Own Me

Chapter Eighteen

♔ Chapter Eighteen ♔

"Hey dude, you okay?"

I stirred at first. I felt hands on my shoulders, gently shaking me in my place. Around me, all I felt was the hard, wet floor. Cobbled and concrete. My entire body felt stiff and aching. I grumbled inwardly, turning.

"Dude," I heard him repeat, "dude, are you okay?"

His hands grappled me up off of the floor into a sitting position. He had to drag me to a wall to stay sitting upwards, otherwise I'd keep falling back down onto the floor. I felt completely helpless and weak, like every part of my body had shattered bit by bit until all that was left was the rotten, empty core of myself. The parts of me that I knew I would never escape.

My eyes wouldn't stay open for very long. They'd flutter for a few seconds, and I'd catch a raw glimpse at the person in front of me, but I couldn't find it in myself to keep them open for much longer. I'd closed them as soon as they met his. I didn't want anyone seeing me like this, but he already had. He'd already be judging me. Stupid slutty rent boy got himself into a situation that he clearly couldn't handle. He was probably rolling his eyes right now.

"Hey, no, stay awake," he urged me, his voice considerate and sympathetic as he began slapping me softly on either side of the face to keep me awake. I didn't need his consideration or his sympathy. I didn't know what I needed, but it most certainly wasn't the fucking sympathies of some stupid stranger that knew nothing about me, nothing about what happened to me.

I felt like I needed to be alone, but some part of me feared the loneliness. It was hidden deeper, but it was definitely there - the fear of my own self, whether it be in a mirror or a reflection, or just as I sat alone. The growing resentment that I couldn't control over my own situation. The fact that there was absolutely nothing that I could do anymore, because I was just so weak and so helpless. And then I feared the faces that would come out of the dark, if I was alone. Tom's, dead, or even worse, Sawyer's. Beaten and bloody, like I'd left him, lying on his bedroom floor, after beating him up like that. I felt sick all over again.

"What?" I snapped at him, recoiling from his touch. My voice was tearing in my throat. "Leave me alone." I didn't mean it.

"No. I need to know you're okay first." He paused. "Are you okay?" he asked, still shaking me to force me awake.

"Get off!" What little strength I had left grabbed at his arms as they shook my shoulders, and pried him off of me. "Don't fucking touch me."

He didn't touch me hard, or roughly at all. But I still didn't want him touching me. Any kind of touching, any kind of affection, skin to skin contact made me feel sick. Took me back to last night. I kept recoiling back into myself, but the last thing I wanted was to be left alone.

"Woah, calm down, kid," I heard him say.

"I'm not a kid, I'm fucking nineteen," I coughed angrily, more angry and frustrated at myself than I was that this dude. Disgusted at the memories flooding in, at how I begged and grovelled pathetically, at how I just lay there. I felt sick again. I just lay there and let him, so weak that I couldn't even put up a fucking fight. I let it happen.

"You're hurt," he said, his voice obvious. "What happened?"

That time, I forced my eyes open and I looked right at him. "What the fuck do you think happened?" I bit at him tersely.

His weary brown eyes lit up almost sweetly, if it wasn't in complete and utter shock. Then he shifted, because if he didn't realise before, he surely fucking realised now. And now that I was fully conscious again, even with the pain I felt searing away in my head and all over my body, I didn't feel sad at all. Maybe I should have been though. Maybe I should be sobbing and whinging, wallowing in my own self-pity and pain and frustration. But I didn't. That wasn't the person that I was, the old Darby or the Darby I was stuck with now. I was never that.