The Family: Ties That Bind (VOL. 2)

Chapter 6: Matlida

Matilda: Five months before

A cool wet sensation tickled my face leisurely drawing me from my sleep, the feeling in my fingers and toes slowly returned as my body awakened.  Something about the atmosphere surrounding me didn't feel right. No beeping machines or hushed voices you'd expect from a hospital...where am I then?

My arms felt like jello as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and slowly peeled them open, aware of the migraine throbbing in my temples. I braced myself to be blinded by piercing white light like people in movies do when they wake in hospitals, but to my confusion, I was met with hazy darkness and a ceiling of wooden floorboards. 

Awareness came over me in a flash. Memories of the wedding, escaping the house, the sound of the chainsaw, the gas station,  all fought their way to the surface in such a fearful panic that a film of perspiration formed on my forehead. This isn't the hospital, is it?

"You finally awake?" a familiar woman's voice asked, blotting my face with a dripping wet rag. "Took ya a nice long nap. Guess you were exhausted after all that runnin' you did, huh?"

I turned my neck slowly and found Loretta standing at my head, dipping an old scrap of cloth into a basin of pink water and washing the blood from my skin and hair. I raised my head a bit to see my body clothed in nothing but a thin sheet and strewn on the metal table positioned in the center of the room. I wasn't bound—thank God—but the burning throbs emanating from the wound stitched together with black thread on my thigh was crippling enough.  Aww, Crap! I'm back at the house, back in the basement, back in the clutches of the family, but how I got back here I couldn't remember.

"Where's Bubba," I asked, holding the sheet tightly around my body and peeling my back off the tabletop, the doctored wound burning with each movement I made.

"As if you actually care." she scoffed. "Do you even realize what you put him through? What you put me through? I'm the one who had to listen to all that cryin' he did."

The wound on my leg was red and hot to the touch fighting the infection that was setting in. Just the sensation of my fingers brushing the inflamed surface around the gash was enough to make me wince and grit my teeth. 

"It was never my intention to hurt him or any of you. I just - "

"Then what was your intention?" she interrupted. "To leave your family, your home, your new husband? and for what? A highfalutin life in one of those big cities where there's nobody to protect ya? Is that what you wanted?"

"It'd better than living in this hellhole," I mumbled, unable to restrain my tongue.

She narrowed her eyes, her face turned the shade of a tomato. Her hand flew up and collided with my cheek, jerking my head to the side and drawing tears to my waterline. I let out a startled gasp of pain and clutched the side of my face.

She dug her fingers into my shoulders, shaking me as she hissed "You just be glad I'm leaving it up to Bubba to decide on what to do with ya. He might be a bit more merciful than I would." She turned to leave with a huff, but not before giving me a glare icy enough to run cold chills up my arms. 

Was she so totally oblivious to their messed up way of living that she was really going to judge me for trying to escape? That the makeshift wedding and the brand on my chest were enough to bind me to the house; the family? Could she really be so insensitive?

"I miss my family! I cried, stopping her dead in her tracks. "My mother, my father...my boyfriend." She refused to look in my direction, merely stood at the foot of the steps with a hand grasping the railing and staring at her worn mud-covered Oxfords. "What if someone took you from your family? Told you you'd never be able to see them again. Wouldn't you do everything in your power just to let them know you're okay? That they don't have to worry themselves sick because you're not dead?  Can you really blame me for trying?"