Will be a two. three parter.
It's focused on Carla's suicide attempt.
References to Liam, Frank's rape etc.
Hope you enjoy
She felt weightless. Empty. And yet so full of crap she struggled to breathe. An odd combination. Each breathe became more and more unnatural. She sat, perched on the edge of her sofa, like a bed tempted to fly it's nest. The skin beneath her eyes was pale and distended. Salty tears having weathered away at the fragile parchment covering her cheeks, left her feeling exposed. She looked around at the room she'd known for so long. The room she'd laughed in, made love in, intoxicated herself in, argued in, been violated in. Memories she could never forget. It was the room that she was going to die in, her life ceasing to exist any longer.
It was 8.23pm. She was tired. Really tired. Her bones felt heavy, her eyelids struggling to remain open. And she felt utterly failed. Failed by him, by her and by them. Failed by herself. She took the familiar path, from her couch to her kitchen, effortlessly letting her hand delve into the bright yellow plastic bag on the kitchen counter, pulling out a bottle of that magic drink, vodka. The yellow bag, a stark contract to the abyss that was Carla's mental state. Cheerful and tasteless. Innocent. Then the vodka, an beautifully clear facade.
The gloriously dangerous sound of the cheap metal cap, scraping against the spherical stem of the glass bottle, the friction of the two materials grinding against each other. Her lips parted almost instinctively as she drew the bottle up to her mouth, inhaling the strong almost medicinal, toxic fumes of the alcohol. Rushing down her gullet, a polluted river consuming anything it's path.
She thought of Frank. How he'd taken over her life. How he'd loved her, adored her, would have done anything for her. How she'd broken his heart, how she'd allowed herself to string him along, hoping her love for Peter would cease, or that she would be able to resign herself to a life or big houses, country walks and little substance. But she just couldn't. She'd done it before, been selfless. And it had cost her, cost him dearly. Now he was lying dead, beneath layers of dirt, with only a slab of stone to symbolise his existence. She'd been holding his heart in her hands, and then she'd loosened her grip. It was her fault. She may not have asked for it, but it was her doing. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she relived the brutal night Frank had inflicted on her. HIs hands pressing firmly against the back of her door. Pinning her like a helpless butterfly at the hands of a thoughtless collector. HIs eyes, rich with anger, deep and menacing.
'Stop Frank, please, get off me' she'd pleaded. But her words were like broken arrows, falling before they could hit their target. Paralysed with fear, his strength ruled. His hands cold and rehearsed, discarding her to the floor.
'No, no, no' she wailed, the only thing she felt capable of doing.
His hands roaming, pulling, touching, creeping. Like sandpaper, whittling down her defences. Her body contorted in response to his misplaced actions, his hands touching her, pulling her limbs open, stealing her body away from her.
Leaving her, forced into a embryonic state, foetal position, knees pulled up close to breasts; deformed like an incinerated piece of paper, fragile shards of her, lingering in the humid stench of cruelty.
Memories she'd rather consign to oblivion, but that she knew she's never be able to erase.
She thought of Peter. Her friend. Her soul mate. The man she adored with every sinew, every fibre of her being. She saw the look in his eyes, the way he cared. He might not love her, he'd told her that enough times, but he cared. The way he'd held her, stroking her hair tenderly, his fingers running through it, as thought he was trying to wash away some of the dirt Frank's touch had left on her.
'But I do, I worry about you all the time' his precious words loitered in her mind. She clung to those words, praying that she was maybe in his mind at that moment. She doubted it. Their journey together had been so complicated. She treasured the way he'd taken such an honest interest in her, how he'd been at her beck and call for so long. But she knew it couldn't go on, not with Leanne now more suspicious than ever. She had to let him go. She had to say goodbye.
Hours passes, slumped over the table, a glass of vodka in one hand. Her peripheral vision was now blurry, the sounds echoing in her mind. Her thoughts overlapped and nothing was clear. She downed the remained of vodka in her glass, her eyes catching something. The small plastic jar of pills Dr Carter had prescribed to her days before. Sleep. It sounded so promising. Only she didn't want to have to wake up and face the reality of the world she now lived in.