Chapter 1 #2
The guy jumped back to avoid getting splashed as the bus pulled over through a huge puddle. In doing so, he bumped into Eris. The wallet slipped out of her hands.
The people rushed on the bus.
The man grumbled some apology and bent to pick up what he thought was Eris’ wallet, and that was when she knew she was fucked.
“You fucking bitch!”
Eris bolted. She dashed across the street without even bothering to look, ignoring the wave of nausea rising from her stomach.
If she could make it back to the park, darkness would be her salvation.
But she was slow and dizzy and before she got to the gate a brutal force grabbed her by the hair and hurled her to the ground.
The impact with the concrete was nasty. The piercing in Eris’ bottom lip split her gums against her teeth, but a much worse, overwhelming pain quickly wiped away everything else.
A violent kick landed in her abdomen. She gagged, gasping for air. She knew she was too drunk to counter-attack.
The backpack slipped off her shoulder as she scrambled back. She hauled herself up, hanging on to the bars of the park’s railing. The nausea was getting hard to dismiss.
“I’m not done with you!” shouted the man in a drawled accent. He was big, but he was half drunk, too, and his attack was sloppy. Eris waited until the last second. She pushed herself off to the side to dodge him, causing him to crash into the railing. His cry of pain was music to her ears.
The backpack.
She needed to retrieve the backpack and get out of here.
She’d barely moved two steps when the sickness hit again and, this time, she couldn’t fight it.
She collapsed against a nearby bin and threw up everything her stomach had to give. Before she could catch her breath, the man was on her again.
Her back hit the hard concrete. A flurry of kicks came down into her side. She curled on herself, choked cries of pain heaving out of her mouth.
The knife.
She needed the knife.
No. No knife.
One more ABH charge would land her a first-class ticket to jail.
Another kick blinded her, angrier, stronger than the previous one.
A stab of blinding pain bolted from her temple across her body like electricity.
Her sight blacked out. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, desperately trying to stay lucid, but the ache was everywhere, crushing her lungs, dimming her reason, and all she could do was whimper like a pussy.
It wasn’t her first beating.
She could take much worse than this. On an average day, she would have been perfectly capable of fending for herself, of returning every punch and every kick three times harder. But tonight, with so much alcohol and no food in her system, she was defenceless.
Another kick to the stomach wrung a breathless cry of agony out of her. It felt like she was shattering on the inside. High above her, the bellowing of her aggressor was growing muddled and distant.
Her palms flattened on the pavement, blunt nails digging into it as she tried to push her scraped face up. A heavy foot stomped her back down.
“I don’t think so, bitch.”
A suffocated grunt scratched up her throat.
So she’d picked the wrong bloke to mess with. Maybe it’d be her last mistake, instead.
If only…
She was ready to die. She’d fantasised about it so many times: an accident at the warehouse, a pallet giving in, its heavy load crashing down from the highest tiers. A quick, painless death. The freedom of not having to try so hard anymore.
No more pain.
No more struggling.
Just peace.
Peace…
She was tired.
She’d been tired for too long.
She let herself slip into the silence that was coiling around her, lured by its sweet promise of oblivion.
Each kick crushed more air out of her. She coughed and coughed, but it didn’t make any sound.
It was like falling asleep: the world fading, every sense shutting down under a soft blanket of darkness.
A different sound floated to her.
She rolled her head towards it, squinting through her blurry vision to see where it had come from, but all she saw was a glimpse of white light and two golden suns hovering above her.
She had never seen such luminous beauty.
And the pain… The pain was gone.
She let her eyes droop closed.
The angel of death had finally come to take her.
“Hey.”
Something touched her face.
Something without violence, without malice.
Something soft and gentle. Alien.
A voice was speaking to her, but she couldn’t hear what it said. All she knew was that it was calling her back, tugging her away from her the safety of the void she’d taken shelter in.
Heavy and boneless, she convinced her eyes to open. Something white and bright was above her—the source of the soundless voice. Except it was getting clearer, less and less muffled.
Eris wasn’t sure what was going on. She couldn’t remember where she was or what she was doing.
“Do you understand me?”
Yes, Eris wanted to say. She tried, but her lips didn’t move. There was an iron taste on her tongue.
The voice continued talking. But it wasn’t just a voice, and the white light wasn’t just a light: it was a girl.
“I’d better take you to the hospital.”
One of those words set off an alarm. Eris didn’t know which one, but the beautiful hallucination above her seemed to pick up on her panic.
“No hospital?”
Eris clutched a hand on the girl’s arm. More questions came and were answered like that. The situation barely made sense, but Eris was rolling with it to cling to the only two things within her perception: the girl’s soothing voice and her touch on Eris’ face.
Then the world shifted. Eris’ legs were moving and then they were not. She was seated somewhere, a dull, throbbing ache strewn across her body. Not dead. Not entirely alive either, but definitely not dead.
Disappointed, she let her head fall back, picking at the cuticle of her thumb as the girl kept speaking. Too many words, too fast.
The rain.
A car honking ahead.
A persistent metallic clink.
Through the confusion fogging her mind, Eris managed to figure out she was sitting in a van—a van that smelled like greenery.
And they were driving—away from the park and away from the guy who’d almost beaten the life out of Eris.
She was still debating whether she should feel grateful or resentful for that.
The angel of death was just a girl. A girl who didn’t know how to stop running her mouth, apparently.
“So, what’s your name?”
Eris, small-talk detester on any average day, couldn’t believe she was being harassed like this in such distressing circumstances.
If she could have, she would’ve begged the stranger to just drop her off at the nearest chemist. Eris was good at nursing her own wounds, she could take it from here.
The only problem was that she didn’t have anywhere to do that.
Back home, her housemates were waiting for her, expecting money she didn’t have.
“I’m Denny.”
Eris snorted. The name suited the girl. Annoyingly so. Denny was a dainty thing, long blond hair falling in turquoise-streaked waves past her shoulders, and olive eyes that were studying Eris like she was a wild animal.
“Mind if we keep the music?”
Eris was hardly aware that there was music playing. The metallic clink came from a penguin keychain dangling from the rear view mirror. It was slowly driving her insane.
She locked eyes with Denny. Don’t give a fuck.
Her lips still weren’t moving like she meant them to. It happened, sometimes, when things got too much. Unfortunately, the lack of reciprocation didn’t deter Denny from chirping on.
“You’re so calm… Are you sure you’re okay?”
Eris pressed her lips together. Every word felt like a million electric needles on her skin.
I’m okay, stop asking.
“Forgive me for insisting, but you look… Well, really bad.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever looked good, Princess. Put a fucking sock in it.
She lacked the energy to put up with the conversation any further. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, praying Denny would get the message.
“Alright, I’ll let you rest. Can you please just give me a sign you haven’t passed out from time to time? Any sign?”
Eris’ leg started bouncing.
“Oh, yeah, that’ll do!”
This time, Eris’ internal snort was more like a laugh.
She had no clue who this girl was or where she was taking her, but right now she couldn’t bring herself to care. If Blondie was a serial killer, she was welcome to finish what the Yank had started. Eris just wanted to forget there was a world outside of this van and enjoy the drive.
She could sense the bruises blossoming under her skin; her gum burned where the piercing had split it, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore.
Everything hurt, but it was a muted hurt, like her senses weren’t properly plugged in.
She couldn’t assess the real extent of the damage, especially not with Denny singing along to the most unhinged playlist Eris had ever heard.
It didn’t help that the girl couldn’t carry a tune to save her life.
“Feel free to skip, if you don’t like the song.”
Eris stretched an arm out and clasped her hand over Denny’s mouth. The girl turned to her with a perfect rendition of an audioless ‘Oh’ displayed in her eyes.
Eris turned off the music, too.
After that, the only sounds in the van were the muted whirring of the electric engine and the pitter-patter of the rain.