Hurricane

Chemical

One day just gonna see me
Look back and forth from the ceiling
(I'm wide open)
Some day loves gonna hurt me
Turn back and soon I'll believe it

Wide Open | The Chemical Brothers
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Warnings! This chapter contains small mentions of past child abuse inflicted on a main character along with current violence and kidnapping (involving non-con drugging) against the same character. Read at your own risk!

Days pass with nothing happening out of the ordinary and the elastic feeling in my gut grows stronger and stronger with every passing moment.

I find it hard to work, the sex doesn't hold the same light it used to - it's dull, tiring rather than exhilarating. I waste the days walking around the city aimlessly, lost in the haze of my brain, completely dissociated from the world happening around me, happening without me.

The haze is stronger today, sitting on a bench in Central Park like I used to do when I first moved here, when I felt lost and alone; a small boy in a big city. I've never felt worse. Plagued with constant worry since the day I spotted my masked attacker outside the club, the invasive feeling of being incomplete, nagging me, tugging constantly on the back of my mind like a child would tug on pigtails. It feels like my soul is stretched across the city, like I forgot something important and can't remember what, only that I have to go back and get it. It feels like it felt those first few weeks here, in New York; the homesickness I felt at having moved across the world so suddenly, back then it had felt like I had left a part of myself in England - and then one day I had woken up and felt fine, like whatever was keeping me there had vanished.

It's like that, like once again I had lost something - left it somewhere far away and it was calling to me to find it.

Maybe it's because of homesickness - my apartment had been my home here since Agamemnon had taken me in - but that didn't feel right. I had hoped coming here would help me clear my mind, help me understand, but sitting here, looking at the grey-blue sky - not a rain loud in sight - I just felt more confused.

A woman sits across the path from me, a little further down on a bench under a tree. Her phone chimes loudly, but I ignore her.

Vanessa has been increasingly worried about how often I leave the apartment, always asking to come with me whenever I leave and barely leaving me alone for a second when the guilt gets to me and I let her trail along. I can't even convince her to get a table while I order coffee, she's that bloody clingy.

The woman's phone chirps again, and I glare at the disturbance.

I shake my head, brushing off her annoying tapping - seriously, who wears fake nails that long if they're going to impede on your everyday life? - and shrug the soft leather jacket around my shoulders tighter. I'd need a new coat soon, it was beginning to get colder and I don't think I can get away with the same black Eskimo jacket I'd had for two winters already.

The woman's phone goes off once again, only this time it's the grating sound of the generic iPhone incoming call tone and I wince as she answers with a nasally "hello?" to whoever unfortunate fellow is on the other end of that call.

I purse my lips, sighing as the woman starts up some undoubtedly petty longwinded rant to the person on the phone. Her voice bounces around in my skull, rattling on my nerves, and I glare at her once more for disturbing my peace.