Lying in bed in the darkness, Amanda's eyes remained open. It wasn't because of what she was now prepared to do, it wasn't even the excitement over what they could expect when they made Frank fuck up so the Entity could get rid of him. She didn't know exactly what was keeping her eyes open. Amanda's head slowly rose and fell where it rested on Jake's chest as he slept. Usually even if she felt wide awake, the gentle movement and comfort of his warmth were enough to make her eyes close, but tonight was different. Why?
As she thought about what had gone on tonight, how she'd had to act, and how Jake had to act while they put on their show, Amanda realized that in the back of her mind, she had been thinking about her mother. Some of the things Jake did during his performance, she realized, were in some ways similar to what her dad had done to her mother in her childhood. Maybe that was how she'd coached him so well. Subconsciously, she was remembering her own experiences.
At the start of her life, from what she'd been told, Amanda Veronica Young had come into the world with little fanfare. She had a mother that loved her the moment she held her in her arms for the first time, and a father who was...Less enthusiastic. He'd not been interested in children at all. He claimed it was because they had no money to raise one, but in her later years Amanda had come to realize it was selfishness. Having a child meant he had to give up the time he wanted to spend on himself, though he'd done so little in her 18 years that he'd kept most of the time to himself he'd jealously guarded anyway.
But her mother made up for that lack of love from her father as much as she could. She only wanted one child and had been thrilled that her only child was a little girl. She'd have loved a boy just as much, but a girl was her dream, and the little bundle of Amanda in her arms had been her dream come true.
Her father had always been edgy before she was born, her mother had told her during one of those many long conversations the two were to have as the years went on. After they came home, her father had laid down the law. He was the one working, and wanted all of Amanda's care in the early years of her life to be handled by her mother. Of course, she'd readily agreed. Amanda was her gift, after all, and she'd been anxious to sooth her edgy husband. She sacrificed to buy the things Amanda needed in that first year of her birth. She spent hours in the middle of the night soothing her as her husband slept. But she never tired of it.
One of Amanda's first words was Mama...Dada...That took her much longer to say. As she started walking, her father became more and more edgy, and eventually began turning to the bottle. She wasn't sure the exact age when her father first became physical with her, maybe around five years old. He'd been watching something on their old T.V., and Amanda, being a child, didn't understand her father's temper when he'd been drinking. She couldn't even remember being that distracting, playing in a corner next to the television with her handful of thrift store toys.
Her father had been hitting the bottle a bit more that day than usual. Finally, she guessed he'd had enough of the distracting little brat and had grabbed her by the wrist to show her, rather than tell her, that he wanted her the fuck out of the living room. Unfortunately, due to the alcohol, he had pulled her arm much harder than anyone should, and the force of it snapped her wrist.
The memories were getting vague, but she remembered bits and pieces. Her mother of course had been through the roof when she'd rushed from the back of the trailer to find her daughter crying in pain and her father, too drunk to comprehend he'd broken her arm, telling her to quit acting like the world was ending for attention. By then her arm was swelling. Her parents had argued back and forth as her mother collected her to take her to the hospital. The argument ended after her father backhanded the "uppity bitch" getting in his face over an accident.
At the hospital, her mother had been rubbing her cheek as she explained Amanda had fallen while playing. It was her first cast, but it would not be her last.
It seemed as though the fact he'd gotten away with it had emboldened her father. He drank more, was irritable more, and began to make his point more frequently with a swing of his hand. Even as her arm healed, Amanda and her mother both shared her father's ire, and the blows from his hands. Whether intentional or unintentional, his behavior served to isolate her mother. She went nowhere, she had few friends. It seemed he wanted to keep her away from the chance to spill the beans on his activity as much as possible.
How many nights had she sat by Amanda's bed when she was a child, stroking her hair before she went to bed, telling her tomorrow would be different, telling her tomorrow daddy would change his ways. This time, her mother had been sure, as she had been every other time, that he truly was sorry for what he'd done.
And every time, at least for a day or two, it had seemed maybe she was right. After a violent outburst, the next day, in his "guilt," mom would get an inexpensive gift, along with an apology. Amanda would get a small gift or a trip for ice cream, and an apology; For a couple of days, sometimes even as long as a week, things would be fine...Until they weren't.
Eventually, when the true horror set in that it was always going to be like this, She would simply stroke her hair with tears in her eyes while Amanda cried.
She had lost track over the years how many black eyes her mother had gotten. In Amanda's case, left arm had been broken once more, and her right arm once before she'd reached the age of nine. Every time it was because he'd grabbed her too roughly when he was drunk, and his adult strength had easily snapped her weak, growing bones.
The injuries, of course, were not limited to the bone fractures. She'd had so many bruises. When he wasn't using his hands, he hurt her with just his mouth...So many verbal assaults for how much of a pain in the ass she was, and how her birth had ruined her father's life.
"I should have made her abort you," he'd said one time. She could still smell the alcohol that had been on his breath as he breathed into her face. "I knew having a kid would fuck up our marriage, and it did. We're broke all the time because of you. Our sex life has suffered a ton. 'No honey," he viciously mocked her mother's voice. We can't do THAT...Amanda's right next to us in her room." His tone shifted back to his normal drunken rage. "FUCK!"
Her father had glowered at her with complete drunken animosity. "If I could turn back the clock to that night, and if I'd known then that she missed a pill...You can bet your little ass you'd have ended up in a condom." The words had been awful enough, but then he'd done something else to make sure the conversation was burned in her memory. He'd backhanded her so hard he'd knocked out one of her baby teeth.
Amanda had been...What, six? Seven? Of course she'd blamed herself, she was still a child. Of course she'd tried to change. Of course she'd taken it, never knowing what she was doing wrong, but swearing as she cried in her bed, over and over again, that she'd not do it ever again. The abuse had gone completely under the radar of anyone who mattered, and the only thing that had ended his abuse of both of them was when her father had finally croaked.
Due to the time in which the abuse happened, the doctors either hadn't cared, or weren't as trained as they were now to pay attention to the warning signs. The other two times she'd needed casts, her father had gone to the hospital to make sure the doctors knew the story, and when he'd told it, they'd simply nodded their heads at her father's excuses and put the cast on the clumsy girl's arm.
But around two years after the abuse started, her father had an evil epiphany. He'd realized the lashing out in extreme ways and breaking bones, or leaving bruises on visible parts of their bodies might someday be noticed by someone who was paying attention, and had shifted to punching stomachs or thighs, where the bruises would be hidden. After all, Amanda would be in school, and her mother went very few places other than to shop, but someone might get nosy if they noticed a bunch of bruises.
Amanda brushed at the tears that leaked from her eyes as she laid on Jake's chest. Her childhood had been miserable, and she knew that if her mother hadn't been present to shield her, he probably would have killed her before she reached the age of 12. That was one of the horrors she knew. Sometimes she didn't cry herself to sleep during that time. Sometimes she stayed awake passed out, worrying that during the night, he'd smother her with her pillow, or maybe just stab her to death.
But despite those fears that had swelled over her death, her mother serving as a shield was why, even after escaping, even after having time alone to dwell on all the horrible abuses heaped on her, Amanda had not blamed her mother. After all, Amanda wasn't the only one who suffered, and her mother had often considered escaping from her father entirely.
So many times she'd sat with Amanda in her beat-up Chevy in the driveway, ready to finally leave him. She'd had enough. The motor was running, her hands were on the wheel...Then every time she'd shut off the engine and burst into tears as Amanda cried with her.
Because they both knew they couldn't run. They had nothing beyond what her father's income provided them. Because her mother had no other family, there was nowhere for them to go. Because her mother had dropped out of school to marry her father, she knew she would be unfit for any job that would pay enough to support her and a child. But even though she couldn't save them both, she had tried to save Amanda.
More than once, she'd talked to Amanda at length about letting her be taken by some sort of foster agency. She'd always love her, but in foster care, Amanda would finally get the love and care she needed from both her parents, rather than only one. The horror of not having her mother in her life was far too much for her to cope with. Amanda had refused. She was a child, but she was old enough to decide she couldn't be without her. She also somehow knew she couldn't leave her mother alone with him. Remaining with one parent who loved her and tolerating the abuse as best as she could was the only path she wanted to take.
But still, as she laid there in the dark, she knew how much of a sacrifice it had been for her mother to even offer it. She was offering to give up the one thing she'd wanted more than anything else in the entire world, her little daughter. In the conversations she had with her after her father was in the ground, her mother admitted that she was glad she had stayed, because losing her would have broken her heart completely. She'd hated Amanda's suffering by choosing her decision...But nevertheless had been grateful.
When she'd been playing in the yard at the age of nine, she'd had a visitor. It was a long-haired cat. The cat had been a tortoiseshell color, and needy, but also wary.
Just like Amanda.
As her mother had hung the laundry on the line behind her, Amanda had slowly and carefully approached the sad little creature, and reached her hand out. The cat had sniffed her hand, and then purred as she rubbed her head into Amanda's outstretched hand. The fur was matted, one ear was curled, and Amanda fell in love with that cat right then and there.
Her mother had turned when Amanda called her name, and seen her daughter with the mangy cat held in her arms, and because her mother loved her, she'd allowed Amanda to bring it inside. The cat had allowed itself to be bathed in the sink, and as they did, her mother gave the cat a close inspection. It was declawed in its front paws, and the cat had no collar, so her mother made the sort of deal that all parents make with their children. They would care for the cat, but since it had obviously belonged to someone at one time, if that person came looking for it they would have to give it up.
Amanda only heard the conversation after her father had gotten home. She'd heard the raised tone of her father and the subservient tone of her mother. She'd heard the slap as she laid in bed, petting her new furry friend. Somehow, her father had relented, and so they'd kept the cat. Amanda named her Jewel, but nicknamed her Jewelsysmooch. Amanda was a loner as a child, and that female cat became her best friend.
Her father hated it, of course. He seemed to hate anything that brought any happiness to the trailer home. He complained about the cost of feeding it, even though her mother bought the cheapest bag of dry cat food that was available. Jewelsysmooch would attempt to make friends with her father, only to be kicked at, screamed at, or tossed away if she was within reach of him. But Jewelsysmooch was unaffected. Based on the way she behaved around all of them, even one of them with ire, she'd obviously belonged to someone, and not even her father's raging avoidance of the cat had a lasting impact on her.
For a year, she had a friend to love. And after that year, Jewelsysmooch was gone.
Amanda trembled and cried bitter tears in her bed as Jake lightly snored next to her.
Her father had killed that cat.
She never thought of it at the time. When he'd come in looking sad and said that the cat was dead, and then led her to the street and showed her Jewelsysmooch's bloody corpse, she'd believed his story that she'd somehow escaped out the door when it was open and a car must have hit her. It was just a sad accident.
After she'd been in her apartment, she'd been considering getting herself a cat, and had thought back to that day, and as she thought about it, she was convinced that her father was lying to her then. Once Jewel was inside their trailer, she never had any interest in venturing outside again. There was no way she would have escaped on her own. At the very least, her father had thrown her outside. But the other thing that made her think it was her father's sorrowful reaction when he'd given her the news. He hated the cat, and only showed mild guilt when apologizing for hurting her, before losing his impulse a day or two later and bruising her again. The manner of the cat's death, and her father's reaction when he told her convinced her then, and still convinced her now, that he'd been responsible for it. In fact, she sometimes believed he'd killed the cat himself, and then tossed the cat's body in the gutter to make it look like it had been hit.
At that time in her life, he'd taken her best friend from her. Amanda cried for a week. She cried harder when he would hit her and tell her to stop being a fucking baby, that it was just a fucking cat and she needed to get over it. She was acting like her mother died, he'd said, and punctuated the sentence with his slaps.
School helped distract her from the loss of her cat. But because of her home life, Amanda was merely an adequate student. As she moved from grade to grade, she wasn't harassed so much as ignored. Her grades were adequate, but not spectacular. She had few friends, since she was poor and looked down upon. The large portion of the kids did not seek her out to humiliate her, as she spent every day practically walking in shadows, but they made no concerted effort to welcome the poor kid.
Besides, there was nothing really spectacular about her that made her stand out and made people want to know more about the little dark-haired girl who barely spoke outside of classes if she was without one of her friends, and who always walked with her head down. She was clean every day, but her clothes were mostly made up of whatever could be found in a thrift store. It was all they could afford. They were not shabby, but every year, she was dressed in what had been popular two years before.
What she wore that WAS new was purchased from the clearance aisle of their small-town department store. She was not selected by her peers as most likely to become president, nor was she selected most likely to end up in prison. If she'd been selected for the latter, she'd have proved them somewhat right. She was largely ignored for her entire school life, and she simply accepted it as she approached graduation. In some ways it had been better. She preferred being ignored to being picked on. She was not asked to, nor attended prom either her junior or senior year. Both times, she'd sat at the kitchen table with her mother playing Yahtzee, and did not end up dating even once in high school.
From the time she'd become a freshman, her mother had once again begun to suggest she escape, but Amanda refused to entertain the idea. She'd made it this long, and was considering remaining after she received her diploma. But as Amanda reached her senior year and her mother once more urged her to escape, by that time, she was ready to listen, not because the abuse had driven her to the point her resolve had broken, and she'd decided to leave her mother to fend for herself...She could have kept living with the abuse indefinitely. After she turned 15, it had almost become ingrained. No...Her decision to finally listen to her mother was because her father had started becoming nice to her.
Amanda wept more solidly into Jake's shirt, forcing herself not to become so loud she would wake him. He'd already comforted her once, and if he'd heard her crying again, he of course would have. But she wanted to let him sleep. She wanted him to have a few unbroken hours not worrying about the regular outbursts of the basket case he had married. Besides, the feelings this part of her life stirred in her were too difficult for anyone to know but herself. If he woke now, she would cave and tell him.
Amanda had told the survivors that despite all the abuse that her father had heaped upon her, he'd never abused her in THAT way. And she wasn't lying. He truly never had...
But he would have. It was something no one knew. Not even Jake. It was the one part of her she couldn't work up the courage to share with anyone.
After she blossomed into womanhood at the age of 17, she noted the change in her father's demeanor around her. He still abused her, but he did it less. His hands on her body became frequently more gentle, even affectionate. He was constantly rubbing her shoulders as she stood before him, rubbing her back, squeezing her hands, At first, she'd been so relieved that she hadn't thought about why, she'd just welcomed the chance to have nights which didn't end with fresh bruises.
What was more, his drinking had not subsided. He still drank as much as he always did, but now he loved instead of lashed out. She began to let herself feel hope that finally the time had come. Finally he was turning the corner and he was becoming what her mother had so frequently promised her he would as she stroked her hair while Amanda cried herself to sleep.
As she continued through her senior year, and finally turned 18, his touching and affection grew. If she was sitting on the couch, he'd put her feet in his lap to gently rub them. If he was sitting next to her, sometimes his hands would touch her thigh. When she saw the way he was looking at her when he did those things, to her increasing horror, she began to realize that he hadn't been visited by some other-worldly visitor that had convinced him to change his ways like in the movies, nor had a mental epiphany. His affectionate touches were more than just affection: He wanted to do to her what he sometimes did with her mother.
She was so disgusted and horrified that her father wanted to do the things to her that were a redneck cliché, that she hid what she knew. She wondered what she was doing, unaware, to make her father think such thoughts. Was it the way she dressed?
She never spoke a word of it to her mother, even after his death. As she moved through her senior year she avoided him as much as she could, and tolerated it when she couldn't. Thankfully, he somehow managed to restrain himself so she didn't have to flee sooner. It made her sick, but she stayed in her home because she knew when she left, she'd miss her mother wicked bad, and wanted to be with her for as long as she could. But even as she avoided what her father increasingly seemed to want from her, she laid the tracks for her escape, and then one day, her exit, her safety, was almost there. She packed her belongings in her little Volkswagen, a yellow one at that time of her life, the day before her high school graduation.
That night, He'd waxed poetic that she was leaving and he convinced her to sit next to him on the couch. Her mother had just left to do a bit of shopping and the two of them were alone. As she sat next to him, he'd told her how much he was going to miss her and begged her to stay. He needed her, he'd said. Things were growing ever more difficult between him and her mother. He was sorry for all the things he'd done before, and now, he was in desperate need of her affection and support. There were things he needed that her mother just wasn't giving him enough of, and Amanda could help him, if she really loved him. He'd kept stroking her thigh as he spoke. When he was done with his words, he'd left his hand resting on her thigh for a moment more before lifting it and putting it where no father should ever put their hand on their own flesh and blood.
She'd tried to leap to her feet, but he was stronger, even more so when he was drunk. He had grabbed her tightly and pushed her down on the couch. He'd laid himself on her as Amanda had frantically kicked her legs in the air, struggling to escape, and drunkenly pressed his lips to her own as he fumbled to unbutton her shorts, and after struggling with the button, had done so.
Amanda had been screaming from the moment he forced her on her back, and he backhanded her, stunning her into silence for a brief moment. He'd said the way she looked tonight made him unable to help himself. After they were done, they'd both feel better, he said. He was unaware at the time, not that it would have mattered in his state, that if he'd been successful, he'd have taken the virginity of his own daughter. In fact, later, she believed that because she was still a virgin, it was one of the reasons he'd attempted to do what he did.
He'd raised himself up off of her to start pulling down his own pants and Amanda had used the one and only window of escape available to her. His hands were on the button of his fly, and she'd lashed out with her right foot directly into his crotch as hard as she could.
His face had gone sheet white. He'd gasped for air, then he'd vomited his bellyful of alcohol on himself and Amanda's legs before collapsing on his back at the other end of the couch. Crying, terrified, disgusted, revolted. Amanda ran to her room. The trailer only had one shower, and as much as she'd wanted to clean herself, the thought of being naked and alone with him was too much to bear. She'd run to her room and locked the flimsy door, then stuck a chair under the handle for good measure.
Then she'd sat on the floor, rocking and crying, forced to smell the alcohol and bile drying on her legs. After over a decade of his abuse, and being alone with her thoughts, she'd partially blamed herself for wearing her shorts and her form fitting t-shirt. She'd partially convinced herself that because she was dressed in a revealing way, she'd somehow goaded him into doing what up to then, he'd prevented himself from doing, limiting whatever...It was, to some questionable touching.
That was one of the reasons why, after her mother got home, she lied and said he'd just drunk too much and vomited accidentally. Her father had said nothing. Amanda had waited to clean herself because she expected him to shower first (He hadn't. His disgusting shirt was still on.) Somehow, she'd dozed off until her mother got home. Amanda went to the bathroom and scrubbed herself furiously until her skin was raw. Then she'd spent her last night before her graduation wide awake with the door locked and the chair back under the handle, just in case. But he never tried to come after her.
When she collected her diploma, only her mother was there to see it. Her father was not in attendance. Sick, her mother said. She'd had a nice, inexpensive lunch for her mother and they both sobbed as Amanda hugged her. But her mother had reassured her and said that no matter how sad she was, she was glad that she had escaped.
She'd gotten the first decent-paying job that would hire her, moved into a small, but still-decent apartment in a neighboring town, and struggled with independence. One day, while doing her laundry in the basement with the coin operated washing machines, she'd met Kyle from apartment 2D. She'd never had any interest shown in her by a guy before, and so she welcomed being chatted up.
She started visiting him. He was a bit more attractive than Frank, but not quite as attractive as Jake. He seemed a little distant, but friendly. They'd seen each other daily for the next two days after their laundry room meeting, while sitting in his black '84 Cutlass in a park and eating fast food, he'd casually dropped his hand on her thigh and stroked it with his forefinger.
The sensation of course was very different than the last time a man had put their hand there, for obvious reasons. She remembered her thought about things happening because she was a virgin, that maybe it had driven her father to do what he did. And then she forced all those thoughts out of her mind. She took his hand and rested it between her legs, and they'd kissed with growing intensity. He'd opened the door, and gotten out, and after Amanda walked around the car, he'd pulled the driver's seat down and she'd gotten into the back seat and allowed him to take her virginity, even though they'd only been hanging out for a few days.
The experience was not terribly romantic, Thankfully she was short because there was not a lot of space in the back seat. When it ended maybe five minutes later, she was no longer pure, but still had not yet had her first sexual orgasm but still, she had a sense of wonder that it had finally happened for the first time. He'd reacted with a strange surprise when discovering she was a virgin, and after they'd returned to the apartment building and separated after a last kiss, it hadn't really mattered at the time, because it was a milestone. She'd even been smiling after she got back to her own apartment.
They'd continued their on and off thing for another couple of weeks, and occasionally they had sex like they had in Kyle's car, but an orgasm from pure intercourse still hadn't happened for her. Still, she enjoyed the sensations and the way it felt to have this guy in her life and doing the things he was doing with her. It made her finally feel beautiful. Things had been going so well that Amanda had been starting to wonder if they were going to become official, It had certainly seemed that way. After life and work had resulted in her night seeing him for a couple of days, she'd knocked on his door to hang out and there had been no answer. That wasn't unusual. They both had jobs and they weren't living together, after all. She'd tried again in the afternoon, and once more in the evening, but there was no response. The next day, while not obsessively worried, she was still unable to sate her curiosity, she'd stopped by the little office of the building superintendent just to see if he knew anything.
He'd known more than she'd wanted to know. Kyle had given notice that he was moving out three days before Amanda had moved into her own apartment. Amanda's presence did not motivate him to stay, nor did he tell her that he was intending to move. He had Kyle's address if Amanda had loaned him something that she needed to get back.
She'd given him something, that was true. But it was something he couldn't give back to her. And thus her first romantic relationship had imprinted itself on her. She'd spent several days feeling used after he left, but made no effort to contact him. If she hadn't been worth telling that he was moving, he certainly wouldn't be interested in her showing up at his door. She'd willingly allowed everything to happen, but still, she'd been used for the first time. It would not be the last time.
Her only regular visitor during that time was her mother, which Amanda was grateful for. She'd spread her wings, felt they had been clipped, and went back to what she was used to, isolating herself. Even though he was unaware, her father had managed to cause her pain again. He never visited her in her apartment. In fact, after that last night in her house, she never saw her father again. Apparently one of his victims lashing out just once had been too much for the drunken son of a bitch. But for a brief period after she had left him, she still somehow missed him. Because of that, and in her mental haste to make herself impure, just in case THAT was that thing that she'd reasoned in her mind for why her father had done what he had, she'd given her virginity to a guy who had taken it and yet didn't even feel the girl he'd taken it from was important enough to know that he was shortly moving out. And it had all been for nothing. She'd have learned to live with the memory of her father's actions even then, even after all the hurt he'd caused her, because he would always be her father. And in the end, even if she'd been right in her thinking (She knew well now that she wasn't) her father never attempted to see her again anyway.
With him treating her like she was dead, and having time to think and process everything he had done to both her and her mother before he died, she'd grown overwhelmed in her hatred for him. Amanda became dead to him, and so he became dead to her. When the call finally came from her mother, she did not go to his funeral, not even for the satisfaction of seeing his corpse in a casket. She'd already accepted his loss in her head and had moved on. With the threat of her father now gone, she'd kept her job, but left her apartment and moved back home. She and her mother savored their time together, free of the abuse, the horrors, the tears of pain.
Neither of them knew their time would be short-lived. A year and a half later, her mother was struck head-on and the crash instantly killed her. The driver who killed her survived with minor cuts and bruises. An alcoholic, just like her father. Amanda couldn't help but wonder if he beat his loved ones. For killing her mother, he was given a minimum sentence due to his "character," It was his first time, and he'd made a horrible mistake. In reality, he was a city councilman with connections. He'd had to resign, but that didn't change the fact that he'd stolen her mother from her.
And then she'd been completely alone. Parentless, just getting on her feet and starting her life, and she had no idea what to do next. A sympathetic co-worker had aided her through the process of organizing her mother's small funeral. She was in a daze from the time it started through the small gathering after, barely hearing the condolences of the handful of people who had attended, mostly her co-workers, a couple of friends she kept after high school, and a couple of people she was conversational with from her former apartment building.
It wasn't until she was alone in their trailer that her mind, while not as broken as it had become in the realm, but still quite broken at that time, finally registered that she was truly, and completely gone. Amanda had screamed and cried in her grief for the entire night, and well into the morning, wandering around the empty trailer home missing her and wishing for her while struggling to accept knowing that her mother was never to return.
The co-worker maintained their sympathy and helped her sell the home for what she could get out of it, which wasn't much. There were far too many horrible memories to remain living in it alone. Not even the memories of her mother's presence were enough. It was the place where she'd been hurt and cried so many tears they could have filled a lake. It was the site of where her father, in a drunken haze, had tried to violate her. Her mother had helped her ignore all and see it as home. Now, it was just Hell in a box. After it was sold, there was nothing left that she wanted to stay for. The job was ok, but she would always be the quiet, self-isolating young woman who had difficulty walking anywhere without her head down. She needed to escape and become a new woman from the ground up. She'd decided to reinvent herself in a bigger city.
But even after she moved, her reinvention never happened. She was still the quiet girl with her head down. The only thing that had changed was her forcing herself to be social, and eventually it became natural. But even that had it's side-effects. She still thought she had beauty, yet the only guys who seemed to show her any interest and were attracted to that beauty were those that could smell the weakness in her. She allowed the guys she entered into relationships with to walk all over her. Occasionally they would use their hands. After all, it wasn't like she wasn't used to it, and a part of her had been ingrained from her childhood to accept that was ok. But in every case, it escalated to a point that became too difficult to cope with and she moved on, only to fall into the same trap again.
In her desperation to find someone who cared for her and wouldn't mistreat her, she frequently gave up her body to some of the seemingly decent guys who were interested in it, and sometimes, they didn't slap her around. But instead of slapping her around, they instead took what they wanted and gave her a little of the affection she so desperately needed until they'd taken everything they wanted from her. After, she found herself once again being abandoned like Kyle had done after he'd gotten what they wanted from her. Once a man had enjoyed using her for nearly six months. The shortest was a week. She eventually hung out with some people that got her involved in petty crime, before finally getting "busted" carrying drugs that she didn't even have.
The false drug conviction put her in a brief stint in jail, and when she'd been offered the first hit of Heroin that was promised to make all her worries and pain go away, she'd willingly taken it. After all, the other inmate told her, if she was going to do the time, she might as well do the crime. And the inmate was right, it did everything they told her it would. She spent the rest of her short jail sentence eating pussy for her next fix, and allowing her own to be eaten if that was the price for it instead. That wasn't all bad, and opened her eyes to the knowledge that she was bisexual.
She'd gone to jail as someone who skirted the law, and had been clean. She was released as a raging drug addict. With nothing to do but dwell on all of the mistakes and pain she'd suffered in her life, and with her body quivering in its need for her fix, she needed to end the shivers and savor the peace of shutting down her mind, shooting up so she could spend hours semi-conscious and not having to think of her mother's death, her father's abuse, her life that was going absolutely nowhere, and the string of guys that had used her. She'd lost the job she had before she went to prison, and her current state made it impossible for her to keep herself functional enough to find another. Eventually, she couldn't afford the decent apartment she'd been living in when she first moved there.
The only place that she'd been able to afford, and even then, only barely, was a filthy, moldy shithole in one of the worst parts of the city. By then she was almost completely broke, and she was so desperate for her body to feel the way it did when she was high that she'd offered herself to a fat man in his 60s who lived on her floor for enough money to help her get just that one hit. Somehow the skinny girl that looked like she hadn't showered in two days had been "sexy" enough to make him accept. She took him to her apartment and he sloppily rutted in her for three minutes before leaving a handful of bills next to her head. After savoring the sweet oblivion the hit gave her, she kept doing it. Sometimes once, sometimes repeatedly with the same guy, as she had done with Cecil.
Amanda stared into the darkness of the cabin, angry with herself for every mistake she'd made what seemed like a lifetime ago. She'd moved there to reinvent herself, and she had. Punching bag girlfriend, easy lay, petty criminal, falsely-convicted criminal, drug addict, reformed addict, apprentice, psychopath, and corpse.
"Here lies Amanda Young: Dec. 3, 1970 - May 27, 2006. She lived a full life, and virtually all of it was complete fucking bullshit." But thankfully, under that something else was engraved in the stone. "Amanda Park: Dec. 3, 1970 - ? So far, so good, if she'd pull her head out of her ass and let herself be happy."
She'd been able to reinvent herself after all. Well, with a lot of help. Her eyes darted back and forth in the darkness. Who had been the biggest influence in her reinvention? Herself? Jake? The Entity? All three in equal ways, really. She would not be here without the Entity, she wouldn't have wanted to be her without Jake, and she wanted to make herself better FOR Jake.
She closed her eyes as her mind continued wandering over it's mass of thoughts, memories, fears, desires. Maybe if she kept her eyes closed it would tire itself and she'd finally be able to sleep, because if she did not sleep, she would want to wake him and let him make love to her again.
She'd told him after their first time together that he was the best she'd had in awhile. She did not tell him he was the best she'd ever had period. Not because it wouldn't have made him happy to hear it, but because after she'd confessed her many sexual users in broad strokes over the years of their relationship, it was embarrassing that she hadn't had the best sex of her life until she was 36, by a sweet guy she'd spent three years murdering.
Now, not all of it was awful. It wasn't like EVERY experience had been like it had with Kyle or the others. Jake did not give her her first ever orgasm from intercourse...But he had brought it out of her the quickest and the easiest. She would say without hesitation that he was the most attentive lover she'd ever been with, even their first time, what, 24 years ago? All the time that had passed and it was still burned in her mind. Others had been attentive too, but Jake was the first who was clearly determined to satisfy her before he satisfied himself. And he had done so every time since.
Was it so odd then that she wanted him all the time? There were just so many reasons. The attentiveness, the sensations he made her feel, the rightness of the way it felt, the need to express herself by giving herself to him... And just...From the first time she grew enough to be aware, to the time right before the realm, she'd been treated like and felt like dogshit and now...Fuck...She felt for the first time she had everything she wanted and now, goddamn it, she was addicted to it and wasn't that fair? Wasn't that right? Didn't the girl who spent nearly her entire life being ignored and used and treated like dogshit just fucking deserve to wallow in complete happiness? Why shouldn't she fuck a guy every time she, he, or both of them were horny when he constantly made her cum so hard her toes curled?
And as always, the stronger part of her said yes while the weaker darker part of her said not until she made up for what she'd done, while knowing that there would be no possible way for her to make up for everything in a way she could justify it to herself.
She knew if she was in the real world with access to a psychiatrist he would probably already have started her on medication to balance her mental state, and they would have tried everything in a variety of dosages until they find the right balance, but she didn't have that, and so these battles in her mind continued rage on and she was tired...She was just so fucking tired of it sometimes. She was tired of feeling it and tired of making Jake have to act like a hostage negotiator while the bad side of her brain took the rational and good side of her brain captive until its demands were met.
Even tonight when the Entity told them that they could stay in the realm for as long as it existed there was a tiny part of herself that wondered if Jake could do the slow, tender, comforting mental dance that he had to do when her mind fought within itself. She was swept deeply for the first time with rage at her continued inability to balance.
Maybe their fucking early trips to the real world, now that she knew they were a possibility, should be spent finding a fucking shrink and getting her fucking shit together for him because she was fucking terrified that after a century or two he would decide enough was fucking enough, no matter how many assurances he gave her he would not.
If she fucking got pills they would come back with her to the realm and would never run the fuck out. Things would reset each time but she could go to the same person over and over until the fucking balance was right. But could she consume them? How would she take them if they didn't ever need to eat and drink? If she drank water could she piss it out but then go back to not needing it as a necessity like things were now? The Entity would once again mildly harass her for asking a God for such a simple and lowly thing like a toilet and TP, but she knew if she did it would give it to her.
She realized even as it made the offer that she loved the realm, and she would never permanently leave once it let them stay, but she also needed the vacations. Very brief vacations. The only problem she truly faced here was that there was little to do when not doing the trials. Because she had little to distract herself she was left with a ton of time to think. Being able to have distractions would prevent her from having all the opportunities that she had now for that one part of her mind to slap the other part with a glove and challenge it to a duel. It was of course one of the many reasons that she knew if she needed to she'd fuck Frank, even though she KNEW it was going to fuck with her mind and once again force Jake to help her cope through it.
More guilt. Jake was going to have to cope with the knowledge that disgusting pile of shit was inside her while also trying to help her cope with it. She was making him do double duty because she didn't have the proper treatment available to help her get her shit together. But as they'd agreed before, the reward was well worth it.
But even if it hadn't offered what it had, she knew she'd have done it. It had helped her reinvent herself, but without it, she'd never have had the opportunity to do anything that she had accomplished. It had saved her multiple times, and only by doing that was she able to have and accomplish anything she had. If the Entity had come here tonight and told her to go to the fire and cut off her tits she would have done so unhesitatingly, because she knew she owed it that.
Still, it had surprised her. She knew well what it felt like to have a war within herself, and even though it was a God, she knew it was having a minor skirmish as well. She was fully aware that for it to...Open up even in the little way it had demonstrated just how much it trusted the pair of them. And she understood why it was gently guiding them, completely of their own free will, to do what she was doing.
Now that the Entity allowed her to know everything, of course just removing him was not, and could not be an option and she was okay with that. She understood it. So they would do what they needed to do and they would give the Entity the cause it believed it needed to resolve the situation in the way it wanted, and to her, and Jake, it would forever be a mere oversight that they had been eager to help the Entity correct, and because it appreciated the extra effort, it was fair and was doing this thing for them to show it a bit of generosity. Nothing more. Once it was done it would never be spoken of and wouldn't need to be.
And naturally, since she'd be eager to cut off her tits for it, she was even more willing to assist it in this minor way, even though it might cause a battle in her mind, because it was finally a way, not a major way, but a way, return some of the fairness they had received. To put it bluntly, she would give it up to give back.
But the most important thing was that tonight, it felt like they all treated each other a bit different. It had even said it was no longer going to refer to Jake as meat. But she would never allow herself to be complacent, she would always do everything she needed to do and more because she enjoyed when it said it had pleased it, and so much enjoyed showing it the appreciation and respect she felt for it.
Finally, her mind quieted and she felt sleep finally coming to claim her. And her last thought before it was certainly an interesting one. Tonight...Amanda really felt like the Entity had been a friend.
And somehow, she knew if she told it, the Entity would be pleased.