Creature - |H.S.|

Nine

Nova

It's been a week.

A week since I was at Harry's club.

A week since the Halloween party.

A week since I was molested.

A week since I last saw Harry.

My mind has been on autopilot these last seven days from trying to block out the painful memories in that bathroom.

After Mason and Judy found me that night, I went to thank Harry for helping- even though he did shoot a guy right in front of me, but to my surprise he had already disappeared, leaving me with just Judy and Mason.

The sound still replays in my head every once in awhile. The bullet leaving the barrel and implanting itself in my attacker's head plays on loop. It's hard when I'm trying to sleep at night. I feel so lonely, and it makes me think I should call my shrink.

I should go and talk about this.

I need to go and talk about this.

Every time it seems like I take a step forward and start feeling better, I instantly fall back two more steps. It's disheartening really.

Judy can tell there's something wrong with me. She was with me a few years ago when my accident happened, so she's familiar when there's something off. I wish I could tell her what happened, but I can't bring myself to it. It hurts too much to talk about and I just feel like I would be reopening up a painful and gaping wound.

"I just want you to be okay. If you don't want to talk to me about whatever happened that night then that's okay, but I just hate to see you so unhappy. I just worry because I don't want to see you so depressed again. I love you Nova, I really do, and if you do decide you want to talk about it, I'm here. I promise. Just promise me you'll talk to someone before you become too far gone."

I love Judy with all my heart, I really do. She's been my best friend through everything and I know she deeply cares for me, but I just can't talk about it right now. It's too fresh, and maybe trying to cope with it on my own isn't necessarily the best idea for my mental health, but I know for a fact I will never let myself crawl back down that dark hole I was in three years ago.

Everything leads me to tonight. t's a quiet Friday night in the film shop, but it's been fairly busy during the week, which I'm extremely thankful for. People have been dropping off rolls and rolls of film to be developed which allows me to spend most of my days in the dark room, hand developing their works of art and keeping my mind at ease.

Some of the pictures I developed this week were just silly pictures of friends at a university party while others were nature or portraits. My favorite photos to develop are portraits of people. I love watching the pearly paper slowly reveal its model before I place it in the stop bath. It's so therapeutic to me.

Judy insisted I call out and stay home to recover a bit, but there's no way I could be trapped in the apartment all day while she was at school. The silence and my thoughts alone would eat me alive. It was better to just go to work and try to take my mind off everything.

Plus I have my boss Kim here to keep me company. She owns the film shop after she retired from being a professional photographer. She would travel the world and take these beautiful pictures, putting her in magazines. She never cared about the fame or the relevancy, photography was always something she genuinely enjoyed and it made her happy.

Once her husband got sick, she then retired from traveling to stay and take care of him. Unfortunately he passed within half a year, leaving her to open J.P. Fotoshop in his honor.