Page 169 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
CHAPTER 39
Ambrose—age nine
The groggy feeling overpowering every sense, doesn’t subside as I blink my eyes.
I’m alone in an unfamiliar place.
A soft bed cushions my back, and for a second, I’m crazy enough to believe in Christmas miracles.
But the room looks nothing like mine, and miracles do not fucking exist. I realize that, as I stare around, I recognize the dark and dated furniture in the room. It matches the carpet.
Recognition hits me. The room I’m in belongs to Colin. The bed I’m in, with its dirty sheets that smell like him, belongs to Colin.
I belong to Colin.
I try to sit up, but the pain holds me back. My hands find my throat again, and with a feather-light touch, I finger thick stitches holding my skin together.
Colin appears in the bedroom doorway, his makeup smudged from the center of his face, revealing all his ugly features—a big nose, lines around his lips, bloodshot eyes. Those details are embedded into my brain now, there to stay forever.
He steps inside a cloud of smoke around him.
Maybe it’s something they’ve given me, but he appears more like a demon than a clown right now. A demon who appeared in a cloud of smoke, not a man in costume, puffing on a cigarette.
I cough, and my throat screams in agony.
His wife steps in from the bathroom and comes over to check on me. She asks pointless questions I can’t answer, telling me what a close call I had.
I allow my eyes to roll closed because I can do little else.
What led me up here?
What happened to my throat?
Memories rush in, Colin behind me. The pain he left behind is gone from my body, but not my mind. That might be the reason my energy is low, or it may be down to my throat. He’d slit it, ear to ear, and told me I’d never talk again.
Fucking monster.
And my parents know him… had planned this.
It makes me want to scream, but I don’t dare try it.
“Thank fuck, you’re awake.” Colin puffs again. “I thought you’d never open your eyes. Say, thank you, Mrs. Bannadosi. Oh, that’s right, you can’t talk anymore. Peace at fucking last.”
He’s wrong. There is no peace. My voice has been replaced by a pressure in my throat that torments me so much that I wish he’d kept sawing until my head came off.
“How are you feeling?” He sits on the bed, his touch lingering on my leg. His words echo in the room.
My attempt to block him out only works to some extent, and now the thought of Colin doing more horrendous things to my body burns in my brain.
“He isn’t well enough for that.”
“He’s awake. That’s enough. Get the fuck out if you have objections.”
His touch rises higher, and it’s crazy, but the second that happens, I’m not in my body anymore.
I’m standing somewhere else in the room, looking over at what happens on the bed. Watching from my soul’s perspective as my body gets touched beneath the sheets.
It lasts seven minutes exactly.
