The Void Between Stars: Book 4 Of The Orion Series

Hell

[TRIGGER WARNING: DEPICTION OF SOMEONE BEING MOLESTED, READER DISCRETION IS HEAVILY ADVISED !!!]

"What happened that day?"

"I--I don't wanna talk about it," I tell the therapist seriously, bouncing my knee up and down.

"I know it's hard, but we have to."

"Oh come on," I say as I begin to feel sick.

"Orion," he says gently, "you know that's how this works."

I gesture towards the computer. "I talked about it last time I was here, and my psychiatrist and therapist back home probably have an encyclopedia written up on it. Can't you just pull it up?"

He looks at me evenly. "Orion."

"Please?" I whisper, starting to give into my panic.

"Seeing as you're here for ninety days, I want to start fresh, like I've said. I'm utilizing a psycho dynamic approach; it's where we start from the beginning to find the origin of what's causing your current hurdles."

He smiles at me as the room is beginning to feel smaller and smaller.

"Does that make sense to you?"

Nodding, I rub my palms against my legs. He looks at me sympathetically.

"Before we get started, I want to take your emotional temperature—you've done this before, yes?"

I had; it's where you come up with emotional triggers and you rate them from zero to one hundred. Zero is where you freeze up, one hundred is where you lose your temper. Usually there's a visual of a thermometer to make the reference easier. It's used during trauma therapy, in an attempt to avoid re-traumatizing the patient while working through trauma.

"Y-yeah."

"Where are you now, Orion?"

I usually ran either hot or cold with little in between (unfortunately). I felt my anxiety rising, but that didn't really help. So I wiped my hands again. "I-I don't know?"

"How do you feel?"

"Really anxious at the thought of talking about this." I glare. "Again."

"Do you need a couple minutes?"

I let out of puff of breath and rub my forehead. "No—I-I think it would m-make it worse. Let's-let's just get this over with."

"If you ever get too overwhelmed—"

"Yeah. I-I know."

So I take a deep breath and plunge into my worst memory.

~

"Orion!"

Fuck. I'm in the storage room of our trailer, the one that had been given to me a while ago as a sort of olive branch by my mother. That's my hunch, anyway. Officially I was given the space because I had outgrown my room.

Coincidentally, me being gifted the storage space had also coincided with my dad's temper ramping. He had a heart attack. After he was back home, I tried my best to just stay out of the way. My days consisted of waking up, skipping breakfast to avoid him in the kitchen, and bolting out the door with my head down for the school bus.

Coming home from school was the ritual of slinking in as quietly as possible and going to my room until dinner. Dinner itself was fun, too (yes, that's sarcasm). I tried to draw as little attention to myself as possible. I was asked how my day was, if I had homework, if I had gotten in trouble, and if I had, how many detentions I had gotten.