What Happened on Wednesday

Part Seven

About a week and a half after I did that speech, I began to have vivid nightmares. I had been having nightmares ever since the incident happened, the incident that can only be described as a nightmare. I had a nightmare one night where I was back in the basement, but it wasn't me under the monster from hell that Oliver had become. It was another version of me, I was watching myself relive the assault from the outside looking in.

I was screaming but they couldn't hear me. I tried to close my eyes in the awful dream but I couldn't. To make matters worse, I wasn't just watching a sexual assault, I saw myself being raped. I couldn't look away. My eyes were unwillingly glued to the horrendous scene and there was nothing that I could do. Then, something even worse happened. Something that I cannot shake from my brain. Oliver had his hand around my throat, and turned to "me", the person watching, and said, "See you soon", before turning back and smirking at my seventh-grade self. I saw that person's face fall into an expression of terror and pain.

Oliver took his fist and pounded it into the face of the person lying on the ottoman, blood splattered as he continuously slammed it into the skull of the young, innocent child lying lifelessly there. All I could do was cry. I watched him then proceed to rape my corpse.

I woke up in a sweaty, screaming fit at about 5:45 that morning. I didn't try to fall back asleep, I was too afraid to fall back into that nightmare. The emptiness in Oliver's voice when he turned to me and said, "see you soon", makes me want to break down. I know it was just a dream, but I could see the fear in my seventh grade eyes and that's not something I can describe. It was as if in my eyes I could see my innocence slowly crumbling away, as if I was already dead before he suffocated me.

What did he mean by "see you soon"? Was that something that my brain just created, or does it have some meaning I should be looking for? Yeah, it was just a dream, but seeing the panic I endured and the pain and fear I saw in my own eyes, and having Oliver look me in the eye for the first time, dream or not, since 2018. It made me physically nauseous.

I broke down and needed to go to Mrs. Mirum's classroom to vent to her again after school. I felt like I was bothering the school counselor and I didn't want to talk to my friends about it because I was certain that at least someone was convinced that I was telling some story I pulled out of nowhere for the attention factor. It's my word against his, and of course he is going to deny it. I dread the day that Oliver finds out I speak up.

I can't get that dream out of my head. If I could wipe the memory, I would. That was the last thing I needed to see, myself getting raped, killed, and then raped once more. I wish it never happened. Both the incident and the dream. I wish none of it happened. I wish he had never touched me in the first place, I wish I wrote about it in my journal, I wish I said something to someone, anyone.

I wish I would have told the truth when Joliene noticed my bruise along my collarbone, but of course, there is nothing I can do about it now. I find myself frequently asking, why, God? Why me? Why didn't you intervene? The response I usually get, not from God, but from adults around me, is "It made you stronger". I didn't need to be stronger, I needed to be safe. The vivid nightmares are what scare me the most. His face is engraved in my mind and there is nothing I can do about it.

It truly baffles me that someone could be so cruel. So defiant and manipulative, and it baffles me even more that I was dumb enough to fall for it. It's hard to believe that someone like him would do that. Oliver was always so kind and caring, adventurous among other things. I was too dumb to realize what was going on up until it had already happened.

I feel worthless. It's hard not to when sometimes all you can think about is what you could have done, should have done, would have done, when in reality what you actually did was stupid. You say that if you were in a situation like that, you would be the hero and stop it before it starts. Before it happened, that's what I would say too. I would say that I would go into a "self defense mode" and get out of there. There's nothing you could do once you realize there is no such thing as "self defense mode".