Twenty missed calls, sixteen messages, eight from Augustus and the rest she couldn't remember...
She is powerful. She knows she is. She is a powerful, attractive and vivacious woman full of energy and light. Her presence lights up a room, her essence illuminates the world brighter than the sun. When she speaks, her words draw attention and people care what she has to say. She is a privileged woman with a voice, an advocate for many oppressed, both young and old, male and female; black, white, purple, you name it.
So why is she lying in bed at 5PM, curtains drawn with not a shred of light piercing through the windows like a damsel in distress stuck in a tower? Why is she surrounded by empty bottles of vodka, rotting food and dirty laundry, and is that vomit that she tastes in her mouth? Her head is pounding, her throat feels like she spent a night drinking sand in a desert, and the room is spinning. The vibrations of her phone next to her limp body remind her of a lady screaming on top of her lungs at her naughty kids in a supermarket, and suddenly, she hates people. Nobody has knocked on her door in days and she likes it that way! Does anybody even know where she is?
She is not a victim. She is a fighter. She is a woman who bends occasionally but never breaks. Her resilience knows no bounds, whatever she sets her mind to, she conquers. She is a well respected member of society, and although some men fall at her feet, she gets down and pulls them back up with their dignity. So, of course she had to do what she did. She had to remind herself that she is not powerless, that he did not take anything away from her and that she had more strength than he could ever have in his entire existence.
Bile rose to her throat as she recollected that fateful morning when she woke up a victim having left her senses a warrior. Powerlessly laying there next to the spineless man who had seen an opportunity and seized it, and once again, she blamed herself for being too intoxicated to stop it.
"Was it at least enjoyable?" She found herself enquiring, twisting strands of her hair with her left hand, because if you're going to take advantage of her while she's too drunk to know her left from her right, then she might as well know if it was worth it. She nearly threw up in her mouth remembering how she tried to gain control over the situation, to make him feel like the spineless scum that he was by spinning the story so it didn't seem like it bothered her. Who was going to believe her, anyway? How was it going to look to the general public? A lot was at stake.
"You took me by surprise", was all he said in response, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and his legs crossed. He felt he'd do it again, given another chance. She felt disgusting, but you'd never know that because she laughed instead. Giggled, even. She was a powerful, attractive and vivacious woman who oozed confidence. Never mind the fact that she had been celibate until that fateful night, that boat had already sailed now, hadn't it? Why dwell on it...
Except, she couldn't stop herself from dwelling on it because she was having visions. Visions when her womanhood was compromised and she was too powerless to realise it. Her ego was bruised, on what planet did he imagine her ever being attracted to him, let alone give up her most treasured gift to him, of all men on earth?! She immediately started regretting the conversation they'd had. She should have confronted him and told him exactly how she felt. But was it really rape if she didn't remember it happening? It's not like he tied her down, at least she hoped not? Like, just because she was too drunk to remember, surely it doesn't mean he raped her?
Her tormented soul tossed and turned and spent many sleepless nights replaying the visions, trying to remember where it all started and what actually took place. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, but it was like she suddenly had the memory of a goldfish. Perhaps her mind was trying to save her from the humiliation and the pain by erasing all memory of the act itself, leaving her with vivid visions, drabs of memories torn from a tattered cloth of shame in a twisted way to give her fragments of her reality. She was a victim. She called out his name, but was she moaning in pleasure or was she trying to tell him to stop?
