A/N: Oh God, I'm so sorry about the wait! I've had tons of revision, several holidays and trips away, and a lot of writer's block. So to compromise I'm giving you an extra long chapter. The next one will be the last. I hope you enjoy this. Please Read and Review xx


So now you know how Ace and I got together. It ain't an impressive story by no stretch of imagination, but it feels good to get it all out. Bad memories build up over time and creep up on you when you least expect it. I've woken up in the middle of the night dripping with sweat, remembering all the shit Ace used to pull and feeling sick because of it. I dream he's after me and I can't get away, and when he catches me he hacks at me with that switchblade till my face just peels off in his hands. It gets so real I'll get up to look in the mirror, convinced all I'll see is naked eyeballs staring out of a slab of raw meat.

It's dumb, I know. There are women who've been through a lot more than me, yet they've put it all behind them clean as a whistle. One chick got her hand nailed to a door, for God's sake, and she's so chipper nowadays you'd never even guess. You see? A few broken bones and an ugly scar ain't nothing compared to that. I guess I'm lucky. I should be grateful all I have to put up with these days is the odd nightmare from time to time.

Now, I suppose you wanna know how I got free from Ace after blacking out. Well, I'd better backtrack to where I left off some time ago. Where was I? Oh, yeah…

So there I was, flat out on my own living room floor like a drunk after an extra long bar crawl on a Friday night. Blood covered my face and hair, sticking my eyelashes into clumps. The stuff kept pumping out of me as regular as ever. I'd woken up by now so I could feel it dripping, bead by bead, over my cheeks.

That wasn't all I could feel, neither. Ace was still fucking me. Disgusted, I struggled to sit up and push him away, but he was too heavy to budge an inch. He weighed a great deal more than me and besides, he had both his hands planted square on my shoulders. Shoving him off simply wasn't an option. So I lay still again and tried to figure out what to do. I've mentioned before that I'm good at getting out of things- my brains make up for the lack of looks, I guess. But thinking right then was tough to do. My head felt fuzzy, like it was stuffed with cotton wool, and the knife gash was throbbing so much I was badly distracted from my thoughts. It didn't help that stupid shirt was still draped over my head.

Gingerly, I tilted my neck to the side in the hope of shaking it off. It slid a little, the tip of a sleeve crumpling with a soft rustle to the floor. I froze, praying Ace hadn't noticed. He didn't react. He just kept on screwing with the same sick hunger as before. One of his hands slid down under my ass and squeezed. I gritted my teeth. The torn shreds of his fingers where I'd bitten him felt vile against me. I wished I'd had the guts to gnaw them right off. I hated the hot, wetness of them as they slithered over my skin, hated it so much I could barely stand it. To distract myself, I concentrated on the shirt again.

It seemed rather heavy for a thin piece of cotton, although maybe that was just because I felt so dizzy and weak. Slowly as possible I turned my head to the side and allowed it to slide off me. Big mistake. The brief contact it made with my cheek caused the pain to flare as fresh as ever. I tell you, if cuts could scream that was what it did. Hell, it was worse than that. It shrieked.

My breath caught in my lungs so I couldn't yell, but my hands worked just fine. In some kind of reflex action I reached up to clutch my face, fingers curling in towards the palm. Unlucky for me, something got in the way.

Yeah, you guessed it.

Ace did.

I tried not to hit him. By god, I tried. But my knuckles had already struck his temples by the time I had mind to do it, and although I was too weak to do any damage I knew I'd surprised him. From the look on his face I could tell I'd made him come early.

Ace never did that, so long as he could help it. Not ever.

"Oh shit," I blurted out. I screwed my eyes up tight and waited for him to smack me. "I didn't mean…"

"Shut the fuck up," said Ace. He pulled out of me, lips knotted in a sneer of disgusted frustration. I felt him, half-hard, against my thigh, and gulped.

"Don't waste your breath," he continued. "I ain't gonna mess up your fuck-ugly face any more than I already have. Don't wanna scare folks too much, do you?"

I narrowed my eyes, loathing him.

"Speak for yourself, limp dick. I pity your Mom for having to look up at that train wreck every time you do the dog."

Ace, who was busy fastening up his pants, paused in his tracks. He fixed me with the chilliest look I ever saw, daring me to keep talking. At first I didn't take him up on it; merely scooted away from him across the carpet like a frightened little mouse. I didn't have the strength to stand up. My head was spinning so much it was like I was sitting on some kind of insane fairground attraction. With a dull groan, I crawled across to the couch and dragged myself up onto it. I glanced behind me. I'd left a sticky, drying trail of blood in my wake, although considering the state of the rest of the living room that didn't matter anymore. It looked a little like an abattoir by now. I knew for sure my mother was going to go crazy when she came home.

No, worse than that. She'd cry instead, mouth open in that helpless, gasping way of hers, and ask why I had to go hurt myself again. Deep down she'd know Ace'd done a number on me, but she'd never be able to admit it. After all, I knew why she was always having 'headaches' and making excuses not to talk to people. She was afraid, afraid of everything, and that was what drove Dad away from her all those years ago.

She couldn't help it. It was in her nature to be edgy, and she'd been that way for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of fully acknowledging it, however, was when I was six or seven years old and getting to be a real troublemaker. Mom was pinning sheets up on the line in the back yard, her brow furrowed so deep that to look at her you'd think it was the hardest thing in the world. I was riding my tricycle up and down the neatly kept lawn, happy as can be. A couple of times I fell and scratched a knee, but overall I was doing pretty well. Even so, Mom wasn't cheery about how fast I was going. She kept looking at me and biting her lip, nostrils twitching rabbit-style as she exhaled.

I could see her worry building up inside of her. It was boiling away behind her tight, powdered face like a kettle full of hot water. It was all she could do not to let it bubble over. Not knowing what else to do I flashed her a brief, gap-toothed smile, just to let her know I was doing fine. But it didn't satisfy her. Nothing would. I gave up on her and kept on riding my trike. Things went along smoothly for a while. I can remember humming a Chordettes number under my breath, half-listening to the squeak of tricycle wheels, the rustle of the trees, the damp flap of the sheets in the summer breeze. This wasn't half bad, I thought to myself.

Then the trike's front wheel hit a rock and went over on its side, taking me with it.

As I landed I took a knock to my forehead- nothing serious, but enough to stun me for a couple of seconds or so. It didn't really hurt all that much. My teachers always used to say I had a skull like an iron helmet, marvelling at my ability to shake off head injuries as if they were nothing. As usual, I sat up and rubbed the sore spot without feeling too worse for wear. I was ready to hop back on the trike again almost immediately. But when I grinned up at my Mother I saw that she'd burst into tears. A stream of mucus started to run down her upper lip, yet she didn't bother to wipe it away. Instead she dropped the basket of wet sheets to the ground and walked back inside the house, shutting the door quietly behind her. I was left out there alone, utterly nonplussed in the way kids often are in such situations.

Yeah, Mom always was a nervous character. She never wanted to see me get hurt in any way, and would rather pretend it wasn't happening than try to deal with it like a regular Mom. These days she'd probably be classed with some kind of anxiety disorder. I figure that's what she must have had to make her that way. But back then I thought she was just cold and uncaring. Maybe that's why the thought of her seeing the blood on the carpet made me so angry. Angry with her, angry with Ace. Most of all angry with myself for letting all this happen to myself.

I dragged the back of my hand fiercely across my eyes. Tears were prickling at the corners, threatening to fall. I refused to cry in front of Ace now. I would rather have died. I caught him watching me from across the room, eyebrows quirking, and couldn't stand it.

"Get the fuck outta here," I snarled. "Now. You got what you wanted, right?"

Those last words sounded horribly familiar spoken aloud. Suddenly I realised I'd said that exact thing to him the very first time he screwed me and shivered, goose bumps cropping up on the backs of both arms. It was a weird coincidence all right. More than weird. It was spooky. Ace didn't pick up on it though, and I never would have expected him to. But I found myself wondering if, subconsciously, I'd meant to say that sentence all along.

"Bet your fern I did," said Ace sarcastically in answer to my question. 'Bet your fern' was a phrase a lot of kids used back then, in Maine especially. I could never hear it again without thinking of Ace. He strode across to me and caught hold of my chin, studying the wreck he'd made of my face with a mean satisfaction. He looked so smug, so damn handsome, that for a second I thought I'd go insane. But I didn't. Instead I tried to hit him, planning to crush his nose or at least chip a tooth. Ace grabbed my hand easily and held it away from me.

"You wanna stop that?" he asked me. He looked amused. "Careful, baby. You might break something."

I didn't like the way this was going.

"You're a bastard, Ace Merrill," I told him. "I hope somebody kills you someday, if I don't get round to doing it myself. And you know something? When that happens I'll piss on your grave and shit on the mother-fucking headstone."

I grinned nastily, expecting this to give him a hell of a blow. Ace looked at me long and hard. Then he laughed at me- actually laughed at me –and shoved me away, letting me fall back against the sofa. The look he gave me made a pang of cold humiliation sprout in my gut. I'd pumped myself up to face Ace and kick him out with pride, but here I was messed up and defeated as usual. In a way, it was as if nothing had changed. But it had. Things would never be the same again. Nothing ever is after a break up.

Ace left my house without another word, leaving the door swinging wide open on its hinges. It let in a breeze that normally wouldn't have bothered me. However, I was feeling so miserable and cut up that I made myself get up to close it. That done, I dragged myself upstairs on my ass like a toddler and shuffled wearily into the bathroom, body limp with exhaustion. The mirror was hung up over the sink. Grunting with effort, I managed to pull myself up onto my feet until I was high enough to peer at my reflection.

I took one look at that ripped, dripping fuck-fest of a face and blacked out, smacking my head on the toilet seat on the way down.


My Mom found me there when she came home the following morning. I wasn't awake to experience anything first hand, but I've asked around since and apparently she screamed so loud that one neighbour knocked a pan of boiling water off the hob and scalded herself. Still, that may have been just a rumour- there were a lot of those flying round Castle Rock that day. There had to be. Practically the entire street came outside to see my Mom carrying me out of the house. She'd refused to call an ambulance, dead set on driving me to the hospital all by herself. I have no idea how she managed to lift me. I'm no lard ass, but for such a weak and skinny woman to pick up a sixteen-year-old girl was some feat. However, she must have managed somehow for I woke up a few hours later in hospital with three nurses hovering over my bed. They'd stitched me up, stopped the bleeding, and now they wanted to know how it had all happened.

What's that? Did I tell them? What do you think?

Ofcourse I didn't tell them. I lied, saying somebody broke into the house to steal something, bumped into me coming out of the bathroom and stabbed me in the face. Then, I told them, he raped me and ran. That accounted for what they'd found 'downstairs' when they gave me a full examination. Obviously the cops tried to get involved, but I fudged things so much they soon gave up on me. After all, if a beat-up girl says she's got memory loss you gotta believe her, right? There was nothing else they could do. I'm sure they had their suspicions, but they kept them all to themselves. It was better that way- for them and for me.

Mom never asked me about what happened, but I think that somehow she knew. That knowledge drove her a little crazy over the years afterwards. Every time she looked at me she'd see Ace with a knife in his hand, carving me up like a Christmas turkey in her very own living room. She never did get those stains out of the carpet. Oh, she tried alright- she spent a full week on her hands and knees, scrubbing and scrubbing until her fingers rubbed raw all over and she had to give it up as a fruitless job. We got a brand new one instead, cheap and ugly but a million times better than the old one.

Sometimes, when Mom wasn't home, I'd lie on my back in the middle of the floor and think of the things Ace had done to me. There were days it came back so clear I could almost taste the blood in my mouth, feel his weigh on top of me. Other days I just felt plain stupid, grasping hold of things I'd much rather forget. But some stuff always sticks with us, no matter how much we try to shake them off. They always come back like a kicked dog, persistent as they ever were.

For me, my biggest bad penny was Ace Merrill…