New Beginnings (undergoing editing)

Chapter(7) Nightmares

By: James TW
Song: incredible
Not my song it's from YouTube
Toby's POV
Eventually I get Liza upstairs, I'm trying to get her into bed, but I can tell that she's scared. I'm ninety-nine percent sure that she has nightmares but doesn't want to admit up to it. I love her a lot in the older brother type of way. All the boys feel like that, she's been through a hell of a lot. Especially for a child.

I carry her upstairs, the walking cast that she got today gives me another reason to carry her everywhere. I stop by her bedroom door and get out some pjs for her, then I pick her up again and head to the bathroom. I set her down in front of the door and tell her to "go get changed please." She does as she's told and goes into the bathroom.

While she's in there I text James
Toby: Heya babe we'll be in the room soon okay?
James: okay hon I cleaned up our room while you were busy so it's all clean now. How long are we going to keep our engagement on the DL?
Toby: Not long hon we can tell them tomorrow over breakfast okay?
James: okay

By the time I finish texting James Liza has reappeared in front of me again. "Hey, can I check for cuts?" She nods and I check. Her thighs are clean and then I get to her wrists and there's recent tiny crescent moons edged into her wrists.

"I'm sorry I had a panic attack" she whispers under her breath she probably thinks that she's in trouble. I crouch down and my eyes try to look into hers, but she keeps looking in another direction that my eyes aren't.

I take her chin gently and I say, "it's okay, let's bandage them and you can go to sleep." I tell her she nods but still looks hesitant and jumpy. I get the hydrogen peroxide out and clean and bandage up her arms. She slowly falls asleep, but I gently take her into my arms and then she's awake and alert again.

I still pick her up though and carry her to our bedroom. She whimpers, regretting agreeing to this. But I rub her back as I put her down in the middle of the bed. James comes over to bed too and gets in on the left side of the bed and I get in on the right.

That way there even if she gets up and runs, then we know about it, and can stop her from doing anything stupid. She turns with her head on James chest and I rub her back as she tries to fall asleep. Within minutes she's asleep and I shut off the lights except for the nightlight lamp beside James.

Normally we sleep in the pitch dark, but where there's a kid prone to nightmares and panic attacks in our bed, I think it's a good idea to keep a light on. I hold James hand and we fall asleep not long after Liza. It's been a long day.

Liza's POV ((((rape))))
Nightmare:
I was walking home from school and it was around four in the afternoon. I had stayed at the library after school to get some work done. The orphanage is always loud with little kids so getting homework done there is nearly impossible.

I listen to the music blaring through my cheap headphones that I had gotten for Christmas a couple years prior. It was starting to get dark out and I quickened my pace a little bit thinking that my beat-up ribs could handle it. I had gotten beat up pretty bad from a kid at school.

I look behind me to see a man following me and before I can even blink, he's right behind me and his arms have slithered there way around my waist and he whispered. "Don't scream". So I didn't, if this man had a gun then he might kill me, or worse another innocent human being.

He pulled me into a run-down house that was definitely an okay looking house but then I'm assuming it was abandoned and it became a crack house. The moment we got into the house he grabbed two pairs of handcuffs and threw his hand over my mouth. Then he dragged me up the stairs that I thought for sure would collapse under our weight.