Forgotten (Stardew Valley Fanfic)

JUNE: CHAPTER TWO

A/N: Hey, you're about to live through June's memories (TW: physical and sexual abuse). If you feel like you won't be able to handle the details, skip forward to the next chapter. You'll still be able to read through the whole story without this chapter, it just adds a bit more of the emotional weight.

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A THICK MASK OF DARKNESS CONSUMED ME but could not rival the agonizing pain that tortured every muscle in my body.

That's all it was at first. A deep night blanketing my vision as every part of me was physically attacked, feeling like hundreds of piercing razors were digging across every inch of my skin.

I wanted to scream, to wail against the pain, but it felt as if someone had stuffed balls of cotton down my throat. Every time I gasped for air, more cotton entered my throat, muffling my screams into utter silence.

It felt like hell. The tormenting pains were coming at me from every direction. I tried to stop them, but my body was cemented in place. 

Darkness hid the sources of my suffering, allowing them to strike me whenever they pleased, which was often. Whenever a pain subsided, it was instinctively met with another blow to my body, sending a scorching fire down my nerves and back up into my head.

My head. That is where it hurt the most. 

I longed to be able to grasp it with both hands, to bring it in between my knees with hopes that my weak pressure would give it some relief. But it stayed put, the sensation of needles drilling into its every crevice.

Throat constricting, I screeched with my whole being, causing my sealed body to quiver in response to the screech. 

It felt like one of those screams I would see in a movie as the main character watched their loved one die at their feet. The world would move in slow motion, exempt from any noise. They would fall to their knees, scrunched eyes filled with tears as their mouth let out a horrid scream I could never possibly wish for someone to experience. 

But that was the thing, all these events played out in a muted world on a screen. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't watching the events before me, I was experiencing them. I was screaming, crying for any sort of relief, but all that came out was silence. No one could hear, no one could know.

Time had no significance in this hell. I couldn't have cared if it were seconds or days, it felt like I had always been trapped in this vault of darkness.

I just wish I would have known this was the least painful part of it all.

Amid my hot tears that trickled down my cheeks, I cried out for what seemed to be the thousandth time and was finally met with bright, white light.

It swept across my vision, the rays hitting the back of my eyes as my mind began to process the scene before me. As if watching from a television screen, I saw two arms reaching out. My arms. Only they were much smaller than the ones I had come to know. I was a child again.

My arms were met halfway with a pair of small hands, grasping at my forearm and leaving small impressions in my arm. I looked up and was met with jade eyes that matched my own.

Jules.

We were young, around the age of six. Her dark red hair wisped around her chubby, freckled face with teeth glimmering in the daylight as a giggle escaped her mouth. We held each other's arms and spun around in the tall grass.

Flowers dotted around my periphery but quickly turned into smears across a canvas as Jules and I spun faster and faster. Our white dresses were already littered with grass stains and smudges of clay. We must have done this a few times already, our bare feet stomping down on the dewy green grass.