Numb Pain

Chapter 7

BONUS CHAPTER<3 updating at 12 votes:3

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My heartbeat races as I spin around, gripping the vanity table. I suck in a sharp breath, struggling to let the air reach my lungs. What have I done?! Staring at his sleeping face, memories of last night's kiss suddenly become rich in my mind. Whilst Jai has been lying in pain, I've been cheating! My heart thumps in my chest as my breaths become short and laboured. I run to his side, shaking him awake. He wakes with a smile, eyes opening slowly.

"What's wrong?" he asks, frowning at my panicked expression.

"Ethan, what have I done?!" I say, not really requiring an answer as I throw his clothes swiftly to him. He catches them, letting them drop as he props himself up on his elbows.

"Eleanor, calm down. Nothing happened last night. I promise. You fell asleep on me, so I carried you to your bed. I was getting a duvet when you started to have a nightmare. When I went to wake you, you grabbed ahold of me and you settled down. So I lay with you. Look, I've still got my jeans on." He smiles weakly, throwing back the covers and showing the denim fabric beneath them. Relief washes over me. He raises an eyebrow at how I reacted. "Why, would that have been a bad thing? If you want Jai, go to him." Ethan glowers, rising to his feet and slipping on his t-shirt. "Thanks for your hospitality." He says this sarcastically, making his way down the stairs.

"Ethan, wait!" I shout down the stairs. "I'm sorry...I just...seeing Jai yesterday really set me back..." I can't find the words to explain myself, and Ethan waves his hand in dismissal.

"Save it Ellie." He says, slamming the door. And with him goes my last shred of hope.As the door shudders against it's frame, all coherent thoughts flee my mind and leave me only with grief, confusion, and an irrefutable anger. I scream at the wall, my hands shaking ferociously and seek out something, anything, to rip into small, scattered pieces. Slowly, as my body convulses, my vision goes black at the edges and all weight from my head disappears downwards. I fall to the floor, unconscious and unmoving, not a thing drifting around my head for a matter of hours.

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Maybe it's my body's way of shutting down and making sense of everything, or perhaps it's a useless, pointless way of shredding my frustration, leaving it to fizzle out until I wake up. Either way, when I wake, disorientated and confused, a thick throbbing encompasses my head, and when I look to the carpet it is soaked through with blood.

Though the throbbing refuses it's halt, I push myself from the floor and sit, unable to make sense of anything but the fact that Jai may as well be dead and Ethan once again left me. What else is there to know but the fact that I really am entirely alone?

The picture of Jai and I still sits happily on the desk, and with a single swing of my arm, it clatters to the floor, the glass panel shattering into the blood soaked carpet and the picture landing face down underneath the bed.

"Best place for it." I mutter, though my words are inaudible, slurred and dizzy. I prick my finger on a shard of glass, and thoughts flurry my head, enveloping me in a sudden torrent of whirling fury. He abused me. He broke me, hit me, slapped me, raped me. Now the same has been done to him, and through a few letters and carefully placed pictures, he expects me to forgive him?

How?

How can anyone ever expect that of a person? I love him, part of me still urges the limbs I control to walk to that hospital and confess everything. But I can't. I can't see him again or I will only face another reminder that everything I know has been lost to the world, and for his own good, I hope he doesn't recover. The thought is so morbid that I myself am shocked, but inside I know it is for the best. I can't forgive him, maybe this morning I thought I could, seeing him lying unconscious in a sheer white hospital bed, but I can't. I brush my hands over the deep gashes and bruises caused by his own muscle and flesh, and rage flushes through my cheeks. If he dies, though I wish it to be quick and peaceful, its better for the both of us. He will be in a happier place, free of the memories and forgotten promises, and I will no longer fear yet crave his awful presence.

In that split second, I make up my mind. I know where I must go. I heave myself to my feet, ignoring the hammered beating against my skull and refusing to touch my hand to the blood that seeps from my forehead above my eyebrow, and walk steadily to the front door. Each agonising step leads me closer to him, to the one I know I can give everything, though it may be hard to accept. In a pained attempt, I drag the whereabouts of his house, of which I have only once visited, from my head, and stumble up the steps leading into his apartment. I knock once, twice, three times on the door.

 And fall.

The concrete of the steps dig into my back, pulsing against the cuts, grazes and bruises already on my flesh. I fight to keep my eyes open, ashamed that I cannot keep my own figure upright, though the blood continues to seep into my hair, and slowly, agonisingly slowly, my vision fades.

Maybe this is the end. The end. Maybe this is where it stops. No more pain, Ellie. You can live again. Be free.

My mind tortures me with thoughts of the final breath, but before I can counter, the world in front of me deepens to an inky black.