Chapter 8
After I yelled Edwin’s name, it was hard for me to go back to sleep so I didn’t. Instead, I stayed up and knew that I was being watched by Alaric. My heart didn’t stop beating into my chest as I waited for him to leave the room but I knew he wasn’t going to.
Now, it was morning and the sun was coming up but I didn’t know when I actually fell asleep. It was scary how that happened. The same man that I feared, I ended up falling asleep with him watching me rather than watching him to see what his next move would be.
I couldn’t tell what time it was but I turned and realized that he must've lifted me out of the floor and placed me in the bed. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Why was he doing that?
I inhale a breath in and exhale as I refuse to think about the many ways he could get rid of me as my nerves take over at the meeting with my son for the first time in my life.
As the water pelts against my skin giving me the only comfort I will ever receive in this lonely mansion, his words… Alaric's words hit my ear again.
I don’t want to hear another man’s name leave your lips.
They weren’t words of a jealous man, they were words of a man that wanted to take everything away from me. He wanted me to go down with him, to die with him…and there was no way to ever come back from that.
I was Alaric’s and he was my nightmare. One I wouldn’t wake up from. Not if he had anything to do with it.
While I shut my eyes and didn’t want to think about anything else, in my head, there was the same notion, the same feeling of what I dreaded the most coming every time my eyes shut.
A man wrapped his big hand around the back of my neck and he cut off my circulation. I had nothing and nowhere to go or look as my body refused to move.
I wasn’t in control of anything that pertained to me.
The therapist in prison says it’s just me giving my nightmares a body… a body of man but she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see it. It isn’t that simple.
She says I’m afraid of men but really I am afraid of myself. Afraid of the person I could become because of the predicament that Alaric put me in.
While in prison, I learned to defend myself, to fight and just when it was becoming too much where I thought I was losing myself, he pulled me out.
Alaric Crowne keeps on taking and taking from me even when I have nothing left to give. He wants me to stay alive so he can continue to stay dead.
He doesn’t get it. My guilt has already killed me just like I had my hands bloody because of his family. I wanted to protect my son and that’s why I gave him up. I had to.
Alaric didn’t understand. He was another Black boy growing up in the foster care system, something I was very much against. Something I stood against when I could but when things got worse with Edwin. I gave it up.
Edwin. Edwin. Edwin…
He was the reason I was enduring everything that was happening right now.
I would continue this game that Alaric set up. On one end, I was terrified of Alaric but on the other side, I noticed one thing… he wasn’t going to kill me.
He wasn’t going to let me go and do what I wanted to do; disappear.
Alaric being in my room kept me up and it wasn’t all bad because it had me thinking. It made me plot something I had never wanted before. Alaric Crowne ignited my revenge.
Because of him, the thoughts came to my mind. The hidden feelings and resentment that I still feel toward Edwin and what he did to me, hangs high.
Because of Alaric, I’ve reached inside of myself and plucked out my heart that first year in jail. My heart is dark as the night and there can be no sunlight that comes into it.
Because of Edwin, certain black and blues won’t ever fade. Not the physical ones. Those ones are gone…
No, the ones that no one but I see, the ones stuck on my mind: the ones that chase me in my dreams like he chased me around the house. The ones that remind me that I am alive everyday.
Those ones. The ones that pushed me like he did into the walls.
This was my life. This was my reality and something had shifted being here.
Something inside of me twisted more and more than the strings that Alaric had that was sunken into my skin. I was his puppet and there was nothing I could do about it.
I was already the person he tortured for, for five years. I was the girl who he couldn’t get out of his mind even if he wanted to.
Like he said… I had no words to give to the world. When my mouth opens, I say all the words Alaric wants me to say. When I cough, I cough how he wants me to cough and if he tells me to never leave this home, that’s what I’ll do. Because there is only one thing left here.
I am all that is left of me. The old Juliana had hung herself in her jail cell and I took over.
Suddenly, the water cut off and my eyes opened again. I was no longer lost in my red thoughts of things. In my mind, everything was red, disoriented and I had only myself.
“Out of the shower.” Alaric's voice fills the bathroom
and I don't have to look to know that he's there, not looking at me.
When I turned to face him, he did have his back to me. Did the man not sleep?
I didn't ask why he wasn't looking at me. I knew…
I was no human woman to him.
He probably considered me lower than that.
I was the red devil that took everything from him. But I couldn’t give up the revenge that I needed. This was all that I had of me because the rest belonged to Alaric.
Alaric Crowne ruled my world and if I wanted my revenge on Edwin, I had to become something I knew I didn’t deserve…
I had to become Alaric Crowne’s world.