Killing Tink

Ch. 24

No one came to get her, and Tink tried to find her secret happy place like she had before. A place deep inside herself and hidden that allowed her to be unattached to her body. It had helped her before and she longed to find it now and rid the burning numbness of limbs constricted.

An almost weightless transcendence. That's what she remembered. At times it came and surrounded her and it felt so familiar. She remembered long days forgotten and isolated when she was with Stash. Moments where hunger and pain lost their hold and she could find herself in that floaty happy place without ever knowing she had gone there to begin with. It came at a cost though, when she did snap back she always felt the punishment and sting. Pain and hunger intensified as if angry she'd found a way to tuck them below for a time.

Her thoughts felt thick, dense, as if swimming through the fog to find something long lost. In the room deafening silence echoed slurs and insults, and from her place on the table she would have sworn Stash's warm putrid breath was being blown into her ear.

It's heating. Just air from the vents, old and stagnant. It's an old hidden place ...that's why you're here - because they put you here to forget you Tink. Stash was right. You're meant to be left, forgotten, cast aside. You aren't the kind of girl who ends up on a milk carton. No one is coming back. This is where they'll find your bones, eventually, when someone else is ready to be cast away forever.

The thoughts bombarded her and the more she tried pushing them away the louder they echoed in her ears and bounced around the inside of her skull. She groaned and began to bang her head against the table trying to force them out. The pain bringing new feelings that she embraced telling her to repeat the process over and over.

Soon the surfaces of her head and the table were sticky with crimson and the more she brought together the table and her head the more she could prove she was still alive. When her head was pounding without the aid of another strike she wretched, vomit spewing unannounced from her mouth. Her stomach was empty and released the only an acid green bile stringy and thick causing her to choke and gasp sending remnants like fire into her lungs.

Her hair was wet and cool now, a collection of fluids and bits of clotting ooze clinging and dripping, and the smell of it all convinced her that Stash was coming back. This is how it had been, sweat and blood and bile both before and after the visits once they got further apart. Warm urine ran down her legs and pooled across the table.

Tink could feel her thoughts slipping back to dark places where death feared to come get her no matter how much she begged. A thousand spinning mirrors took over her vision and the bombardment of sounds and smells repeatedly making their way into her senses pushed her to dive deeper into the grey. She tried to focus, convince herself that someone was watching, waiting. Hoping for her to snap. She used what voice she had to yell for help and scream until her throat burned and her voice no longer had sound.

She tried to convince herself that this was nothing. No Stash bouncing up and down on her while he slapped her face. No sounds of skin slapping against skin moist from stale air and unbearable heat. Those were things that turned her stomach and caused her to panic. This was just laying, and waiting.

Yet the taunts continued from the very center of her brain - the waiting is worse isn't it?  You say it was unbearable because you knew he was coming sometime - but secretly you liked that he showed up time after time never truly  forgetting you were there.

She fought that internal voice until it's pitch came in waves with the pounding pain in her head.

She had liked when he came back. It was normal. Isn't that what John had said?  It was normal to be grateful for not rotting in a hole forgotten. That didn't mean she liked the way he beat her, used her, abused her. It just meant she didn't want to die.

It made sense, surely-- it made sense to someone. John, with his perfect suit and tapping shoes and those dark brown eyes like an animal looking for more. And she'd tell him more. If he came back she'd tell him everything.

She promised herself and a God she didn't believe in she'd tell him every last detail. She'd tell him how Stash used her until she was broken and dry pleading for him to pass out or leave again. She'd tell him how she wretched when he spit globs of sticky spit into his hands and slapped it painfully across her private parts because otherwise she'd bleed from his rough ways. How when she did bleed he had to beat her more because it ruined the mood and only her pain could make him hard again.

It wouldn't matter if John liked it, if it got him to come back she'd relive her days in the hotel when she was forced to play roles and make men happy for money. All of it.

Promised rolled in whispers from her dry lips until she couldn't think anymore. She was trapped, no one was coming. The table's hard slick surface gave her no mercy as her numb fingers clawed. Her grasping nails bent and broke unnoticed until she finally gave in.

It was there, the rip between what was and has been and never could be--and she relaxed. Like the old quilt from grandma Azeal she used to hide in at home, comfort settled over her. Despite it cracking her lips and adding to the blood on the table she felt the turn of a smile. Everything was as it should be. She was safe and warm and back in the cocoon of sanctuary she'd built so long ago.

Just her, and the baby of course. She was there, warm and snuggled listening to the beat of its heart against hers. They'd have each other. Always.

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Really hard chapter to write. It took me four separate sessions for these mere 1080 words.  But each one meant more than a word or a page of Tinks story. I'm Still not sure why Tink picked me for this, but I thank you for following along.