Imogen
The sensation of Parker’s grasp viciously closes in on me.
My throat instinctively cinches as though his hands are there now, and a cough erupts from my chest as I climb off the dining room table.
I clutch at my neck, my stomach lurching so hard I nearly vomit from the shock of it all returning.
I feel… invaded. Like something foreign and wrong was forced into the fabric of me and left to rot.
The memory carries heavy shame, though I know I was only a child.
It makes my skin crawl to think his touch is part of my history—like my body kept it, even when my mind refused to. I almost want to scrub myself raw. To peel back the years and find the place where he laid that first stain and rip it out. But I can’t.
I force it back. Down, down, down. But it keeps scratching its way back up, frame by frame, unstoppable. It’s like watching something unfold in a horror film. Like I’m seeing it happen to someone else—a different little girl. And all I can do is cry for her.
This was never a dream, never a nightmare I created, but something I built walls around as a psychological defense mechanism.
The papers prove it. The intake forms, my name scrawled in Mom’s handwriting. She tried to save me before it could harden into something permanent. I didn’t even make it past that first appointment. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t remember enough to explain. And after that, we never spoke of it again.
Mom must have hoped I would come to her when I was ready.
As for Parker Lane, I never saw him again. He simply disappeared, dissolved into nothing like mist. I don’t know what Mom did about him. If she went to the police. If she begged his mother to send him away. The papers don’t say. They stop here, at the worst part.
I don’t even realize that my back is against the dining room wall, my body sinking to the floor—my vision taken over by the darkest reminiscence.
I’m pulled from it all when I hear it again.
Knock, knock, knock.