Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
You should’ve seen this coming. I told you physical contact is not allowed. Only by me.
Dom’s words echo inside my head like a broken record player. He did warn me. He didn’t tell me that contact by accident counts as well. And I unfortunately had to find that out the hard way.
I guess I’m lucky in some way, he only gave me five lashes.
Five lashes for the five seconds he was holding you.
The only positive side of how I look is that he doesn’t find me attractive, meaning I am no help in satisfying his other urges. But either way I am his property, if only for the sole purpose of being his personal punching bag.
Miss Sophia’s voice curls around my ears as I sit in her office, but the pain that currently has me in its stronghold blocks out my capacity to interpret her words.
The wounds are sore and my muscles protest with every move I make, finding a comfortable sitting position is impossible. The skin didn’t break, which is a mercy, but the bruises are everywhere.
“We shall pick up where we left off last time.”
The vanilla office with its cream and white walls and furniture comes back into focus, her words penetrate my thoughts as she is apparently done with her monologue.
That means it’s up to me to do the talking.
Digging through my brain in the hope that something might rise to the surface is a tiresome process and one with barely any result.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to recover my memories, desperately even. But every time I feel like something is within reach, it slips through my fingers and I am left with a bone deep tiredness. A headache where I’m unable to function with and a confused mind that tries to figure out what is missing.
Still, I nod.
Miss Sophia offers a kind smile and pulls a small stack of photographs from the leather folder beside her.
“Same exercise as before,” she says as she holds up the images to her chest, arranging them.
“I’ll show you a series of images and you say the first thing that comes to mind, let your intuition speak. ”
She shows me the first image. A yellow flower in a field, a sunflower I know now.
“Joy.”
She nods and places it aside. The next one is a broken teacup on stone tiles. “Loss.”
A cracked mirror. “Broken.”
She studies me briefly before moving onto the next. An open hearth where a fire casts the room in shadows, orange embers flickering around it.
My heart stops and I look at her, unsure of what to say or think.
“What do you see, Maily? What feeling does it give you.”
“I…”
I blink, try to respond to her question, but my vision blurs and I tumble into a rabbit hole.
I stand barefoot on smooth floorboards, my skin tingles from the change in temperature. A coat hangs by the door, a worn chair stands next to the hearth and I believe I have touched that table before. The room feels familiar, I’m just not sure how or why.
Yet, something feels…off.
The temperature is too hot, uncomfortable even. Sweat runs down my neck into the pyjamas I’m wearing. I blink and the light becomes impossibly bright, the air dry all of a sudden and that smell…
Smoke swirls in my lungs, and I desperately search for air to breathe. I cough to let air flow through, but it does nothing to relieve the pressure that builds in my chest, to let air flow through.
Heat bites at my skin, so much now that it becomes painful. And when a loud crack sounds from behind me, I know I don’t want to turn around, but somehow I have to.
I turn.
All I see is fire, consuming everything in its wake.
“Maily!”
Miss Sophia’s voice pulls me back into the present, or maybe it was the shaking of my shoulders that did the trick.
Whatever that was, my body is still caught up in fight or flight mode, unsure if I have escaped the horror that was about to happen.
My fingers dig into the edge of the sofa, trying to find some footing.
After all these years… a memory resurfaced. I thought I would be happy. Finally remembering something about the life I lived before arriving at Anima.
But the fire, the smoke I inhaled… What does it mean?
“I…I saw a house, or, no. A room,” I murmur. “Flames were everywhere, licking up the walls and I…I was standing in the middle of it.”
I let out a shaky breath and try to calm my galloping heart.
Miss Sophia remains silent, which is very unlike her.
She watches me, but her body is tense, as if she too is on high alert.
Right when I’m about to beg her to say something, she speaks.
“Can you remember anything else? What did the room look like, have you been there before? What were you feeling?”
I swallow hard, my throat somehow sore and dry. I don’t remember anything, not a single detail. Only a feeling.
“Home. It felt like home.”
And I know that makes no sense, because if it were my home, I should remember that, right? But as soon as I have spoken the words, I know it’s a certainty, not a feeling.
Miss Sophia closes her notebook. I didn't even know she was taking notes, as she folds her hands in front of her. “I believe that is enough for today.”
“What does it mean, Miss Sophia? Is it some kind of metaphor?”
She weighs her words carefully and takes a nerve-wracking amount of time to answer. “I cannot say for certain, but whatever it may be, your mind just opened its first door.”
So it is a memory. She didn’t say it with that many words, but surely that is what she means, right?
“This is progress Maily, it’s a positive thing.”
But if it’s a good thing, why is she so tense all of a sudden? The urge to ask her to dig deeper is all consuming, but the throbbing headache that is already surfacing makes me hold my tongue. Now is not the time, I should give myself a break.
I thank her and tell her goodbye as I leave her office behind. Miraculously, there is still some time left before lunch and diving into a book sounds like a very good idea, to hopefully give my mind a much needed break.
Calling it a library feels very generous. It’s really just a walk-in closet with a few bookcases shoved in. Two shelves stand on either side of me, and the aisle between them is just wide enough for me to walk through it without my shoulders brushing the spines.
There aren’t many people who read here in Anima, so this modest collection is more than enough for most of them. Me on the other hand, has read every book in this room more times than I can count.
Still, I’m not complaining. These stories, familiar as they are, offer a quiet kind of freedom. A way to leave this place behind, if only for a little while.
I reach for a book at random, a romance this time. They might just be my favourite genre. I’ve never experienced love myself, the passionate kind at least, but reading about it sometimes comes pretty close to feeling it.
The common room is situated on the first floor and although it isn’t that cosy, there is a very comfy seat with my name on it.
Worn out leather and a small bench to rest your legs on.
It’s all that I need. Snow falls down the sky as I pass one of the windows and it creates the perfect reading aesthetic. Or, almost perfect at least.
I can’t shake off the feeling that there’s something wrong with the memory I saw. I’m not seeing the whole picture, but right when I feel minutes away from figuring it out, my mind freezes. The headache returns instantly.
I dive into my book, disappear into the world in my hands. Time ticks away as I read and I lose myself into the words until a bead of sweat travels down my hairline.
I am not reading a spicy scene, yet I am burning. The room temperature is warm, but it shouldn’t be warm enough to sweat. I wipe my hand across my upper lip and dive back into my book.
As my eyes trail over the words, my vision starts to blur until the words become a black spot on the paper. I rub my eyes and the stain is gone, but so is the common room and the worn-out seat I was sitting in. I am back in the house that feels familiar, but doesn’t at the same time.
Flames are all around me as I stand in the middle of the same room. I turn around and a woman stands there, mouth moving, speaking words I cannot hear. She looks terrified, soot already tinting her cheeks with black. She’s screaming something, but the sound doesn’t reach me either.
Suddenly, she grabs my arms in an iron grip. I try to break free, but it’s like she’s glued to me.
I blink and everything goes dark for a moment and when it returns, the room has changed. Gone are the walls, completely burned down and all that is left is smouldering wood and ashes.
The woman lays in front of me, her body intact, but not breathing. I don’t have to check her pulse to know so, her heart has stopped beating, the expression edged on her face one full of desperation.
My heart pounds erratically as I take in what is played out in front of me. My arms are covered in sooth and if I take a closer look at my hands, I notice small sparks hovering around them.
Right when I’m about to take a step forward, the burned down house disappears and I’m in the seat in Anima. Yet the scent of smoke still stings my nose, making my throat dry and my eyes tear up.
A sound draws my attention to the window in front of me, glowing eyes watch me in the shadows and I quickly turn around, but nothing’s there.
What the actual fuck was that?