and unfortunately, she’s a bit too much like me.”

“She’s trying to drown out the memories,” Ben says.

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