Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Elijah
W e stayed there looking out over the forest below for a few more minutes before getting back on the road. I turned the radio on to give her some space, and if I was honest, I needed it too. We ate our sandwiches in silence as the miles went by. But as every one passed, my anxiety grew. I didn’t finish my meal before my stomach cramped with panic and I lost my appetite.
Putting away my leftovers in the cooler, I reclined the seat a little and stretched my legs out as much as I could in the cramped car. It took a massive amount of control to keep my breathing even and to will my hands to stop shaking. When I couldn’t keep the tremors at bay, I tucked my hands beneath my thighs and closed my eyes. Turning my face up to the roof of the car, I worked through the steps of my meditation techniques I’d learned in the hospital.
Deep, slow breaths, counting the inhales and exhales. Ignore the racing beat of my heart, drown out its thundering beat with asinine phrases. I’m safe, nothing can hurt me. No one is here to get me. Breathe in the calm, breathe out the panic. My body isn’t shaking in fear, my heart isn’t racing, and my lungs aren’t restricted, I can breathe. It all felt like bullshit when I knew someone was really out there trying to get me to hurt me.
When the therapy meditation didn’t work, I tried the old meditations I used to do after a hard day at work. But I couldn’t get my mind to go blank to picture anything. I also couldn’t get my muscles to relax and let go of the tension. My body and mind didn’t want to cooperate, as a result I was stretched to the limit like a rubber band. I’d kill for one of those antianxiety pills right about now. And that thought made me sick.
“E, I know you’re wigging out over there, I can feel the turmoil of your thoughts.” Her voice gave me something to focus on, but my knee started to bounce anyway.
The crunch of grave preceded the car coming to a stop. I opened my eyes to see she’d pulled over on the shoulder of the highway. But I couldn’t look at her, not right now. A panic attack hovered on the edge, waiting for me to lose the fight. If I looked at her and saw sympathy, I’d lose the fight. I would not have a panic attack in the car, the confinement would only make things worse. Uttu had held me confined for months. Don’t think about her!
Her seatbelt clicked and nylon sliding against plastic sounded overly loud. It amazed me, I could hear it over my ragged breathing and racing heart. My eyes closed again, and I kept trying to get the images in my head to turn to black, so I could overlay them with something else beside the demon and the terror. I felt her moving around the car, and then the small weight of my seatbelt gave with the click of a button. Her cold fingers gently tugged my arms out of the way, so the belt could release me.
The band on my lungs eased a fraction of a fraction. I felt her looming over my and the control I’d been fighting to keep within my grasp ripped away like broken tension cable as the panic rushed out. Even knowing it was Kainda looming over me and not that abomination didn’t make a difference. My eyes came open at the same time I bolted upright in the seat and grabbed her. Faster than I should’ve been able to move, I turned in the tight space and pinned her back against her seat.
“Shit!” The word escaped her, and it sounded far away even though she was only inches from me.
A rushing started in my ears and my vision blurred. I blinked to clear it, but it didn’t clear. Superimposed over Kainda’s features were the demon. Her warm honey gaze became covered in red, glowing eyes with slit pupils. The freckles on her face washed out beneath an even more pale skin tone. Her straight flat teeth faded behind sharp teeth and a pair of thin fangs. Her messy, auburn ponytail clouded over by long, stringy raven’s wing black hair.
“No!” My whole body shook, and I couldn’t get my hands to release her. The demon sat before me and I couldn’t bare the thought of touching her or her touching me. But my hands didn’t get the message. Looking down at them, spider webbing I knew couldn’t be real covered my hands, welding them in place. Experience told me, no matter how hard I struggled, they wouldn’t break.
Her muscles tensed as she tried to move, and my grip tightened around her upper arms. The small sound of pain she made vanished under the crushing fear in control of me. I needed to get out of here. Now!
“E, she’s not here. You’re safe. I’m Kainda, I’m here with you and she can’t get you. She’s not holding you prisoner anymore. Focus on me, Elijah.”
The voice didn’t sound like the demon. No hissing lisp. No weird phrases. She didn’t call me her fly. The voice pushed back the panic, and I kept blinking, trying to get the image before me to match the voice.
“Come on, E. You know me, Kainda. Look at me, see me, not her. I won’t hurt you, and I won’t let her hurt you again. Please, E, I promise you it's safe. You can move your hands, they aren’t trapped.”
Her head tipped to one side and the hair brushed against my hands. I shouldn’t have been able to feel it through the webs, and it didn’t feel greasy or dirty. My vision blurred with tears and my eyes burned. I hung my head, trying to make it make sense. Taking another deep breath brought the smell of soap and chocolate to my nose. Not even a trace of the coppery smell of blood tainted the scent.
Kainda had been eating a chocolate bar when the panic attack had started. Lifting my head this time, I no longer saw the demon. Instead, I saw fear had turned Kainda’s eyes more of a green than a brown. My hands still held her pinned back to her seat, my fingers digging into her arms. I felt the strain in my arms from how hard I was holding her, and I let go like she’d burned me.
Reaching blindly behind me, I opened the door and threw myself backward out of the car. Gravel scraped against my palms, and I heard her call my name as I struggled to get my feet underneath me. Spinning around, I grabbed the guard rail at the back of the car and threw up my lunch. I heard a car door open and close, gravel crunching beneath shoes, before I felt her presence behind me. She thankfully didn’t touch me.
“Take a drink of this.” A plastic bottle of water came into my field of view. Once I took it, she said, “I’ll wait for you in the car.”
I used the first drink to rinse my mouth out, getting rid of the bitter, acid taste of vomit. After spitting it out, I took a few more deep breaths and felt the sun shining down, hot, on the back of my neck. When my heartbeat and breathing had slowed to normal, I took a drink of the water cold from the cooler. My stomach cramped and shame clawed its way up the back of my throat.
Getting back in the car felt like I slogged through wet cement. Kainda didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at her yet. After a few minutes of silence, she sighed and put the car in drive and merged back onto the highway. Anger at the demon simmered in my chest, mixing with the embarrassment of the attack, and the deep well of depression welcomed both feelings. I needed to apologize to Kainda, I knew that when I looked at her arms there’d be bruises.
Of all the incidents and people I’d accidentally hurt since getting rescued, this one might be the one that finally broke me. I hated myself for hurting her. If I couldn’t control the panic attacks, I needed to go back to the hospital to keep me from hurting anyone else I cared about. Causing her pain hit me harder than any of the other times I’d wigged out and injured someone. The fear I’d see in her eyes when I finally saw them and not the demon’s would haunt me. I’d wanted to see some emotion in her gaze other than indifference, and now that I had, I wished I hadn’t.