The Haven

Prologue

She rubbed her hands together, feeling both the smoothness of her fingers over her skin and the roughness from years of mutilation. The brown leather couch she sat on was meant to be cool and comfortable, to help make her feel more at ease. Instead, it just added to the feeling of dread and being in an enclosed space she was already suffering from. She kept her eyes on the plush white carpet, counting the threads, attempting to keep her eyes off the person seated across from her, in a brown leather armchair that was the sister to her seat. The woman, a psychiatrist appointed by the courts, was a rather young woman with long light brown hair and grey irises. She was skinny in a way that reminded Eva of runway models who all looked as if they could be blown away by the faintest breath of wind. Even wearing a navy pant suit and blazer, she was intimidatingly beautiful. As if she did not have enough self-esteem issues already, now she was constantly having to talk to a woman about these issues and others three times a week. The courts it seemed, were doing more harm to her than had already been done to her in the past.

"Eva," the psychiatrist prompted. She did not look up. After a moment of waiting, the psychiatrist asked, "Are you just going to keep counting threads or are we going to make some progress this week?"

Eva's eyes ripped from the carpet, and met the woman's in a piercing glare that might as well have been the slice of a blade into the gut with the flinch the psychiatrist showed. Her perfect red lips parted in surprise. She looked ready to speak again, perhaps to calm whatever fury she felt Eva may be about to unleash. Instead, Eva cut her off.

"What kind of progress would you like today?" Eva demanded, voice cold and angry. Fire and ice. Pain and suffering. Beginning and end. "Are you going to show me more ink blots to determine how my mind works? Do you plan to declare me insane again? Isn't it obvious I am mentally unstable?" she glared even harder at the psychiatrist. Though she had been here in this very office many times already, had seen the many certificates and diplomas on the white walls, the woman's name still escaped her. Or that it took years for anyone to even realize what I was going through, no matter how many times I told someone. How it took almost dying for someone to actually, finally, listen to me? Why is it that it took that bastard putting me in the hospital for people to finally care that he was in fact doing everything I said he was doing, but my mother saying I had made it all up was all it took for you idiots to toss away my complaints?"

As Eva spoke, her tone raised several octaves until she was nearly yelling. She stood up suddenly, clenching her fists at her sides, but did not make any further movement towards this woman. This perfect woman who was supposed to be helping her with her problems. Problems she might not even have to the extent she did had someone cared enough to hear her out years before, when she began her complaints.

Perhaps it should have fueled her fury when the psychiatrist simply crossed her legs and began scribbling some notes on the yellow pad on her lap, pen tip scratching over the surface. Instead, it just made her words keep pouring out, as if a floodgate had been broken through.

"For years, I hid everything. I had to allow that bastard to do what he wanted to me. I had to endure the ignorance of my mother, who just drank away the memories and allowed it all to happen. She should have protected me. She should have made him leave or allowed me to! Even when I turned up at school with the obvious marks and bruises of his attacks, no one listened! No one cared. At least, not until— "

She paused then as she was struck with the memory of him. Of the man who had saved her. saved her in so many ways. Her silence did not go unnoticed, she knew, as the psychiatrist looked up from her notepad, pen still poised above the page. A wave of nausea began to build in her stomach and her eyes began to burn. How were there possibly any tears left? After all, she had done nothing but cry for nearly a month since she had been brought here.

"Eva?" the psychiatrist pressed, concern showing in her eyes. "It's OK to feel angry and hurt. It's OK to need to feel the way you do. It's not OK to hold it in. That is why you are here." Her expression softened and she laid the pen on the pad of paper. "Do whatever you have to do and then we can go from there."

Eva waited a moment as the onslaught of memories played through like a movie in her mind. She closed her eyes against the building pressure even though a few tears escaped anyway, leaving hot and salty trails over her cheeks. Her knees gave out and she hit the carpeted floor, wrapping her arms around herself as the sob she was fighting so desperately to keep in escaped.

And then she was screaming. Screaming in painboth mental and physical. Screaming in sorrow and anger. She had lost it all.Lost everything she had finally gained. All because of that bastard and his bitch. She fell forward,burying her face in the carpet and screamed some more, fingers grasping forthat one piece of comfort she may never feel again.

Author's Note: Hello everyone. If it interests any of you, my muse for this particular story is the Lifelines album by I Prevail. Check it out on YouTube.

Please comment, vote and share.