Awakening Abigail

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

 “He took me to the bathroom.  With him were two of the other men.  One stayed behind with my father.  In the shower all three of them raped me.  I don’t want to get into details.  I tried to keep my mind blank.  Sometime I heard a gunshot, and then the fourth one also came in.  He also raped me.  After that they walked away, leaving me alone in the bathroom.  I waited for a while, certain that they would come back and finish me off.”

Abi was sitting on the couch in her living room.  Her knees were pulled up, as if to protect herself.  While she spoke she didn’t look at Andrew.  The words were falling from her lips like the clear tears falling from her eyes.  At first she started off uneasy, not knowing what to say.  But after a while they just rolled out, as if her soul broke open.  She told him everything.  Never in her whole life has she told the story to another person other than a police officer.  Her voice was shaking now, as she was drawing close to the end.

“After about ten minutes I got up.  I slowly walked to the living room.  I didn’t care anymore; I wanted them to kill me.  But they were gone.  Our front door stood open, as an invitation, as a joke”

She closed her eyes, swallowing hard.  Andrew could see she was fighting for composure.  When she spoke again, her voice was shaking so much he had to strain to hear her.

“They shot him.  My father.  Honestly, I just remember running down the street in my pyjamas, covered in blood.  I had to get away, out of the house.  I ran without thinking, and ended up running to a random house.  The people phoned the police and ambulance.  I then lost consciousness for a while.  When I woke I was in a hospital bed, uncle J sitting there.”

She looked at him for the first time.

“My mother lived, miraculously.  She was in bad shape, but she lived.  They immediately started me on Anti Retroviral medication for the HIV.  It was horrible, but it saved my life, and I wasn’t infected.  Apparently the attack was aimed at hurting my father.  He had a fight with some of his workers, and they ended up killing him.  Unfortunately they disappeared,   and my mother and I spent two years hiding away.  Uncle J dedicated his life to find the criminals.  My father was his best friend.  Eventually, he found them”

She sighed.

“We decided, after everything, to keep our new identities.  Going back to who we were was too painful.  I’ve never been back to the house, uncle J did everything.  My mother and I refuse to remember the bad things.  When we think of my father, we see him as the man he always was. We’ve moved past this, together.  Here we are today, years later, alive.  My mother was so close to death.”

She shivered.  She took a deep breath.  For a moment she just sat, staring blankly into nowhere.  When she spoke, Andrew heard another Abi.  Gone was the composed woman.  Gone was the girl telling him another sad story.  For the first time he could see Michelle.  She let him in, entirely.  It was like he was transported, back in time, standing in a bathroom, staring at a broken figure, crouching in a shower.

“To this day, I can’t stand the sound of the sea anymore. It reminds me too much of being alone in the shower, waiting, no sound but the crashing of the waves.  Not only did they take my father, cripple my mother, but they took the one thing that gave me peace.  The one sound I could lose myself to.”

She started sobbing, harsh gasps escaping her tiny body.  Andrew reached for her, but she pulled back, her voice on the verge of hysterics. 

“No!  Do you know how many times I wished they killed me?  Each time, fighting back the nausea from the medication, looking at my mother, her body slowly healing, but her heart broken?”  She dropped her head in her hands.  When she spoke again, her voice was soft, barely audible.