Delirious || Bozari

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Mari

My name is Mariko Takahashi. I am thirty years old. My parent's names are Teruo and Ayako. I was a psychologist. I do ballet. My best friend was Ian Hecox. I was kidnapped, tortured, and raped by Wesley Alan Johnson.

Mari felt like she couldn't move, even if you didn't factor in her restraints. The wind had been knocked completely out of her. She struggled to breathe, to keep her head above the tides caused by her memories, to keep herself sane. Her eyes were wider than they ever had been before. Her body felt alien and unfamiliar, as if it belonged to someone else.

She remembered everything now. Every fact about her life, everything that Wesley had done to her. The illusion was broken; she saw him for what he was now. What he'd always been. A monster, the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Every little thing he'd done to her flashed through her mind.

Their therapy sessions. Watching him shoot Ian. Injecting her with anesthesia, knocking her out. The scold's bridle, and the insufferable music he'd tried to plague her with. Fooling him, making him think that he'd brainwashed her. The party. Night Rider getting shot. Him taking her home, and her calling the cops. Making a deal with him before he went to jail. Getting the call informing her of his escape. Him shooting Isaac and her knee, kidnapping her again. Escaping. Meeting Eugene. Falling in love with him. Wes using him as ransom. Joven getting shot. Wes' family. Letting herself fall into his lifestyle, and by extension, him.

Most importantly, she remembered the electroshock therapy. The way he'd taken advantage of her feelings for Eugene to bring her back into his clutches, and strapped her down to that bench before frying her brain, and turning her into... whatever Atomic was, if she was even anything at all.

Mari felt like she wanted to scream, but she couldn't find the willpower to do so. She felt like she was choking. It was too much; all the memories, all the pain, hitting her all at once. It was drowning her and filling her lungs with air at the same time, and she couldn't process it. Her brain was overloaded, working too fast to try and figure out what the fuck was happening to it. Mari could barely even think.

Ericka was staring at her with wide eyes, frozen in place. Mari couldn't move her eyes to look at her. She was paralyzed, staring at the wall, her mouth hanging open. 

Her entire body started shaking, quivering against its bonds, and then she finally found the power to scream. And she did; loud and powerful, sharing her pain with anyone who had the misfortune of being around her to hear her. By this point, a thick layer of sweat covered her skin.

Ericka rushed forwards, wrapping her up in a tight hug despite the fact that Mari could probably burst her eardrums from how loud she was screaming. Mari barely felt it. She was too wrapped up in her own mind to be focused on anything to do with her body.

Atomic had been too strong. Wes hadn't completely erased Mari. He'd only subjugated her, taking the most important thing she possessed from her; her mind, replacing her with the entity that called herself Atomic.

Mari hadn't been conscious during the time Atomic had spent in her head. She'd been there, but pushed back, unaware of everything that was going on. It was only when Atomic weakened, doubted her memory of her relationship with Wes, that she managed to fight her way into her mind and talk to her. That little voice had been her. She remembered that, screaming at herself to remember who she was. Most of the time, Atomic had ignored her.

But she remembered being Atomic, too. She remembered the way she felt, the way she thought, everything that had happened to her. Atomic was gone now; she could feel that; but what she'd left behind still remained. And that terrified Mari the most. The fact that she had been like that, that anyone had the ability to turn her into that thing, was horrifying. It chilled her to her very bones.