Forgive me for this...but for this story to be a story it needed a catalysis for the plot which will be played out in the next bunch of chapters. I have plenty of reasons for this...if you wish to know them you can leave me a comment or a message.
Content warning for implied and referenced sexual assault.
August 4th 11 pm
Cold, she was cold but she couldn't escape this dream she was in.
It had to be as she thinks about the days before this all came to earth. When Hades himself reared his ugly head.
She can hear her name being called, but she has no will to answer back. She squeezes her eyes more shut and thinks, wishes that it was the beginning of summer, that everything was bright with hope and excitement as it has been on the last day of school.
Her head is aching and the sand is cold beneath her.
Sand?
She touches her forehead, prodding into a cut that seems to be covered in sand and still bleeding.
Her dress…her new pretty dress was dirty, beside her. It comes back to her, no it slams violently back into her mind as she finds herself choking back a sob. It was dark, and it was late. How she begged, how she begged for them to not ruin her new dress, taunting and smirking. Undoing hooks and buttons. Princess wants to make this easier…
She reaches down under her petticoat, her drawers in disrepair and wetness coated her fingers that touched her thigh. Another sob as she held her hand up in the moonlight, her eyes opened for the first time, and whatever was on her hand was streaked with blood.
She was cold in the August evening but she couldn't seem to move. She couldn't escape this dream she was in. It had been supposed to be a perfect evening, a perfect night, instead, Hades had broken through and swallowed her life whole.
This was a nightmare of cold, but wasn't the underworld hot? Was hell and the underworld the same place?
Mother didn't like her saying hell outside a biblical context? Hades, Hades would be her hell.
Darkness, surrounded as she buttoned eyes shut again If she opened them…it would be real and her life would change forever. This war had come and now her life, the best years of her life were taken from her.
No, this had to be a dream.
It had to be as she thinks about the days before this all came to earth. When Hades himself reared his ugly head.
She can hear her name being called, but she has no will to answer back.
Rilla!
Just let her die in the river of Styx or was it Acheron? Maybe Cocytus?
Rilla! Spider! Rilla!
She hears out in the distance as if her mind is playing tricks on her. That can't find her, not again. She curls into a small ball, paralyzed to being found. To be subjected to whatever they did to her once more. She can hear their laughs in the back of her mind and it makes her sick.
She hears footsteps, but her eyes are still buttoned shut, when a hand touches her shoulder a scream escapes her mouth, piercing her ears.
"Rilla it's Jem," she hears her brother's voice, but her body is still shaking. Someone calls for a jacket, a blanket anything. She hears Walter, she hears Shirley, and she can hear Ken. Voices that in theory should make her feel safe.
But wasn't the harbour safe?
Someone picks her up, Jem by his cologne she gathers because she still can't open her eyes to see their disappointment.
"Her dress…" someone says.
"Grab it," her brother says. "Your jacket, cover her will you until we get to the wagon?"
They keep talking to her, what feels like a long journey most likely home, they talk to her, and they talk to people across roads saying that they have found her. Whoever is holding her, is protectively keeping the blankets around her. She can't tell if she's shivering or if she is still crying.
"Rilla?" she hears her father's voice, and then his strong arms wrap around her as someone transfers her to him.
She can count the steps that lead to the front door. She hears a shriek of shock…
Susan.
Her head rolls a bit resting on her father's shoulder.
The light is bright to her eyes, and as she tries to shield them she sees her hands dirty and nails broken.
Flashes of reaching out to scratch, to fight back flood the forefront of her mind. She whines, suddenly afraid as she drops them her body shakes and she feels what they have done to her once more.
"It's okay, you're safe now," she hears her mother say softly. Shaken to the core it sounds like she whispers to her husband the doctor.
Call Dr. Parker, call the district nurse who helps with deliveries.
A hot bath, to wash away the dirt and sand, bandages for her head.
"Look at me, just focus on me Dearest," her mother tells her and scared hazel eyes find the same old grey eyes that tucked her in and chased monsters away for so many years.
Her mother undresses her and takes account of the marks and bruises. Her mother is the one who wipes the blood from her thighs. It's her mother who puts the cloth in her hand gently and tries to explain.
"I just want to make sure you are not actively bleeding Dearest, Please?"
Bleeding, the blood that had covered her thighs with other strange substances. She takes the cloth that's wet to the touch and still warm. Her mother gives her a moment of privacy, before taking the cloth back once she did what was asked. She's helped into the tub, her hands clutching her mother's arm. The hot water stings in places it never has before. Mother washes her hair, combing out the tangles, before dressing her in a fresh nightgown.
Her bed had never felt so safe, with warm blankets and her hair braided, Doctors outside her door talking, and a nurse. Trying to decide. They need to check, they need to ensure that there was no damage. The idea of anyone down there is terrifying as thinking about what happened.
What would you prefer? Someone asks her.
In the end, it is her mother holding her hand, and the nurse. The same nurse that once helped delivered her most likely, is now carefully bending her knees. Talking gently, she explained as she carefully as she checked over the teen.
Tears leak through her shut eyes, hands squeezing her mother's. The nurse pats her leg and washes her hands. Such a brave young thing, she hears through her tears. She can't hear what they are saying in the doorway once it is open once more, but her mother looks paler with each passing word.
Assaulted she hears though.
Assaulted, completion, tearing, bruising, possibly— She can't hear the next word as her mother gasps. Her brother is threatening the men who did this when they have no idea who did this. Everyone looks to her for an answer, which only makes Mother caress her hair and sit next to her.
She doesn't know...they weren't at the party...they...found her on the shore.
Her father is trying to piece everything together, speaking to Jem and Walter, 'You were supposed to be watching her?'
It wasn't their fault though! That is what she wanted to say but she couldn't say anything after thinking about them. Her body hurt in strange places, she was used to cramps but this was different.
Reputation was everything, wasn't it?
Would anyone ever want her now?
Did she see their faces? Recognize a voice? Anything that could be a lead?
They wouldn't make her marry him if she had, would they? They wouldn't, they couldn't!
She lays in bed, staring at the wall, flashes of the night race through her mind. Creeping into dreams as she cries and fights in her sleep. Someone is always there, comforting, rubbing her back in those dark moments. Mother's soft hands and voice, her father's steady and weighted hand. Walter sits holding her hand, reading from books of poetry.
Susan brings up her favourite food in the morning, trying to entice her to eat more than she does.
She barely understands what happened but the reactions around her make her know that it was the most disastrous thing that could happen to a woman.
Her father asks her awkward questions about her monthly, it was regular was it, not these days? Did she remember the last time she had it? She stares at him blankly but looks over to the small calendar on her desk until he looks at it with her. Small red dots in the corners, as he flips through the months. He counts, dragging his finger along the weeks. Trying to average what was something that was not entirely on a schedule. It still bounced through weeks and months. She never thought anything about it, mother told her it might do that for a few years until she got older.
He says nothing but kisses the top of her head.
"She's just a child Gilbert, my god who would do this to a child!" She hears her mother cry. "Why did I let them talk me into allowing her to go?"
"Because we never thought something like that could or would happen Anne-girl," her father sounds broken.
Rilla for the first time, can't find the courage or wanting need to shout in italics that she wasn't a child because things she barely understands are still at the forefront of her mind every time she closes her eyes.
She cries silently until her father comes back with a mug that smells of milk and chocolate, but the taste is off as he helps her drink it.
"Just try and sleep, we'll be right here," he says kissing the top of her head. Whatever was in the mug made her eyelids feel heavy, and she panicked at the feeling of sleep and darkness. No! She doesn't want this…not again, she doesn't like people holding her wrists, keeping her from flailing around.
Mother's perfume washes over her.
It's okay
It will be okay.
She finds out as needs to relieve herself, stumbling to the toilet across the hall. It makes her sick, the sight of her body, the bruises and scratches that she can't remember if they are from them or herself in her sleep. Her nails are cut short, and she has scratches on her arms and legs. Bruises as well in the shape of hand prints.
She can't look away, but the bile in her stomach is rising and choking her.
Footsteps are rushing towards the door at the sound of her retching. She shaking in the corner, pulling at her hair when they open the door, covered in sick.
Mother's perfume washes over her once more, and father's cologne.
It's okay
It will be okay, we'll have a bath and fix your hair.
Mother tries to tell her looking at her Father almost hopeless about what to do or say.
