Chapter 17

Bob heard her gasp as he left the bedroom. His head swiveled and he saw her standing there, bent slightly forward, her arm outstretched, hand turned sideways in a fist at the top of a candle. Her face was so pale it looked almost ghostly. Her mouth opened and an agonized groan was torn from her throat as she dropped the lighter and reeled backwards.

Her eyes stared at the tall, pale yellow flame that the lighter had created at the tip of the candle, but her mind saw the same hand, outstretched in the darkened interior of an upside down car. She saw her rapist's bloody face, and his scream of "HELP ME, YOU SLUT!" rang in her brain. She also saw her hand, with the flaming lighter, dart toward a pool of liquid. Then there was just light expanding toward her ... consuming her.

Bob recognized the lighter instantly. He had no idea how she'd gotten her hands on it, but he knew instinctively that she was remembering. Her hands came up, palms facing outward, as if she was trying to shield herself from some unseen attacker. She kept backpedaling and bounced off the wall as a tortured scream ripped from her throat.

Her knees gave way first, and she dropped straight to the floor, impacting on knees that registered sharp pain. Her eyes became her own again, and the vision was gone. Movement in her peripheral vision caused her head to turn to the left. She saw Bob.

It may have been that the pain in her knees distracted her enough that she didn't just shut down. It might have been kinder if she had lost consciousness just then, because her brain, though stressed in a hundred different ways, was still capable of putting all the bits and pieces of information together that told her what she had done ... and what had resulted from it.

"Nooooooooooo," she groaned. Her knees hurt, and her thigh muscles relaxed to let her fall. Her body accommodated automatically and she sat hard on the floor, her legs beside her, still bent at the knees. Her groan was interrupted by a deep indrawn breath, which became a scream as she tried to cover her eyes to keep the vision of that ball of fire away. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

By the time he got to her she was a basket case, hysterical, her hands waving in front of her. He caught her as her waist was letting her fall. He couldn't pick her up, so he sank to the floor, pulling her upper torso across his and holding her tightly to him. She fought him for a few seconds, but then collapsed against him.

"I KILLED HIM!" she sobbed.

Bob had no idea what to do. As much as he'd thought about this possibility, it hadn't prepared him for the eventuality. His own emotions were roiling. One part of his brain screeched, "Lacey Fetterman! You're under arrest for the murder of ... some guy!" But that part of his brain was almost brutally silenced by the overwhelming sorrow he felt at what he knew she must be going through right now. He had nothing to offer ... except to hold her.

The platitude came from his lips just as helplessly and easily as it had come from a rape advocate's lips, months before. And just as uselessly.

"It's OK," he murmured. "Everything is OK."

When we are overwhelmed by events, and what is called the "fight or flight syndrome" kicks in, the world can become a tumultuous place. There are a myriad of things going on, both biologically and in that strange and interesting place we call a brain. The odd thing about that is we can't really call what happens in that situation "biology." Mental processes aren't physical, in the sense that we haven't been able to match up physical activities in the brain with specific thoughts. We know what parts of the brain are used for various things, but not how they actually operate. Even if we did, in the heat of the moment, we have no time nor inclination to parse out what's happening, and very little control over it, as well. We rely on instinct, in those times—another thing we don't understand very well.

Bob's primary instinct was to comfort his beloved. Other instincts were there, but were not strong enough to claim dominance. That's why he was saying everything was OK, even if he knew that right then nothing at all was OK. He WANTED everything to be OK and he was trying to MAKE it OK.

Lacey's instinct was to withdraw to a safe place, where the hurtful thing that she couldn't ignore wouldn't be able to torment her. She was well aware that something was terribly wrong, too, and was quite sure it would destroy her.

The so-called fight or flight syndrome's purpose is to resolve the danger, in one way or another. In this case, flight was impossible, because the danger was in her mind.

The only other option was to fight.

To be honest, Lacey might have lost that battle, had Bob not been there. Even as she tried to tell him what was wrong, which she was quite sure would drive him away from her forever, she clung to him as her last hope. And, even though he had agonized over this very scenario countless times, Bob's single thought was to protect her from the danger.

It took most of half an hour, which seems like a very short time, unless you're facing the hounds of Hell. Eventually, she came to understand that his tight embrace meant he wasn't leaving her. Then she cried, grieving for the loss of her own innocence.

This was completely different than what she had experienced during the rape. She remembered looking into the eyes of the man she hated more than anything in her life. She remembered the odor of gasoline. She remembered intentionally bringing her lighter to life. She remembered the animal rage inside her. She remembered feeling her face twist as she snarled. She remembered seeing the man's eyes widen with fear as he saw the flame in her hand. Most of all, she remembered driving her hand, holding that flame, down into the patch of wet that flared into the light that then took over her entire memory within seconds.

She remembered wanting to kill him, and the exquisite joy of being ABLE to kill him.

And that made her someone she didn't want to be ... but had no choice in being.

She didn't think of her confession as being to a law enforcement officer. She spewed out all the vile things she had done and felt to a man named Bob, the man she loved, and to whom she was clinging both physically and emotionally. He was her only anchor in the storm. That he was holding her as she did so, and kept holding her, penetrated parts of her brain that weren't conscious, but which reacted in ways that helped her feel less storm-tossed.

Bob, on the other hand, was quite familiar with confessions of this sort. He was well aware that there were the beginnings of healing in a confession, when there was remorse for what had taken place. That Lacey felt remorse was obvious, and that appealed to the part of him that loved her and wanted her to be unhappy with the fact that she was a murderess. It meant that evil didn't own her, even though she had served its purposes.

To read this story you need a Registration + Premier Membership
If you have an account, then please Log In or Register (Why register?)

Support the author's future writing by purchasing this book from Bookapy

Mistrusting a Memory

Lubrican

$4.50