Excerpt of the work currently called 0113 - Untitled copyright Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. Note: this is an excerpt of a rough draft, not a final version. Errors are likely, and everything here is subject to editing and/or deletion.
She woke once again in the dark room- but this time it didn't feel like a dream.
Did they ever, really?
Ativan didn't usually knock her out like that; it just made her mellow. The only times she really remembered blacking out like... that...
Where the hell was she?
What had she done?
She pushed herself up, and then gasped. Her body ached. She shoved her hair out of her face and groped blindly for the edge of the bed, and from there for some kind of bedside table- the most likely place she could think for a lamp. She needed light. She needed-
Don't freak out again, Erin. Deep breaths. She consciously controlled her breathing, the way she had been taught, as she located a table and searched carefully for a lamp.
A small box, maybe for jewelry. A... pair of handcuffs? A little less carefully and a little more frantically, she searched further, and then bit back a scream as she grabbed onto something sharp, cutting her hand.
She recoiled, hugging her injured hand to her chest, and ended up in the middle in the dark room. Bravely- in her humble opinion, anyway, given what she had found so far- she shuffled forward, her uninjured hand in front of her face until she found the wall and breathed a sigh of relief.
The relief was short-lived. In that moment, a door behind her on the opposite wall opened, letting in a stream of muted but well-appreciated light, and a man she had never seen before.
She revised that initial thought as she looked at him more closely. He looked a little older than Erin, maybe college-aged, though he had a quality about him that made Erin think he was older. His skin was a caramel-bronze that meant both sunlight and genes, and the short hair that sat in tousled spikes was dark enough to match- like good coffee beans. What didn't match were his eyes, which would have been extraordinary even on a northern-Europe blond. They reminded her of a blue-jay dipped in mercury, all swirls of sky blue and frost and silver. He didn't look like anyone she could remember ever knowing, but at the same time he seemed impossibly familiar. Those eyes, currently focused on her with what seemed to be concern, seemed like eyes she must have stared into for hours, once upon a time and another life.
Maybe she had.
That thought, that she might be in the presence of someone who knew the wrong her, made her skin crawl.
"Where am I?" she asked, in a voice so muted she could barely recognize it as her own.
The concern turned to outright worry. "In your room, in your Sète home. Do you remember how you got here?"
Sète? She had never heard of it.
"What state?"
Now he really looked confused. "Shevaun, why don't you sit down? You were badly hurt. This is the first time you've been conscious in days, and I think you're still confused."
"What did you call me?" But she knew. She knew because she had heard the name before. It was written in all her records.
"Shevaun, sit down-"
He moved to touch her arm and she jerked back.
"I've got to go. I have to leave, now-"
"Shevaun-"
"Don't call me that!"
She screamed the last, trying to remember that this man didn't know. As she remembered the rest of what he had said, she demanded, "Hurt- how? How was I hurt? What did I do?"
She didn't want to go back to the ward, to lockdowns and body-searches and waking up in restraints... but wasn't this worse? At least when she woke up in isolation she knew where she was and who she was with and who was this man and what had she done?
"Calm down," he was saying, but she couldn't. She knew what "Shevaun" was capable of; any friend of that woman's was no friend of hers. Erin only needed to glance at the bedside table- and the handcuffs, knife and bottle of wine there- to know that.
The man reached for her again. This time she shoved him, discovering in her panic a strength she hadn't known she possessed until suddenly this stranger was sprawled full-length on the ground. Seizing her advantage, she dashed past him- only to slam into a petite girl with unruly blond hair who stumbled a bit but managed to keep her footing and grab Erin's arm.
"Shevaun, you're awake!"
The girl glowing happiness was quickly replaced by confusion as the man Erin had run from said, "Nikola, hold onto her. Something's wrong."
"Something is wrong," Erin said swiftly, as the man stood, moved up behind her, and grasped one of her wrists in each hand. "I don't know what I've told you, but I'm not who you think I am. And I need to get home, right away."
"You are home," Nikola said.
"No, I'm not-"
"Nikola, why don't you give us some privacy?" The man asked.
Nikola nodded. "I'll wait in the parlor, in case you need me."
Parlor? Who has a parlor, in this day and age?
Apparently we do, Erin's mind supplied.
Yes, a parlor, and a bedroom all dressed in an old-money, Victorian style, with a four-poster bed, an Oriental carpet, and honest-to-god oil paintings on the walls.
And handcuffs and a knife, and a man Erin had never met.
"Please," she whispered. "Let me call my father. He'll explain."
The man holding her didn't reply to the request. Instead, he pulled them both down on the bed, where he spooned against her back, pinning one of her arms underneath her and keeping her other wrist in his hand, against her shoulder. It was gentle, but anyone who had ever been professionally restrained knew that he was perfectly ready to roll forward and pin her more thoroughly if she struggled.
"Let's start over," he said, in a voice that was oh-so-careful. "My name is Adjila. I am in love with Shevaun, so you can be assured that I won't hurt you, that I have a vested interest in figuring out what is going on, and that I am not going to let you out of this house until I am confident of your safety. Even if you were making sense to me, I would attempt to discourage you from leaving due to your current physical condition- which you would notice, if you would calm down enough to recognize that you are still injured."
Aware that she wouldn't be able to get up until he let her, Erin forced herself to relax. As she did so, she confirmed what he had said: her whole body hurt. The pain seemed most focused in her gut and her ribs, but everything ached, as if she had either had a serious flu or taken an equally serious beating.
"Okay, I've calmed down," she said. "Would you let go of me now?"
"So you can run off?" he guessed, correctly. "No."
"Actually, because it creeps me out to have a guy I don't know snuggling with me," she snapped. It was her secondary reason, but that didn't make it less true.
She felt him flinch, and an unexpected wave of pity washed over her. He had claimed to love Shevaun. She was about to tell him that Shevaun didn't exist.
"If it would make you less uneasy," he said, "I can tie you down instead."
She drew a deep breath. "I don't want to be tied up."
"I didn't think so. Now, if you aren't Shevaun, why don't you let me know who you are?"
"I've been trying to-"
"So do it," he snapped. Then it was his turn to take one of those deep, calming breaths before he asked, "What's your name?"
She gave him that and more. "Erin Misrahe. I live in Massachusetts. I'm sixteen." She added that last with the hope that it might make him back off a little, since he was obviously older and "they" apparently had some kind of serious relationship.
She didn't really want to think about that.
"Do you often wander around in other people's brains... Erin?" he asked, only hesitating a little on the name.
It was a weird way to put it, but she knew what he meant, and answered honestly with words she had never expected she would say to a complete stranger- one who wasn't some kind of health care professional, anyway.
"I'm schizophrenic," she admitted softly, as she tried to remember Dr. Vaghin's words on the subject. It's a disease, Erin; it's not who you are. It's not your fault. It's not something you chose, or that you should blame yourself for, or that you should be ashamed of. All you can choose is to keep fighting it. "I was diagnosed when I was a little kid. Add to that a dissociative identity disorder, and you get however I met you and got here. I've been symptom free for almost two years... until now."
Until now. Until, for the first time in her life, things has been going well and she had begun to really feel hope. She had friends. She had a life, finally- or, she had, until she had woken up today with a stranger who knew her by another name.
"Are we-" The first question choked itself off as she fought unwanted tears. Why did this have to happen, now of all times? "Have we- I mean, do we..."
She trailed off and, without releasing her wrist, he half hugged her with the arm draped over her wrist. "We've been together for... a while."
"We met before this?"
He hesitated, evaluating her question before he answered, "We met years ago."
Years?
Which time?
She had run away often in the past. She had grown used to waking up in unexpected places, but they had usually been hospitals of one type or another. She had rarely managed to get away and still been free when she came to her senses... but it had happened. Whenever she dissociated, she tried to get away, the exact same way she wanted to run now.
She had not known that she had ever gotten wherever Shevaun had always tried to go, but apparently she had. She had somehow formed a whole other life. How worried had these people been during the last two years, if Shevaun was as real to them as Erin was to her father and the ward?
"I'm sorry," she whispered, without meaning to. Sorry for the pain she must have put these stranger through over the years- and sorry that she would do whatever it took to kill "Shevaun" for good. She felt some pity for this man, but she didn't love him. She didn't know or care about the girl he had called Nikola. She would hurt them if she had to, if it got her life back.
Adjila seemed to make a decision. He stated, "Erin, I'm going to walk with you to the bathroom. You are going to look in the mirror and tell me whether the face you see there is the one you are used to seeing. If the answer is yes, we will go get the phone, and I will let you call... your father, you said?"
"Yeah."
"If I let you up, are you going to attack me again?"
She shook her head. He was going to let her call her father. That was all she needed to confirm her identity, and get a way home.
They stood up. Adjila let her walk on her own, but he never put more than a single small step between them. They passed through another door from the bedroom and into a bathroom Erin could only describe with a "wow."
The large, Jacuzzi-style tub was black marble, and the shelves to each side held candles that were cranberry in both color and scent- she could smell them from across the room- in addition to a normal assortment of soaps and other necessities. The floor was creamy white tile, and the counter was more black marble, veined with white and covered with a scattering of objects that ranged from a mahogany-handled hairbrush and a tube of lipstick to a beautiful, antique-looking but obviously razor-sharp dagger.
Finally, she lifted her gaze to the mirror.
"That's not me," she gasped. She ran into Adjila as she tried to step backward.
"I didn't think it would be," he replied, as he wrapped his arms around her waist, pinning her own arms at her side. Still speaking slowly and quietly, as if to keep calm some kind of wild animal, he said, "Shevaun-" He had gone back to using that name. God! How she hated that name! "- I have known you, continuously, for a great many years. We have been together-" He held her more tightly when she started to struggle. "- for almost as long."
"No," she whimpered, and then repeated more strongly, "No," before finally shouting it, "No! No!"
"You bastard!" She kicked at his shins, fought and shouted and squirmed and cursed. "You're messing with me. You're- you're-" But there was that face in the mirror, with skin like cream and long hair with deep auburn waves like something painted with garnets and blood. There was those eyes, black eyes, which stared back at her, wide and frightened.
"Shevaun, calm down!"
"Don't call me that, you sick. Twisted. Son of a-"
He spun her around, and roughly pinned her against the wall.
"Erin," he tried, with a voice that was no longer gentle, "calm down, or I will knock you out and simply pray that the next time you open your eyes, the right person looks out of them."
"Get you hands off me!"
This time he lifted her and half carried, half dragged her, still struggling, back toward the bed. "You're going to hurt yourself," he pleaded. She landed a lucky elbow in his rib cage and he gasped, dropping her. She landed hard on her hip. "Or you're going to hurt me," he coughed. "You don't know your own strength."
"Good," she bit out, scuttling back and jumping to her feet again. "Come and get it, pretty-boy."
He did, too quickly for her to follow. Without quite knowing how he managed it, she found herself pinned on her stomach on the bed, with one of her arms twisted painfully up behind her back to hold her in place.
"Stop this!" he ordered
"Not. Freaking. Likely."
She should have remembered them sooner, but she only recalled the handcuffs when he shifted his weight to grab them. She tried to throw him off, but Adjila was quick and he knew what he was doing- and that shouldn't have surprised her, given what she had seen so far in these rooms.
Erin did the only thing she could think to do, as this stranger cuffed her wrists behind her back: she screamed bloody murder.
Adjila thumped her against the bed, knocking her breath out, at the same time that the door opened and another girl Erin didn't know- a brunette, this time- poked her head in.
"Everything okay in here?" the new girl asked.
"Nothing is okay in here," Erin shouted, as soon as she had pulled in a new breath. "Call the police! I've been-"
Adjila shifted his weight just enough to push her breath out again and quiet her as he bit out, "We're fine."
"Okay." The girl stepped back and closed the door without another word.
"Erin," Adjila ordered, his tone now vicious, "shut up. No one can hear you except Nikola, Larissa, and me, and they're going to listen to me until you start acting more like you. Now, I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to... especially if you manage to break another one of my ribs."
"You'd hurt your precious Shevaun?" Erin challenged.
"I know how much your body can heal from- and she knows how much damage it can inflict," he snarled. "She'll forgive me for defending myself as soon as she... gets back. And you had better hope that she is back by the next time those pretty black eyes open, because otherwise, I am going to have to get creative, and you probably aren't going to enjoy that. So shut your mouth, shut your eyes, and go to sleep or I swear to Heaven, Hell and all the worlds between I will give you good reason to scream."
Erin was psychotic, but she wasn't crazy enough to challenge this man who kept weapons and handcuffs so close to hand. She shut her eyes and her mouth, and silently prayed she would wake up in the hospital.
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