Twist Of Fate

Forty Four

HARRY

I am struggling to breathe. My chest feels tight and my skin is tingling, prickling with electricity. The atmosphere feels stuffy and thick. My mouth and my ears feel full of cotton wool. My eyes won't focus properly and the floor could be moving beneath my feet. My only sense of gravity is her fingers around my wrist, holding me steady, stopping me from falling. How long has she been stopping me from falling?

She wants to know what is going on in my head. How do I tell her? How do I speak the words out loud when I have never spoken them out loud to anyone in my life? I am afraid. I am so very afraid of who I am, of who I have become. 

"Why? Why are you afraid?" she asks gently.

I am aware she has let go of my wrists and I am now sitting on my bed while she sits opposite me on her bed, her hands tucked beneath her thighs and her legs crossed at the ankles. She isn't her usual cowering self: she seems to have found strength from somewhere. I take a couple of deep breaths, my lungs rattling. In, and out. In, and out. At first I am not sure why I am doing this and then I realise she is breathing with me, guiding me to take a breath in, and then releasing it slowly.

Her control of this situation is calming me. My vision slowly begins to focus, and my heart rate is decreasing. I am no longer desperate to destroy everything in the room. After a minute of watching me closely, she opens her mouth again.

"What happened to you?" 

"I got angry," I answer, my words sounding thick and muffled, but she shakes her head, holding my gaze.

"I don't mean just now. I mean what happened to you in your past? You have demons, Harry. I don't need to be a psychologist to work that out. What happened to make you so angry, and more importantly, why did you almost pass out just because I told you I wish we hadn't... you know... made things awkward between us?" 

Not this again. I can't let myself think about it. I don't want to go back there.

I close my eyes as the room swims before me once more, fighting a rising nausea in the pit of my stomach and resisting the memory that is materialising slowly, one that I have kept buried for so long. 

"Don't, Chloe," I mumble.

Sounds are rushing through my ears, like wind in a tunnel, loud and echoey and overwhelming. 

"Tell me," I hear her plead, but she sounds faraway and I grip the bedcovers either side of me to steady myself as my mind transports me to a different time and place; one of fear and uncertainty, of pain and violence, of loneliness and isolation.

I see my step dad entering the kitchen, his face like thunder. I hear the screech of the chair legs as they scrape across the tiled floor, pushed aside in fury. I feel the cold seeping through my tshirt from the wall behind my back as I press myself against it in fear, trying to hide from his wrath. I hear furious shouting and hysterical screaming, hateful words and squeals of denial. I watch as he grips my mum around the throat, forcing her backwards and slamming her head against the kitchen cupboard. I hear her rasping breath, and I see her hands clawing at his, desperate to free herself from his grasp. I smell the overpowering stench of the onions that she was chopping for tea and stale alcohol lingering heavily in the air, seeping from the pores of one or both of them. I hear the sickening thud as he releases her neck from his grip and pushes her away in disgust. I watch as she bends over the sink, gagging and choking before finally straightening up, trembling from head to foot. 

I want to run but I am rooted to the spot. I want to look away but I watch helplessly as he advances on her again, undoing his jeans with one hand as she backs away with terror in her eyes. I cry silently as he pulls up her skirt and she begs him to stop. I close my eyes to the image but I can't close my ears to the sound. I hear him grunting and I hear her crying. I want to tell him to stop hurting her, but I am afraid of him.