The Masked Emotions Redux: Linger

NIGHTMARES

NADIA

Lying in bed in the middle of the night, Nadia woke up in a cold sweat. Heart pounding in her head, she tried to scream, but when she opened her mouth, it was impossible. She was unable to utter a sound – in fact, to her horror, she found herself paralyzed and unable to move. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she found herself able to move again. She looked around in a panic as the laughter of those men began to overlap her loud heartbeats. "Oh shit, this bitch is a virgin!" that cheerful voice just felt like claws into her brain. Gnawing away what little sanity she had left.

She knew her subconscious was trying to remember what happened in every gruesome detail and she told and begged herself that she wasn't ready for that ordeal, at least, not yet. The only thing she wanted to know was why her? What was it about her to have something so terrible done to her? She felt her sheets as cringed on how drenched they were. She looked at the clock beside her. "It's three in the morning." She pulled the sheets off the bed and placed them on the balcony to dry out before heading for the shower.

The water felt like silk, pushing away all of the filth that plagued her. Trying her best not to scream as she raised the temperature of the water to the point that her body was begging her to jump out, but she stayed, trying her best to scrub her body as hard as she could, even when she broke a layer of skin, she kept going. Eventually, she stepped out and ignored the sharp stings caused by the cold crisp airs as she took the sheets from the balcony and fixed the bed before walking to the living room. She saw a laptop on the coffee table, opened it, and as soon as it loaded she began researching everything about Samuel Knight to discover the names of the other men who raped her.

It only took an hour and thanks to Facebook, she immediately discovered the rest of the men who were in that room. "Mitch Dossey, Harry Ericson, and Paul Fredrick." She clicked on their pages and scoffed at their most recent posts. Afterward, she logged into her bank account and verified that the money was deposited and as soon as she saw all of those zeroes, she began to develop a plan to properly get even with all of them, but first, she to do a little more fishing and went back on Facebook.

SAMUEL

Samuel woke up screaming in his living room. Since the rape, he had not once stepped foot on the second floor. His entire body was shaking. He felt sick to his stomach and rushed to the kitchen sink where he began to vomit the half bottle of vodka that he ingested earlier just so he could go to sleep. He looked around like a lost child. His father had removed all phones and internet access from the pool house to prevent him from trying to call the police and confessing what he had done. Even after watching Mitch and the others get what his father called 'Texas justice' he still felt that it wasn't enough. "I have already taken care of it!" The echo of his father's sickened tone bounced in his head. "If you feel this guilty about it, then you should've never done it, to begin with!"

He was right. Samuel was so consumed with trying to get even with Enzio that by the time e realized that he went too far, he didn't know how to stop it. Mitch Dossey was indeed a force of nature all on his own and Samuel was terrified of what was going to happen to him once they recuperated from their attack. Would they do the same to him? Will, they savagely beat him? Or will they just feel sympathetic for him considering that he was begin choked the entire time and just blacklist him from every social event in Texas. Ironically, he's silently hoping that they will savagely beat him. He rinsed out his mouth, ate three slices of bread, poured himself another tall glass of vodka, and wobbled his way back to the sofa, where he sat there wallowing in his self-pity, slowly staring at the pair of scissors and contemplated ending it once and for all.

JUNO

It was a quarter after seven and Juno woke up to the laughter of her sister as she cheerfully spoke to her mysterious boyfriend on the phone. Juno cocked her head up and saw that Miko was in her gym shorts and t-shirt, laying on her stomach with her legs crossed and curved upwards in the air, acting like a giddy high schooler. Normally, she would've tossed a pillow towards her sister's head to give her the message to take the conversation to the other room, but she needed to get up early anyway.