OPHELIA: Chapter 17
Blurb
Elizabeth Lockwick wants one thing… to ensure Ophelia remains dead.
For years she’s weaved a life seen through rose-coloured glasses in idyllic Vermont with her husband Sebastian Lockwick, an alluring man with a broken moral compass, whose intent lies in protecting his wife. However, apart from her unorthodox understanding of Sebastian’s dark and gritty hidden nature, she finds herself slipping away from her sanity in maintaining this picturesque life.
After receiving a gruesome gift from an unknown sender threatening to expose her, she finds herself haunted and possibly hunted by her buried past.
In order to make things right for herself and ensure that her secret is hidden, she reluctantly travels back to her sleepy small hometown in Wisconsin. A town where young girls seem to be mysteriously disappearing. There, she reunites with the dysfunctional Pierre-Louis’, a French-American family who sheltered her in their manor in her time of need.
With time slipping away, she struggles with her guilt and a dangerous affair and realizes that perhaps Ophelia wasn’t dead after all these years.
Elizabeth suddenly finds herself caught in a game of cat and mouse, unsure of which she really is this time and who she can trust.
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Chapter 17
She held the tray of tea anxiously as she stood behind his door. He’d been in there for over an hour. With a short subtle breath, she knocked the oaky door before her and called out to him. There was a feeling in her gut that something was not alright. Knocking the door again, there was no answer. Had he fallen asleep? She turned the handle to find it unlocked and took a step in.
“Stef?”
He came out of the washroom, his hair damp along with his white t-shirt which clung to the wet parts of his torso and dark sweatpants that hung casually at his waist. “You should really lock that,” she smiled and placed the tray of tea to the side table. Her smile suddenly broke off when she noticed the red soaked cloth on his left hand. “Oh my God.”
“It’s nothing,” he tried to assure her, but she ignored him and went into his bathroom cabinet for a first-aid kit.
“How can you say it’s nothing?” She scolded him quietly and pushed him to sit on the edge of his bed. “What were you even doing?”
Kneeling on the floor besides him, she wiped the wounded hand and applied the cream with her fingertips onto his palm. A sense of guilt filled within her as she worked before him. He hadn’t said anything, simply sat there lost in a thought.
“I’m sorry,” she sighed as she wrapped the bandage around his hand. “I know with everything happening right now it’s a lot. I just didn’t think it was the right time to talk about us.”
“Then there isn’t much to talk about is there?”
There was something about his tone she noticed. He was upset and she could smell the alcohol spilled on the floor of his bedroom.
“I need some time to think,” he said.
“About?”
“I don’t wish to say anything that would hurt you, Lily. This scenario is perhaps easy for you but-”
“It’s different,” she frowned. “How could you even think that? Is that what you think of me?”
Ophelia stood and took a deep breath before she left, “There’s tea Rosie asked me to bring up for you.”
Locking her room door behind her, she felt an impending exhaustion drench over her body. A nausea of pain and hurt and vulnerability pierced like needles through her skin. Coming back to Rose Gap opened all her wounds and no matter how hard she tried to keep her composure and wear this mask it began to wear down. Not even a shower seemed to help. She fell onto the soft bed and closed her heavy eyes hoping for a peaceful sleep.
The fire swallowed the piano like the demon he was. Her tender feet burnt and sore and tired. She called to her mother. She screamed to her father. Was it too late? Did they leave her in here? Or where they…? No. She tried to push the thought out of her head. Fear lent wings to her feet as she ran up to her parent’s room. Heat scorching everywhere like arrows shooting at her. The chandelier suddenly fell to the floor, smashing into a million glass pieces. A large wood fell in front of her, before her parent’s bedroom door. She screamed, shouting their names to no answer. Ophelia knew she couldn’t open this door by herself. No fifteen-year-old girl could. She ran out the house as tears fell down her cheeks, washed away by the silent taunting rain from above that seemed to do nothing but ignite the fire murdering her home. She took a left, running forwards to a road she had no idea about, in the hopes of finding help.
The darkness of the night plummeted down before her as the dimly lit dirt road felt never-ending. Her feet ached, her legs were sore, and in a faint distance she saw a burred light from afar. A house. A large elaborate house with a short white picket fence at the entrance. Ophelia ran to the doorstep, her was dress damp and clung to her body, she knocked vigorously at the red painted door until it opened. A young man stood before her, he seemed to be around eighteen or twenty. Her voice trembled as she tried to relate what happened. Her vision blurred. She wanted to use their phone. She wanted to call the police or someone to tell what had happened. Why didn’t she? He was telling her something. He was explaining something to her. What was he saying? Why was she listening? Why did she follow him? They’re upstairs. She remembered his words. His face, as she looked up at him felt nervous. Tense. ‘I have to go’. She remembered telling him as she entered the empty room.
‘They’re coming’. His words hung like dead white lies upon the empty air. Why was he looking at her like that? ‘I want to go’. His fingers dug into her shoulders as he pressed her in place. Time seemed to be skipping ahead of her. Or slowing down. ‘Let me go!’ There was someone else in the room. A girl? A girl hiding in the closet? No. No. She wasn’t thinking clearly. Her body ached as she touched her head and felt blood rushing down. Time was skipping. Why couldn’t she remember? She was on the floor. A dirty, cold, damp floor. The sound of a belt buckle hitting the floor echoed within her ear. ‘Mommy’. She tried to scream as she felt a person’s weight on top of her. ‘Please, please’. She wasn’t strong enough to push him off. She tried to scream again but he muffled her screams with his thick salty hand. Another dirty hand crawled beneath her dress, fingers rubbing against her private parts, the fabric being torn off with hungry eyes before her. Her tears and screams numbed in sync to the pain she felt shooting though her thighs as if it was now tearing apart. Over and over and over and over and over. She screamed through a muffled hand. Nonstop screams were of no use. Her body limp and weak and bloody was flipped over and her head slammed against the floorboard again and again as she felt the pain from the back. Fingers pinching her softest parts, her small breasts burning, aching, sore. And from the back, a stiff, nasty, painful feeling digging into her broken flesh. Claiming her innocence, as if she was a dead animal a lion enjoyed playing with.
Voices lingered. The air felt cold. A man’s voice slapped into the thick icy air. Her body stiffened. The rustling of trees shivered in the night’s air. She was outside. With hands on her ankle and another pair lifting her by the shoulders, her body rose and suddenly fell into something shallow. And although her body was numb, she felt the course damp dirt beneath her fingers. On her knees, on her legs, her naked belly, her face, and with every passing moment it felt heavier and heavier upon her. She was unable to breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
**
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