Chapter 14 - Trina
This can’t be real…
The darkness around me is so complete that there is no change to it, no definition. The shadows are heavy, pressing against me like walls closing in. I try to struggle free, but I’m bound, tight ropes wrapped all around me.
“Dana, please, no!” I scream.
All I hear in response is cruel laughter as a blow strikes me across the face. My knees ache as I kneel on the concrete floor, along with my hips and back from sleeping on it, too. My wrists and ankles burn from the ropes, and over my cries, I can hear Aunt Dana laughing.
“But how is Mom? She’s okay, isn’t she? You’re helping her?” I beg.
“She’ll get what she deserves,” Aunt Dana says, her voice cruel. “You can come and see her soon, when I let you out to clean the house.”
Tears pour down my cheeks and torrents of words come out of me—apologies and desperate pleas. Aunt Dana scoffs in disgust and leaves, slamming the basement door behind her and leaving me alone in the dark.
“Please take care of Mom!” I scream. “Do whatever else you want, Dana, but please take care of Mom!”
There is no answer, only the grumbling from my stomach as I contemplate another day without food.
I don’t know how much time passes when I’m down here, because Dana makes sure it’s as dark as a grave. Sometimes I’m bound, sometimes I’m not. It depends on what sick and twisted game she wants to play at the time.
A memory flits through my mind of the day we arrived here, my mother looking so thin and frail, her long hair cropped close to her head now that she was too weak to care for it. She leaned heavily on my arm as we walked up the long concrete path to the door of Aunt Dana’s massive mansion.
“She’s not a kind person,” my mother says to me. “But she has always taken care of the family. We have no choice, now that the insurance has run out, and they took our house. Aunt Dana can provide for you and take care of me.”
From the moment Dana opened the door, I didn’t trust her. She was supposed to be my mother’s twin, but apart from having identical features, they were nothing alike. Dana’s eyes glittered with cruel light. Her face was set in a stern expression, and she never laughed or smiled.
Unless she was inflicting pain. Then her laughter was genuine.
For the first day, she was civil to us. Then, slowly, she started to bully me into cleaning the house and doing her other chores. I just wanted to care for Mom and keep going to school, but Dana told me I had to pay her back for every second of time she let me stay with her.
The abuse worsened slowly over time. Dana used her own witchcraft for personal gain and was disgusted by my lack of power.
“Stunted little weed,” she’d spit at me. “What fathered you—a fucking carrot?”
She taunted my mother when she couldn’t get out of bed, verbally abusing her for being too weak to use her powers. The only reason she’d agreed to let us stay was because she wanted to use us—but neither of us had any power she could take.
When she started restraining me and locking me in the basement and I missed school, I thought someone would notice.
I didn’t know that Dana was well-respected in town, known for charity and kindness, and caring for her ailing twin sister and bastard brat niece only made her look more saintly.
She made excuses for my days off, and no one challenged her.
This. This is the part I’ve always hidden from myself. When the abuse became horrifyingly real instead of subtle.
I struggle in the darkness again, feeling as if someone is trying to break through it to rescue me, but the nightmare drags me back down into its hellish depths.
I wanted to run away so many times, but I couldn’t leave Mom.
She eventually became bedridden, and Dana left her there, not tending to her, refusing to let me care for her.
Whenever Dana let me out, I would run to Mom, staying by her side as long as I could until Dana came for me again, beating me and throwing me back into the basement.
My mother begged me to run, but I couldn’t. Soon, she lost the ability to speak. Dana left me in the basement longer than usual. I almost went mad in the dark, until one gray afternoon she came for me and dragged me to my mother’s side.
She was only moments away from death, and I completely lost my mind with grief, screaming and begging her not to leave me. Dana slapped me and threw me against the wall.
“On the point of death, a witch may transfer her powers,” she snapped.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for this!
All I want is to get out of this stupid little town—I have a mansion waiting for me in Europe and a coven that will do my bidding, but I want this power before I go.
It’s the only reason I’ve tolerated both of you.
Your mother has always been more powerful than me, and I want her magic. Extract it for me!”
“I don’t know how,” I wail. “Please help her, please, Aunt Dana. Don’t let her die.”
“It is beyond my power, even if I would,” Dana replies. “Hold her hand, take her magic, then give it to me.”
As I took my mother’s hand, I knew that if she passed her magic to me, Dana would kill me to take it. I felt the faint flickering fire of my mother’s soul growing distant and disappearing down a long, dark tunnel.
“No!” my voice rings out, echoing through the past. “Don’t leave me!”
I hear Aunt Dana swearing, and her hands clamp hard onto my head, her thumbs digging into my temples.
I can feel her forcefully extracting my memories, locking up all her horrible deeds inside a vault I can’t breach.
She leaves once the act is done, and I am alone, sobbing with despair as I hold my mother through her last breath.
After that… fragments. Foster families. Apologies. People telling me what a saint my aunt was. How unfortunate it was that she had to leave so suddenly. I agree. And I know nothing of the truth, except for those moments of clarity in my nightmares…
“Trina, wake up!” Owen’s voice roars through the thick darkness, forcing my eyes open.
I come to with a scream that makes my ears ring. I hurl myself into his arms, clinging to him as the memories race through me, leaving me sick and shaking with shock.
“Trina,” he says, rocking me. “Thank God you’re awake.”
I tense up in his arms, needing his comfort, but suddenly understanding why his actions triggered me so much.
Anyone would react badly to getting kidnapped, but I’ve been bound before. Trapped, used, tortured… my body thought it was all going to happen again.
“Shh,” Owen whispers, stroking my hair. “I’ve got you.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Can you tell me what that was about? It’s not the first nightmare you’ve had. I had to wake you up once before.”
“Uh-huh,” I mumble, slipping out of his arms to get back into bed and wrap the cover around me. “I’ve had them for a long time, but I didn’t really understand them until now.”
“You can tell me,” he says, kneeling next to the bed. “You can tell me anything.”
I look into his eyes, wondering how much I should tell him. The wound inside me is so raw, so freshly opened, I can’t stand the idea of throwing salt into it.
I just want to hold these memories gently and try to accept them, try to understand. I don’t want to analyze myself.
Turning my face away, I look into my lap, knowing that I really don’t want to draw any comparisons between what my aunt did and Owen’s actions.
It will just seem like I’m throwing it in his face. There might be a time to tell him, but not now. Not when I’m so emotional.
“I saw some of it,” Owen says, surprising me. “Or I should say, I felt it.”
“What did you feel?” I ask.
“I’m not really sure,” he answers. “It felt like… You were hungry. Maybe trapped? Someone powerful was there, who wouldn’t let you get away. But above all, horrible, intense grief. You lost someone, didn’t you?”
“My mother,” I almost sob, curling in against myself. “She was very sick. We went to live with my aunt, but she didn’t take care of us. She abused me. I think she let my mother die. I don’t know.”
“Holy shit,” Owen says, coming up onto the bed to hug me. I lean into him, taking comfort from his strength. “What the hell happened to you?”
“It doesn’t really matter now,” I say, pushing away the memories of Aunt Dana’s abuse. “But… I do remember that she was a witch, and so was my mom.”
“Oh my God,” Owen says, keeping me huddled against his chest as he strokes my hair. “Really?”
“Really,” I reply. “My aunt wiped my memory before she left town. That’s why I didn’t remember before this.”
“Where is she now?” he asks.
I shake my head. “She said something about going to Europe. I remember seeing some documents when I was cleaning, that she’d bought a massive estate over there.
She’d been planning it for years, and it was an inconvenience to her that we showed up on her doorstep.
She wanted to make it work for her, though, and tried to take my mom’s magic.
She wasn’t able to do it, and that meant I was useless to her.
. She left right when my mom died. I went straight into foster homes. I never heard from her again.”
Owen rocks me a little, and the sensation of his fingertips stroking my long hair sends ripples of comfort running through me.
“I’m so sorry, Trina,” he says gently. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you, ever again. Please believe that.”
Even though I do believe him, I know how crazy and cruel the world can be, and the words don’t quite reach all the way to my heart. His touch comforts me, but I’m nowhere near healing.
“Well, at least we know now that you are a witch,” he says.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “But according to my aunt, I’m not very powerful. It’s one of the reasons she punished me.”
“What a horrible person,” Owen mutters, his arms tightening protectively around me.
We sit like that for a little while, and as my tears dry, my muscles relax, and I realize how tired I am.
Maybe I won’t have nightmares anymore. Maybe I can actually rest.
Even so, sleep still scares me.
“You’re tired,” Owen says. “Do you want to lie down?”
“Yes,” I reply. “You don’t have to stay. I’ll just—”
“No,” he says, pulling back to look into my face. “I can’t leave you.”
We stare at each other through the pale shadows, and the moment between us feels heavy, but not in the awkward way it’s always been so far. Vividly, I remember our shared climax, the look in his eyes when he came inside me, and the way my body clung to his with every fiber of my strength.
As if in that moment, we were truly whole.
My resolve breaks a little, and Owen strokes my cheek, smiling. The warmth inside me grows stronger, and I realize how deeply I trust him.
He did reach right into my nightmare and wake me. He might even be the catalyst that lets me remember it… as well as the part about me being a witch.
“Okay,” I say. “I want you to stay.”
He smiles and hugs me, stroking my hair again.
I press my cheek to his chest, hearing his massive, strong heart beating, the rhythm soothing me as much as his gentle touch on my hair.
Slowly, we lay down, whispering to each other a little as both of us get comfortable and Owen pulls the covers over us.
I curl up against his chest, the first feelings of wonder beginning to prickle at the back of my mind.
I really am a witch. It’s true. What kind of powers will I have now that my memories have been unlocked?
Even though the idea excites me, my body is too tired to let me think about it. I just curl up against Owen’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and enjoying the soothing touch of his fingers against my hair.