“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice is barely above a murmur. Low and haunted.
Jeremy snatches my hand that’s balling into a fist and splays it out on the gun. I try to resist, to fight, but I’m no match for his strength.
His larger palm engulfs mine and he forces my finger to press on the trigger. He then lifts it to my temple with chilling calm until the cold muzzle is glued to my skin.
“Don’t do this.” My words tremble in sync with my insides. “I don’t want to die.”
When he speaks, it’s as if a demon has possessed him. His voice is monotone, cruel, and absolutely frightening. “Answer the question or you’ll have to take two in a row.”
I shake my head, my vision becoming blurry, and it’s then I realize my eyes are filled with tears. I can feel the air being forced out of my lungs and how the gun gains more weight with every passing second.
“If you’re calling my bluff…” He exerts force on my trigger finger.
“Wait, wait!” I blurt, the high of emotions wrecking through me like a hurricane. “It…it started during the last year of secondary school.”
“I didn’t ask you when it started, I asked why.”
I purse my lips. “Mental stress.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question. What’s the reason behind the mental stress, Cecily? What drives a confident girl like you to the point of dissociating from the world?”
I can feel my carefully built armor cracking, disintegrating, and scattering around me in bloody pieces, but I still hold on to the illusion that I can hide this part of me. “Does there need to be a reason?”
“There’s always a reason for choosing to escape inside your mind.” His voice hardens. “Why do you shut out the world and people who care about you to entertain your demons?”
My spine jerks, more at his tone and stiffening posture than what he’s demanding of me.
A crazy thought forms in my head. Could he be interested in this because he encountered something similar?
Or am I imagining things?
“Answer the question, Cecily. Properly this time.”
The nonnegotiable quality of his voice mixes with his firm grip on my finger.
If I die, then he killed me.
The fact that this might be the last moments I have, that in a few seconds, he might blow my head off, gives me the courage and openness I’ve never experienced before.
Not even when I’m drunk.
The words tumble out of me in broken sentences, “My…my secondary school boyfriend…uh…he tried to have sex with me, but I always told him I wasn’t ready, and he was mad about it so he…drugged me and stripped me. I was frozen on the bed as he turned my body left and right. I was screaming in my head, but no sound came out. I was calling for help, but no one heard me. All I could do was watch as he removed every piece of my clothing. I couldn’t stop him, couldn’t fight, couldn’t do anything as I lay there and smelled his putrid cologne and cigarettes. He tried to rape me, but the moment he put his thing in my mouth, I vomited all over him. He called me disgusting and left, but not before taking pictures and videos of me in compromising positions. He said…he said if I told anyone or reported him, he’d release all the material he had on porn sites.” I choke on my words. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t even tell my own parents. I was so scared and wanted to confide in them so badly, but that would have meant that Papa would see his little girl all drugged and stripped and think he couldn’t protect me. Mum would feel so bad, too, and hurting them would’ve killed me. So I preferred to keep it a secret. But I think—no—I’m sure I overestimated my ability to get past the traumatic experience. Ever since then, I go into these phases where I’m helpless, unable to scream or move or ask for help. Just like then.”
Silence falls in the room except for my harsh breathing and the involuntary sniffles that accompany my tears.
I try to stop them, but I can’t.
I can’t help the breakdown that storms through me and destroys everything in its path.
My heart hurts and everything in me aches with a force that I can’t contain. And the sole witness of my pathetic, vulnerable state is none other than Jeremy.
The devil Jeremy who forced me to tell him about a part of me I’ve kept buried for so long.
The monster Jeremy who has no heart to feel what I’m voicing for the first time since it happened about two years ago.
But maybe this is better. If I’d told this to Papa, Mum, Ava, or the others, they would’ve been devastated. They would’ve blamed themselves and blamed me for keeping it hidden. Emotions would’ve been at an all-time high and it would’ve broken me.
But Jeremy is an emotionless vault. A heartless man who only serves his own agenda.