Haunted
Dawn hasn't had a solid night of sleep in over sixteen years. She blames her insomnia on the boatyard fire.
In reality, though, her reasons for not sleeping go way beyond just that.
Truth be told, every time she closes her eyes, she can fell his hands pinning her wrists above her head, his breath on her neck, his body pushing her deep into the mattress. Sometimes, she forgets it happened seventeen years ago, and she muffles her cries for him to stop into a pillow. Faye may be a heavy sleeper who needs an earthquake to wake her, but that doesn't mean Dawn's willing to take that chance. Why burden her teenage daughter with such a heavy subject, anyway? She stays wrapped in the blanket, trying to get herself away from the part of her past that she swore to herself that she will never revisit again. Somehow, though, no matter how often she tells herself she'll never think about it again, she always does. In her defense, though, it's not an event she can just forget about in the blink of an eye. Especially since the memories come rushing back to her every time she looks at him.
She longs to tell someone; maybe doing so will give her some piece of mind. But she doesn't know where to start, or if there's even a point in telling anyone. It's not recent; he hasn't done anything since being presumed dead. So she keeps it bottled up. The nightmares continue and, while they vary, he's in the majority of them. So is that horrible night. Nobody knows what happened that night except her and Blackwell, and she wants it to stay like that. If people knew, she has no doubt that they would ask her all sorts of questions. Questions that she isn't even close to being ready to answer. Keeping it to herself and suffering with the nightmares is, in her opinion, better than being interrogated by everyone in town. And she also chooses not to tell anyone because they won't understand. They all think she worshipped Blackwell in high school, but they're wrong. One night will haunt her forever, because of him.