What Should Have Been From The Beginning

A Nightmare Come True

MEREDITH'S POV

Still with a white towel wrapped around me, clenching my stomach as I felt a small wave of sickness float through my stomach but thankfully passing, I walked towards the door and grabbed the handle from inside, pushed down on it and watched as what I instantly witnessed sent shivers along every inch of my skin and I immediately regretted everything I had just done. 

The door swung open with a forceful giant stood on the other side. No eye contact was made yet as the predator checked left and right, for what I imagined to be looking for anyone else. His head and face was cloaked in a black mask and the rest of his body covered by dark clothing. He stood inches above me and as he looked down straight into my room, he grabbed my arm, constricted my skin between his fist, and pushed me back into my room. In the seconds that everything was happening, every memory and thought I had ever had flashed before my eyes and I gulped harder than ever as I was being launched back onto the bed. I was naked. Underneath the towel, I was naked. And all I could think about in that moment was that the man, that was now rummaging around in his coat pocket, was going to realise I was completely undressed underneath a thin coating and rape me. He was going to rape me and if I made it out, Derek was going to have to live with the fact that his fiancé had been raped. I kept my legs closed tightly together, hoped the worst wouldn't happen, tried to hold back tears until I saw him rip a piece of duct tape from his pocket and walked towards me. This time I felt the only way I was going to get help, was a risky way but I screamed with the entirety of my lung capacity, hoping someone would hear me. Call the police. Be brave enough to come inside my room. I needed someone, anyone. 

Before I knew it, there was a hand around my throat, tears flowing frequently down my cheek and a secured strip of tape across my mouth, restricting my breathing. I opened my eyes from closing them and holding them tightly shut, blocking out any image of what was happening and trying to think happy thoughts, to be greeted by a gun. To my head. There was a pistol held up about a metre in front of me. I took a deep, lasting breath at the realisation I could be killed right now and someone would have to come in and find my dead, lifeless, naked body across these sheets. I held my breathe the whole moment of realisation and even though nobody could ever prepare themselves for what I was facing, I accepted it and was ready to just get it over and done with. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be quick and sudden. Not painful and filled with unacceptance. Then after that moment of realisation, the possible baby came into my mind for the first time. Just as well, the first bout of love for this child, that I may be carrying. This child would die along with me and Derek would be left alone. No wife. No child. He wouldn't be able to cope. He wouldn't live. His love for me would make him want to die. My mind was going back off into a tangent of imagination however quickly returned back to reality of a nightmare. 

I had no idea whatsoever why this was happening. Who this was. Why me? Why was I the one to be targeted? Grasping my stomach and now becoming blocked from receiving an appropriate amount of breathing air, I shut my eyes once more and then they didn't open again after that. Not once. Warm breathe had swept across my skin. A short instance of stationary life happened and then haunting sensations chilled my veins. A hand, a single hand, dominated my leg, behind my knee cap and I shortly after, felt myself being dragged closer to the edge of the bed. With my eyes remaining closed and a single tear surfacing my skin, I did something I had never done before and knew I was never going to get to do again. Without a single ounce of religion in my body, I prayed. To God, I prayed that Derek wouldn't have to be the one to find me lifeless with his unborn child in my arms, as I held my stomach tighter. And then, throughout the seconds that felt like an eternity, I reminisced on all of our moments together and wanted them to be my last thoughts. 

A sudden calmness , for some unapparent reason, came over me and I pictured Derek and I, hand in hand, walking through the streets of Italy, him stopping to take a picture of every lavish sportscar he saw and me stood behind giddily admiring the man that was to be my husband. I watched our intimate moments, dancing and swaying inside my living room to the sound of our favourite love songs. The ones where Derek would know every word to it and softly whisper it  down my ear whilst his arm was wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer and closer to his body with my head rested in the crook of his neck. I reimagined the scenes where we first saw each other again after I had come back to the hospital from Florida and he was in the lobby surrounded by boring people. Everything about him lingered in my mind. His smell of warm cologne. The touch of his stubbly beard against my soft skin. The feel of his palm against mine and his fingers intertwined through my fingers. 

The atmosphere was silent and if a pin had dropped, it would have been heard on the laminate flooring. Every feeling and sensation was apparent. The gentle breeze coming through the ajar window and the feel of the cotton sheets against my bare shoulders.  All the warmth in my body was slowly disappearing though and then I felt nothing. No thoughts. No feelings. No hate. No love. I felt nothing. Except numbness.