Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2020 16:56:09 GMT -5
Content Warning: Depiction of Sexual Assault, Mentions of Suicide
Maybe ten months later, Adrienne Levi was laying on the couch in her apartment. It has been a long process but it was hers now. Nothing seemed to be going right since that night. Stuck in a dead end job. Training in a run down gym for the possibility of a career. She’d sent emails out across the country, asking for a chance. None were interested. A month later, she’d get that special invitation but now it seemed like she had wasted what could have paid for a semester at Keiser University. Who was she kidding?
Most of all, Danny being gone has caused a lot of issues.
She didn’t want to think about that. Her mother claimed that Daniel Levi’s death was about the best thing that could have happened to her. Especially after Adrienne had told her everything.
She didn’t feel any better. Adrienne had repeated ad nauseam what had happened that night. Had been interrogated. Had been poked and prodded.
Had been made to feel worthless.
The pills the psychologist had prescribed had sent her spiraling back into reliving that night over and over. Wondering what would happen if she just let him get it out of his system.
No one would look her in the eyes anymore. Her co-workers, her boss, even her friends were distant. Like that night she had died, too. But she wouldn’t emote that. She couldn’t say that. She couldn’t tell anyone because all they would do is wring their hands and ratchet up their concern without just letting her get it out.
She wanted to scream.
Lazily tapping at the screen, she played Candy Crush on her phone. The lights in her apartment were off. Her blinds were drawn. Her face only illuminated by the phone itself.
Jimmy was sleeping on her legs. The big tub knew that she had nowhere to go. Her free hand stroked his rumbling frame.
She’d call in sick. Nate would give her a stern warning and two points. Her expired prescription bottle contained half a dozen Oxys she had purchased from Katy. Had a good bottle of white wine in the cabinet. Time to go.
Adrienne opened her eyes. The shimmering lights refracted through the crystal chandelier overhead. Her head rested against Danny’s chest. His hands were placed on her hips. Many nights she would lay awake in bed and romanticize that evening. The one night when all eyes were on her. They were in a grand ballroom. Her heels clicked on the marble floor as they slowly danced. Shadows swirled around them to a misplaced notion that all of this occurred as the world fell down.
“I love you, Danny,” she said as her hand, enclosed in a white silk glove, touched his face.
He didn’t answer because this wasn’t that night. Their first dance occurred in her mother’s backyard. And while it was sweet, she remembered the hem of her rented wedding dress becoming grass stained as they day wore on. Usually, this night as they absconded up the spiral stairs, giggling all of the way to the master bedroom with the canopy bed. Not the Holiday inn room that she had saved up for.
The world just didn’t understand how amazing Danny was. He was the epitome of a dapper gentleman in his light pink and white tuxedo. It was his extravagance and penchant for pomp and circumstance that made her heart flutter. Her gown was everything she ever wanted. Elegant and sophisticated. She felt intoxicated in the draped bodice and the flowing white shirt that trailed behind her. She didn’t trip over and skin her knee. She was all style and grace as she stared into Danny’s charming visage.
“Kiss me,” she cooed, totally enamored with her man. Danny was always taller. He was afterall a demigod in stature. Adrienne Straussler was the mere mortal he had plucked out of obscurity. She was putty in his hands. Malleable. In the eyes of those who know: susceptible to grooming. Adrienne laughed away all of their concerns. She saw the stars in his eyes. He promised to take her away from a world that seemed a room with no escape. Bursting through, he made their own exit.
Their lips met in a chaste kiss, like the ones she had always imagined.
Adrienne could taste the decay in his mouth as his hand palmed the back of her head, fingers snaring and twisting her long dark hair. His eyes were placid pools of brown sludge. Pupils dilated beyond their bounds and swallowed up white. He was gentle as he dipped her backwards. All the while the shadowy tendrils had converged and grabbed hold. Their fingers materialized as they clutched and teared at her gown. Taking her further and further into an undefined space.
“You’re doing this for us, Ade,” said Danny with the sincerity of a snake. The voice was his and many others. His breath smelled like the hard whiskey he imbibed himself with nightly to dull away the reality of his failures. His gums were bleeding, his teeth stained and blackened.
She pushed away at his face and his flesh came off the bone in handfuls, his tongue lashing wildly as he spoke, “Daddy’s home!”
She struggled from underneath as this pure exaggeration of everything and everyone that terrified pried her legs apart and slathered rancid saliva all over her neck, mimicking the kisses Danny gave her on their first night together. Fat stubby fingers pinned her shoulders down as she could smell a fair man’s aftershave mired with this repugnant body odor.
The horrors this abomination expelled were nothing new to Adrienne. She closed her eyes like she always would and floated away. This is the moment she’d snap awake in the middle of the night but these days, it just continued and continued and continued...
Terror and confusion washed over her as a pressure of a boot pressed against her throat.
“The way you trrrremble,” the hulking king snarled as his heel dug into her neck, cutting off her supply of air, “Quivering fresh meat… Whets my appetite. All your twitching makes my teeth ache!”
Her flailing broke through and the pressure released only to be replaced by the epitome of impotent rage. Bright neon shades illuminated the decomposing face of her only lover as he climbed on for another ride. With hands wrapped around her neck, his arrogance oozed from the gaping orifice that had lost any semblance of a mouth, ”Told you that you would like this, bitch.”
She broke free of more tendrils, beating and battering at this monster’s body. Her thighs were slick with her own blood, the pain no longer mattering. Out of the corner of her hand, she saw a hand, a real hand, reaching through the bottom. Out of desperation, she reached for it.
Its nails dug into her wrist as it suddenly restrained her. She heard it somehow whisper directly into her ear, “I admire your heart a hundred more times than I admire your ass,” and delivering a false hope to be seen as something more to ejaculate on.
Pinned down, she resigned herself to the possibility that she wouldn’t wake up. That if her new friends knew that she was this pathetic that they’d just move on. Her eyes shimmered with hope when Silvio Leon spoke to her through those cards. She felt human when Kohaku grinned at her dumb jokes. She felt alive when Matt Knox had stopped treating her like a child and had helped her with an accomplishment that someone supposedly Magnificent never achieved. Maybe those were the real dreams.
Reality was a supernatural abomination ripping her in two.
She blinked.
The image of a sword, dull and poorly maintained, flickered overhead.
Crying, screaming, even laughing hysterically Adrienne raised her arms towards the hilt. Her fingertips touched the end of the rusted hilt and…
Sniffling, she compartmentalized what had just transpired until next time. Traipsing through what was real or not wrecked havoc as per usual. That afternoon just prior to finally getting her first shot was the darkest it has been. A pathetic trembling, quivering mess dialed a hotline just for someone, anyone to talk to. To convince her that she could push through the misery of being alone. Even if being alone was without him. Outside observers could revel in his demise all they wanted. But Danny Levi had been a constant. And him being gone had left a void.
And even then, Adrienne pushed against the notion that it was just a matter of finding the right person.
No, she wanted to stand upon the heap. Defiant in the faces of those who would diminish her. Every person who viewed her as some lost soul would understand one day that Adrienne Levi would never be defined by the aberrations that caused her suffering.
And they could either see that or be run over.