Reflections [Complete]

Chapter 17

Kong's POV

I woke up with the feeling of intense nausea, bile rising up my throat threatening to spill out. I was ready to lunge toward the bathroom to empty my guts, but the slightest movement caused a throbbing pain in the back of my head. I groaned while clutching my head with both my hands, trying to get over the dizzying, disoriented feeling when I began taking in my surroundings.

I was in a filthy, unfamiliar room, with nothing but an old creaky bed, paint feeling off the walls, insects crawling around freely, only a few clothes abandoned in the center of the room while I sat on the bed completely naked.

By the time realization of what had happened dawned on me I had begun shaking slightly. Panic and fear taking a firm spot in the middle of my core. Slowly spreading their grip throughout my veins. Crossing my limbs. Reaching all the way to my fingertips that were shivering as I attempted to grab my clothes carelessly strewn around the room.

I felt a sharp, intense burst of pain in my backside, riding up my spine as I tried to pull up my pants. That, along with the throbbing in my head was once again making me dizzy and nauseous. I wanted to throw up really badly, but I needed to get out of this place even more.

As fast as my nervous hands would allow me I wore my jeans, wanting to conceal the dried blood caked between my legs as fast as possible. Haphazardly, I pulled together the buttons of my shirt and stumbled out the room and the building. I don't know who saw me or even if there was anyone around to witness my disgrace, but as soon as I left the cheap, dilapidated motel I stopped by the side of the road to empty the contents of my stomach.

I was thirsty, and disoriented, and sore. Not only my back but even my arms and legs from the multiple light and dark bruises I had seen littered across them. It hurt to move. It hurt to think.

And standing on the side of a busy, city street early in the morning, with hundreds of people going on with their life like it was just another day, I stood alone and lost. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to go. I still lived at home with my parents. How could I face them right now? What was I supposed to tell them when they asked where I was all night?

So I just began walking. Aimlessly wandering around the roads. Feeling sick both physically and emotionally. Disgusted. Weak. Scared. Angry. And countless other emotions. Cycling through them repeatedly. Sometimes one at a time. Sometimes all at once.

At some point during the endless hours it had begun raining. The cold water finally washing the stench away from my body. I don't know where I was or how far I had walked, but I found a random bus stop and sat there. Desperately needing to cool my overheating flushed body. I wanted to scream or cry or do just about anything but it was like I had no energy to even move. I wanted to scrub the skin off my body, anywhere he could have possibly touched, but I wasn't even able to raise my head. So I just sat there. Desperately thinking back to last night. Trying to remember. Trying to forget. But it seemed like there was no amount of water in the heavens that would be able to clean the blemish on my soul.

It wasn't for another three days where I had shut myself in my room that rage had finally replaced all others as my primary emotion. I wanted punch and kick and stab and do as much harm as physically possible. I wanted to be violent. I wanted to be vicious. But I knew I wouldn't manage to get within 3 ft of him. He was too rich, too powerful, too important for me to touch a hair on his head.

So I did what I thought was my only recourse. I got my drug tests results and filed a police complaint. I hadn't told my parents. I hadn't told anyone. And I didn't even want to. I didn't want them to know. I didn't want anyone to know. I simply wanted him punished. Pay some price for what he had done to me.

But only a few days later I found large man in an expensive looking suit waiting for me outside my house offering me two simple choices. Either I withdraw my police complaint and in return I get to keep my job and get help with my mom's medical expenses or I choose to pursue the case and they would drown me in hundreds of counter cases and legal bills.

I have no idea if any of that was possible. I have no idea if those were empty threats or not. But I was 18 and scared and easily intimidated. More than anything I wanted to keep it from my parents. So I agreed. And in one instant from a victim I turned into a whore.

I tried as hard as possible to get over it. To just forget. Ignore anything happened at all. I smiled at home. Hung out with my friends. I even went back to work. The only solace in my bleak life was that he left me alone from then on. He never came by my desk. He never spoke to me again. In fact a few months in he had left the country to join the sister company someplace else. But for me it was already too late.

The change in me came gradually. Slowly creeping into every aspect of my life. I did not wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to lose every last ounce of my personality. I didn't intend to change so drastically that even I have a hard recognizing myself in the mirror on most days.

For weeks, months even I laughed and joked and pretended that all was right with the world. But somehow it kept getting harder and harder to fake. My smiles got shorter, my conversations briefer. I felt comfortable very few places other than my own room, and I preferred staying there over anywhere else. I was never the last one remaining at work and it made me nervous to be alone with anyone else. The more people commented on my change in behavior, the more I withdrew from them. With every passing day I made lesser effort to even pretend being OK. It was just so much easier when I didn't need to talk to anyone. When no one asked me what was wrong. Why I was being reserved. So I kept shutting down further and further. Eventually It became too much effort to get me to talk and people simply stopped trying.

It was during the wedding of my two close friends from high school when my first panic attack hit. After several comments from everyone about how uncharacteristic my stoic silence was lately, I had escaped to the corner of the room. Away from inquisitive minds and prying eyes. I was quietly observing life around me, something I seem to be doing a lot lately, when I noticed someone similar to him. Just barely. It wasn't though. But it didn't matter anymore. The fear of something that wasn't even real had taken over all my senses. That's when I withdrew from society even further. I was an absolute nobody. No one was going to care or miss my presence.

I didn't want to be this way. I didn't want to have conversations only in my head. I wanted to talk aloud. I wanted to tell someone everything that I was feeling. All the thousands of thoughts I had bouncing around. But who. And how. I know I wasn't coping well at all with any of this. I had so many pent up emotions within me but instead of building up to a point that I would finally snap, that it would finally burst out and I would be free, it was slowly oozing into all aspects of my life. Taking over my entire being to the point that I didn't know how to be happy anymore.

It seems the only feeling my heart was capable of was fear, suspicion, or anger. And over the years it has been just so exhausting to keep them up for so long. So slowly and patiently I have killed them too. To the point that now there is just this empty hollowness.

And then Arthit came crashing into my life.