Title - Whittled - Part 5
Author - Kourion
Summary: For two months, Spencer Reid had been missing. And now he had been found. Abducted by a man called the Hunter Moon Killer. And like all of the HMK's victims, Reid had been brutalized. But unlike the others, he's the only one to have ever been found alive. / Reid-pain. HC/ Morgan-Reid friendship fic.
Please note: for all the beautiful reviews, I want to just say "thank you!" so much. (For those of you reading my Mentalist fic, "Little Stars" (about an abused child rescued by Jane and Lisbon) please know that the last chapter is one of the longest, but also a little bit of a nostalgic good-bye from me. I've been working on that fic for such a long time...so keep your eyes peeled. It'll be up by Saturday (possibly sooner!))
Anyway - back to Criminal Minds. ;) What do you know? It's Reid's turn again.
Reviews are precious, and one of my new year resolutions is to personally thank all my reviewers, so please don't hold back.
Additionally, I have no idea if this chapter will be even remotely sensical to you guys. I tried to write from a place of emotions, and not logic. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be Reid, and to feel that degree of shame. So...yeah.
But if you like this chapter (and by like, I simply mean "appreciate" - as the subject matter is understandably difficult to 'like' in any real capacity!) please know that I wrote almost the entire chapter to Aphex Twin's "The Mellow Song" and Mark Isham's "A Sense of Touch." Music can motivate me almost like nothing else can. So if you haven't checked those songs out, you should!
P.S. If you know of any exceptional music that is pleasant to write to, please send recommendations my way. Sometimes I find that I write a lot more if I simply have really excellent music playing in the background. (For writing I tend to prefer pieces without lyrics, unless it's in a foreign language or sounds alien to me, such as Sigur Ros.)
N.B: this chapter is highly experimental. Parts of it - especially towards the later section of the story - will be composed in a flash-back format to convey the trauma of Reid's experience and his struggle with PTSD. Hopefully, that's what it will convey. If it works for you - if it makes you feel anything - please send me a line. If you hate the format...please send me a review, too (as long as it's not an outright flame, please).
All errors, spelling or otherwise, are my own.
WARNING: this chapter is a strong T+/ softer R. It deals with relatively graphic depictions of sexual abuse. You have been warned. If also deals with self injury.
Reid's POV
My skin burns.
I've been scrubbing at it with a bristle brush for 20 minutes. The water from my shower blasts over my chest in waves of heat so extreme that I know I would seem disordered to anyone who could possibly see me right now.
I have to remind myself that no one can see me, of course.
That no one is watching me.
My flesh feel raw and I turn my forearms over to examine the expanse of skin and to survey the damage.
I can see red petechiae dotting the landscape. Blood bursts from my rubbing. Testimony to my efforts to feel better, even though I never do.
Or certainly, I never do for long.
I sigh, then force myself to stop the vigorous motion. It's a daily task: reminding myself that I have weigh-days and examinations and that if I go into the office bruised and wounded-looking, I'm only going to cause myself more problems.
Not less.
It's hard to pull myself out of the shower, though. It always is. The sound, so loud, so repetitive in my ears - contrasted against that of cleanliness and heat and water and a RUSH of something almost hopeful. The sound of water. The sound of it gurgling down the drain, never to sit on my body again.
The noise from the shower blots out the sounds caught in my mind.
I think that's why I get so many showers now.
psychotic breaks can be triggered by trauma.
schizophrenia, too.
and i hear so much in my head
screaming and crying that never stops
and they say it's understandable
but how would they know?
how would i even know if it was something worse?
As soon as I turn off the shower, I'm freezing. The abrupt difference in the atmosphere - from loud to almost eerily quiet - makes me feel apprehensive. A harbinger of an anxiety attack, perhaps.
I think of the steps in order.
What I need to do.
Baby steps, now. Because even getting a shower is something that can still throw me off course. Especially since it dredges up the awareness that grit still needs to be expunged from my intestines.
I manage to locate my midnight blue tub of Nivea cream in record time.
It's actually "Nivea for Men: Intensive Day Moisturizing Cream."
I didn't purchase it; Morgan did. But it's been a huge help, so I'll give credit where credit is due.
My skin is incredibly dry these days, and the scent is soothing. It almost has a hint of something...mentholated. It smells clean and fresh and new. Almost clinical, but not harsh. It covers up the raw, bleeding smell that I can always feel trapped inside my body, now. Putrescence. The scent of burning meat. Contamination and sex and the smell of filth.
Of course no product is going to erradicate the smell. Not entirely. Not for good.
That's where the showers come in.
Enough of both, and I can go a few hours and breathe in without smelling it. I know it would sound insane to someone who doesn't understand, but I truly believe that my olfactory sense has become...heightened since I was taken.
Maybe it's partly due to the fact that so many of my other senses were constrained. Dampened down. The sense of taste, of sight, and when Daley wasn't around - even the sense of sound. All diminished in a dark basement with concrete floors, no light, no blankets, no anything at all.
It was just cold, and rank, and I shivered and hurt and wished I could have kept the bare minumum of my decency. My clothes, for sure. But if not those, a blanket.
Something.
Anything. Anything so that when he was done with me each night, I could cover myself back up. So that when the sex was over, at least I knew I didn't have to stay exposed in front of the others until he came back.
So at least I could have covered up the gore.
Blood, often.
Vomit - the first few times.
When Daley was in a bad mood - when he was enraged - the smells would become worse. The smell of myself. My body, betraying itself. The scent of urine, the first time it happened. Saturating my clothes.
which is why they were removed in the first place...
if you hadn't done that
maybe he would have let you keep them
maybe
maybe
you can never know
And then it got worse - the smell. Despite the cold.
It was everywhere. The scent of my failure. And I knew that it had been filmed; that made it ten times worse. To know that they had seen it. That they must have. Somehow - even when I didn't think I could have felt more repulsed of my own body - it had gotten worse. Somehow, in some crazy way - that had been worse than the rape.
Because Daley had raped me.
But I had peed myself.
The next day, Daley took the chains off from my feet and stroked my face - almost lovingly, almost with kindness.
Almost as if he was sorry.
He wiped at my face and my hands and genitals with a wash cloth while I squirmed and bit through my lip until my teeth tasted like blood, and I tried to go away in my head. He washed and he washed, and then my whimpers turned louder and more insistent as I begged him not to touch me.
To leave me alone.
So he slowly broke apart. His kindness slowly left his body. Left his face. And that was when I knew never again to turn Kevin Daley down when he was being kind.
That my biggest mistake hadn't been in voiding my bladder when he had cut me.
No. It had been in turning away when he had wanted to clean me.
When he had wanted to have me.
Again.
The punishment for pushing him away was always the smell of blood and bleach. At first, I celebrated the scent. The scent of bleach, almost like chlorine. Almost like being in a pool. Being anywhere but there. It stung and it sat on my skin until I felt like it was drilling through to bone, and I'd think to myself: "Good, then. You're still clean. Still clean."
still clean
you were still clean
Because blood was still cleaner than the smell of sex.
I manage to return my toiletries to my 'cubby' about ten minutes before group. For a second, I feel such a swell of tension that I clench up my hands and stretch them out in a desperate attempt to dispel some of the anxiety.
It doesn't work very well, but it takes the edge off. I take a breath of air. Tell myself to stop it.
To STOP IT RIGHT NOW.
'right now,' my mind always whispers.
and always in the voice of a child.
me. as a child.
and i have no idea why.
Katyn is sitting propped up in an oversized faux leather loveseat. Her skinny legs are covered in clashing tights. Electric colours, neon leg warmers. Today she is wearing a hot pink sweatshirt with a puffy paint Koala on the front.
I tell my face that the sweatshirt is cute. Amusing. I tell my face that it should smile.
That if I can't fake a smile...
then I'm never getting out of here.
Katyn is 22, which makes her the baby of our group. Her hair is pitch black, like asphalt tar, and razored. Her arms, I know, are razored too. Cuts upon cuts of badly healed scars. Some white and keloid-thick, others purple-pink: a more painful version of her clothes.
Obvious, badly hidden. At least, to me.
Unable to be concealed, no matter how many layers she wears now.
Because you only have to see them once. Lines and lines or razor tracks...and how can you ever forget? Forget what you've seen?
"You look like you just rolled out of bed," I say gently, by way of greeting.
It's almost 5:30 pm, but it's true: her hair is a halo of black knots.
"Whatever," she grumbles, giving me a look of near-irritation. I know it's just an act. But sometimes I wish I could just see her. Without the scowl.
Because I don't know what she sees.
I don't know if she sees IT.
But I suspect that she must.
"Did you even use a towel? You're getting water all over the floor," the girl adds a moment later, before she shifts about. I see the Koala shirt rise above her torso just a little bit, exposing bone. Exposing 75 lbs of wastedness and grief and rage and one hell of an ugly childhood that never got to live past the tragically young age of nine.
It makes my heart hurt.
-It also reminds me of my own body-
A moment later she's smoothing down the fabric, playing for nonchalance. Indifference.
"I'm skipping group today."
I hold a breath. Release it. "You said that you wanted to get out of here. You'll never get out if you keep missing group."
Her arms now come to bind up her skinny knees, her chin planting itself firmly against her wrist: "Screw it, Reid. I'm watching something. Something I want to watch, when I want to watch it. They already control everything else around here. Fuck 'em."
My eyes flutter up to the screen. The girl is watching cartoons. Horses prance about in colours that could match her clothing choices; I crouch down on the sofa juxtaposing hers, taking pains not to sit too close or too far away from her.
Both could trigger her - for different reasons.
"This is a show for children, Katyn," I say softly, reasonably. Wanting to encourage her to get up and go to group more than anything else.
After all, if I have to go to group...
she should go to group.
She's infinitely worse off than I am.
At least I know how I *look* to others.
"Says you, brain," she mutters darkly, rousing me from my throughts. I know she doesn't mean it, but I still can't help but go quiet.
I push back the swell of hurt at the "not-supposed-to-have-been-an insult" insult.
She has no idea.
None.
She's just hurting.
"It's a cartoon about horses. Surely you can do better than that. Come on. Come to group."
"Ponies," she hisses, turning up the volume to drown out my protests. " It's a show about ponies. And what the fuck is it to you anyway?"
When I stand up a minute later, I can see that her eyes are wet and her face is glum. She chips away at green-yellow nail polish, scrapping a fleck off with one battered finger. The moons of her fingertips are purple from anemia. Purple blood. Blood of the nearly-dead.
She's thinner than me, and colder than me too, and-
you shouldn't push her
...I feel a slug of guilt crawl right through my stomach, and bite my tongue.
Because there is so much I could say.
That she probably even needs to hear:
I'm sorry he hurt you.
I'm so fucking sorry that he took it away from you.
Your childhood.
I can't say it though. Not really.
Not aloud.
It would just make it that much more painful for her.
That much more real.
Speaking always does.
My hair is still damp (but not sopping) when I find a place in the rec center and deposit myself into a crimson bean chair.
"Spencer," Dr. Everett welcomes me, face even and calm despite my tardiness. "Better late than never, I guess."
"Sorry," I mutter, not knowing if I really feel sorry at all. Not thinking I really do. Just following the sense memory of appropriateness. The latent sense that once upon a time, I would have said sorry...
Dr. Everett is a man in his late 50's. Cheeks the colour of a red beetle. Salt and pepper hair. Not portly, per se, but almost. Getting there.
"Katyn didn't feel up to tonight's group, huh?," our mutual doctor asks with resolute equanimity.
Nothing can throw these people off the scent of disorder and shame. They compartmentalize even better than profilers.
I hesitate in my response. It's a loaded question, and we both know it. In solidarity, I go for a somewhat ambiguous response.
"She was watching a show," I add, giving nothing away. "She might come by later."
Which is a complete load of crap.
I know Katyn has no intention of coming to group. Not tonight.
Not when a man is in charge of asking the questions.
Not when the man in charge...reminds her of her father.
I console myself in the knowledge that out of all the males in this ward, I'm the only one Katyn will even talk to without flinching or looking down at her lap.
And that must mean something.
Maybe - just maybe - it means that some part of me is still clean.
And that she can sense that.
Because if anyone would know, it would be someone who could smell it
because they could smell it on themselves, too.
The group is fairly evenly divided. Slightly more females than males.
Mean age approximately 39, but with a mode age of 36.
Just under 62% female for breakdown.
Youngest participant is 19 years old.
Eldest is over 55.
"Spencer?"
I try to pretend that I've been listening. "Hmm?"
The 19 year old - Jeri - laughs. He's the snarliest of our motley crew; probably feels somewhat outnumbered by older females because of it. Of course, there is also something about him that I find unnerving. To the extreme. A sense that the boy is lingering way too damn close to the sociopathic edge.
"Spencer?"
After a few more moments, I realize that I'm still lost.
"I'm...sorry. I-," shut up. shutupshutup. Don't even play their game. "Could you repeat the question?"
My voice, miraculously, doesn't tremble.
A week ago everything trembled. My voice. My arms. My hands. And the only way I could get it to stop was to sit on them. Which looked even more odd. Eventually I took to simply stretching my sweater over my hands. It didn't stop the trembling, but it diminished the overt nature of its course until I felt more in control again.
Of those frazzled bones sheathed in skin that had nowhere left to go
and couldn't stop moving because of it.
To his credit Dr. Everett simply fills me in.
"We're completing a free association game. Julie just gave the word 'paint.' Now it's your turn."
I squint-frown.
"My objective is simply to utter the first word that comes to mind?"
As if we all couldn't just cheat at this...
Dr. Everett nods. I sigh.
"Umm, 'paint' is the word? Uh, I guess 'cough' then?"
Jeri snickers and I stare back down at my hands - now swathed in a blue button down top, stretched over my fingertips.
At 6:40 pm group ends. A waste of a perfectly potentially rich hour, if you ask me. I could have achieved a lot. Under normal circumstances, of course.
For some reason that I cannot fathom -
some pulsing need...
I want to take a shower again.
When I return to the break room, Katyn is still decked out by the television. Her eyes, like my hair, are also now dry - which makes me feel marginally better.
My Little Ponies is no longer playing. I can't be sure if she deliberately looked for something less juvenile because of what I had said earlier. I hope not.
I let my gaze fall to the television set, wanting to say something. Something to atone for making her feel worse than I know she already feels.
As it stands she's watching some animal rescue show now, so I try to focus on that for a few moments before I realize that the show is almost as disheartening as our last group session.
And that says a lot.
On the show a bald eagle named Chester is being euthanized. It has been decided that due to advanced arthritis in his limbs he'll never fly again, and due to his fear of human beings - the zoo would cause him excessive amounts of stress.
So death it is.
The animal's eyes are closed, and he looks so incredibly vulnerable on the examination table. His small white feather tufted chest is rising and falling. His movements - even under sedation - pained. And to know that any second now...his heart is going to stop?
That he'll never wake up again?
"Well this is depressing," I mutter dully. I know I'll take a hit for it, but at least it helps to clear the air. Set us back on familiar footing.
"This is life," Katyn clips back. "And at least they tried to save him. It could have been worse. He can't fly very well. A wolf might have gotten him otherwise. Ripped him to bits. Sometimes that is kinder. Death, I mean. Sometimes it makes sense."
As she speaks, my face suddenly breaks out in a sheen of sweat. And all I can think of is:
sometimes it is kinder
And all I can think of is:
I wish I could have used a needle instead
And then - like the thunder after the lightening - Katyn's eyes are large and round and she's whispering to me.
Something.
But I can't hear.
I can only SEE.
a slit
it makes a sound like a nip
a starchy sound, like fabric pulling apart
then two slits
one for each wrist
but it's not deep enough
so i do it again
and again
i'm hacking apart the skin with the glass
as if the glass is a pick axe
and my hands are now coated in my syrup
but it's not syrup
it's blood
and i know i might not come back from this
and the glass breaks apart beneath my skin from the force
as i dig it beneath the veins and pull with all my might
and am i screaming?
did i scream?
maybe
or am i crying?
i don't know
all i know is that there is no pain
i am a dummy made of clay
not real
not real
none of this is REAL
and i can't feel anything at all
not even the burn in my arms where i opened my wrists
not even the sense that i should scream
all i can feel is the well of heat and blood
the almost delicate rivulets of warmth and iron-rose
flowing down my arms
and it pools in my belly - the blood
the blood pools down to my center
and onto the ground
and i can't keep myself up
all i can do is drop the glass
and watch the wounds on my wrists
watch them expand and grow darker and darker
and then turn black
And in that moment
I wanted my mom.
Oh god, I want my mom to hold me.
I want to tell her everything.
I want to tell her nothing.
I want to close my eyes and not see it anymore.
"Spencer? Spencer!"
And lips are moving, and a girl is speaking.
But I can't hear it very well over the rush of blood in my ears. Then the tide of blood recedes out of my skull and out of my compressed brain - too full with scents and images that I never again want to experience.
And then I am okay.
I can hear again, and feel again.
The lightening always strikes first. The thunder comes next.
Sight
Then sound.
And it's no different with PTSD.
The images come first
the sounds of real life come next.
Katyn's hand feels too warm and too kind on my back. Rubbing circles along my spine.
"It's over," she hushes to me. This spindly little kid, consoling me. "It's over now."
"I'm sorry," I manage to choke out. My throat is clogged with tears. "I'm sorry. I-I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to make you remember. With the TV show. Earlier. I know it feels like you lost it, that it's gone-"
A pale face stares back at me, contorted. Like a Picasso painting. The eyes and the nose and the mouth...are not where they should be. Nothing is what it should be. Nothing.
"Reid?," the voice lilts and drifts and drops. And then she speaks again. "What are you talking about?"
I wrap my arms around my chest and try to dispell the panic that is ascending from my core. Clamouring to come on out and make a scene. Because someone is touching me, and don't they know better-?
Can't they smell it too?
I reek of sex.
And death.
And how come no one else can smell it?