day nine.
"SWAZI!?"
The voice is too high for my ears. Sound rushes at me, making it feel like my ears are bleeding. I open my eyes to see Jac. His face was still ghostly white and filthy. An expression of worry etched onto his face.
"Jac?" I croak. Even my voice sounds...wrong to me.
"Oh thank God!" Jac yells, relief flooding his expression.
I wince at the sudden loud outburst.
"I thought I was going to lose you," He says, wiping a dirty hand across his eyes.
"Don't get too excited, you still might lose me," I grumble at him, trying not to puke all over him.
My thoughts are having a mental war with themselves. Three quarters are screaming at me to get away from this man. That other slim side of me is saying, it's just Jac, he's not going to hurt me. I realize I'm twisting in Jac's arms.
"Swazi, I'm not going to hurt you. You're sort of safe," Jac says, giving me a crooked smile.
"And How do you know that?!" I spit at him, shoving away from him.
"What?" He says, confused.
Why are people so idiotic!? Can no one understand the simple logic of the human mind besides me!?
"I don't care what you say Jac, Words can lie. You have no idea how many times a man has told me that he won't hurt me, then proceeds to rape me, Or how many times a man has told me that I'm safe before he beats me till I'm nearly blind from the pain,
"I know you're going to say something like, "I'm not the kind of man!" But that's not what I'm scared of. What I'm scared of is that you COULD be that kind of man. You COULD be the rapists or the abuser. Nothing is stopping you.
"So don't you dare tell that you won't hurt me Jac, Because you will. If we make it out of here and I never see you again, that will hurt me. Or if we see each other often, you'll find ways to hurt me. Even if we die in this hell of a hole, you will hurt me. So Stop Lying to me Jac."
The silence that follows feels thick. As if you could snatch it out of the air. Jac doesn't say anything, just stares at me with hollow eyes. I hold his gaze with all my frustration and anger pouring off me.
"You got that Jac?" I say, accidentally spitting on him. He flinches, breaking our gaze.
"Is that the way you want to live?" He finally says after four minutes of silence. His tone was flat.
"And what if it is? Are you going to try and stop me?!" I snap back, glaring at him. He shakes his head.
"Who am I, to tell you how to live your life." But his tone sounds... disappointed.
"Just spit it out Jac," I say, my teeth gritted.
"So you're going to cut the whole male population out of your life because of what they could do?! When kind of logic is that?! You're never going to heal if you do that. Your gonna stay forever trapped in your mind. What happens when someone who cares for you comes along? What happens when a man tells you that he loves you?!"
His words echo around us in the crater. Those two stupid words repeating over and over.
Loves you.
"Here. Sense don't seem to get it, I'll paint a picture for you Jac. Imagine there's this bunk bed in your house and when you were little you kept on falling off it and breaking your arm. There's going to be that small part of you that is scared of the bunk bed because you got hurt so much by it. You can never look at any bunk bed without thinking about the pain they've brought you. That's what it's like for me. I can't look at a man without thinking about what they have and could do."
YOU ARE READING
When We All Go
JugendliteraturI never felt so alone. But I'm used to being alone. Alone is what I wanted. But then he had to come along. He had to try and be the best person possible. He had to come along and start caring for me. **** Swazi is a cold character. Most people would...
