Sneak Peak of Blurred Lines
T hey say memories don’t lie.
But mine do.
Well at least I thought they did, until my dreams became more prominent, callous, and leaving me with a hollowed, sickly feeling in my stomach each time I wake, clawing and trying to rip the images from my heart and head.
I tell myself these dreams can’t be real, but something deep within me tells me they’re lost moments, stolen memories; ones I don’t want.
They’re just fragments, broken scenes of a time that feels long forgotten, of a scared little girl, that girl being me.
The dreams are erratic, jumping from a toddler version of me, in tattered clothes that were way too small for my body, merging into an older, curvier version, a teenager.
Squeezing my eyes tightly closed, I can still hear the voices that ring loudly in my skull even long after the dream has dispersed into nothing.
Faceless, iniquity laced voices that I feel are so damn nefarious, even though I don’t know how a dream could possibly elicit these sorts of reactions, these volatile thoughts.
Yet somehow, I feel it so deep in my marrow that I’ve heard them before, seen them at some point, that I’ve lived the memory that plays havoc in my mind.
So much so, that I fear I’m going to be sick every time I wake up.
That’s why I jumped in an Uber early this morning, without so much as a word to Adam or Connor.
It may have taken me forever to grow the balls and finally climb into the uber, but it has led me to this exact moment... Standing outside of my mother’s house.
She wasn’t much of a mum, not until Damon entered our lives, even though he didn’t know that I existed until I ran out one night because my grandmother refused to look after me. Damon tells me that night changed his life. I smile at the memory because it undoubtedly altered mine as well.
He didn’t have to care for me, love me, but chose to. He took me under his arm, adopting me and marrying my mother. However, my mother never stayed faithful to him, and it wasn’t long before she turned into a cheating whore.
But that’s not why I’m here.
It’s her voice. I know it is.
It’s her voice filled with vicious intent for reasons I don’t understand, and I can’t decipher. They feel too real to only be a dream, and I’m starting to question my mind, my entire being, my entire fucking life.
My cousin, Dottie, who is now engaged to my adopted step father, Damon, yeah that’s a long story, well she said something to me a few months ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
Dottie had something on her.
Has something on her.
She remembers what I’ve buried so far into my psyche, that I fear when I unravel it, I might not recover from the repercussions, but I need to know. I have to know. I’m pushing everyone away, distancing myself from my fiancé and his best friend, whom I don’t really know what we are together.
Are we a throuple?
Fuck knows, but what I do know is my heart may beat for Adam, but it skips for Connor, and that’s not something I had anticipated. Ever. Swallowing the saliva collecting in my mouth, I lift my hand to knock on the door, but it stops short when I hear another voice.
His voice.
“Nicky, you shouldn’t be here.”
I can hear the frustration in my mother’s voice, but it’s his voice I’m stuck on. It’s like a cold, dark, nightmare that lives in the recesses of my mind, asphyxiating and making my stomach turn.
The voice that haunts me.
My body breaks out in goosebumps, and I begin to shiver profusely, my mind teetering between flight and fight, because I know I’m having an outer body experience and I’m heading into uncharted waters and into shock.
Closing my eyes, fresh tears fall free, but I push them away, focusing on my breathing. When I feel like it’s under control, I pull my phone free and dial the only person who can help me.
“Baby girl, where are you?”
“Dad…” I try, my words cutting off, fear like I’ve never felt before strangling me when I hear his voice again.
“Arriana, where are you?” My dad says, pulling me from a memory trying to resurface.
“Dad, please, I need you to come and get me.”
“Ok, ok,” Damon says carefully. “Where are you?”
I hesitate, not knowing how much I want to devolve, because I don’t really have much to go on except some tormenting, fractured dreams that feel real. So fucking real they scare me .
“Baby girl?”
The cry I was trying to hold back breaks through the line, and I hear Dottie’s breath catch. I know it’s her. I’d know my cousin; my best friend, even if I were deaf and blind. She is the other half of me, and I would die if I lost her or anything came between us.
And it nearly did.
My mother.
Fear festers and bubbles beneath the surface as his voice becomes louder, closer, along with my mother’s. Doing the only thing I can think of, I quickly step down the stairs and move around the side of the house to the bush I know is still there, a tear escaping and sliding down my face.
“Arriana?”
Dad’s voice sounds like it is underwater, and I feel as if I’m about to pass out as I stumble while trying to hide in the bush. Forcing the words out between hurried breaths, the panic and anxiety capitalising and overwhelming my senses, my tongue feels as if there is a thick film coating it.
“I’m at mums, please hurry!”
And then I pass the fuck out.