Where I Lay My Head

Rachel watched the battered woman attentively although she laid still and quiet as a corpse. His eyes were parched and strained, unblinking, as a sense of traumatic catatonia threatened him. His body was still but his mind was rioting and his gut, churning. Cecil had some time ago left him alone with Adeline but he was oblivious to anybody's presence but hers, or lack thereof.

And suddenly, a drop of moisture trailed its way from the rag at her forehead to the bloody ravine marking her right cheek. She awoke wincing but dared not to stir too much. Her eyes swiveled to the looming, hunched figure sitting at her right and immediately welled with moisture. She struggled to pull the covers over her face but they were caught under Rachel's heft so she shrunk into them, causing a tyrannous pain to shoot through her torso.

"Rachel," she whimpered against the pain and approaching hysterics. "Please don't look at me."

He pulled the covers away from her trembling face to stroke its unmarred half gently. A tear escaped him as well although he was unaware.

"You're still the only thing that I want to look at." he spoke softly, his eyes dancing with hers in a refreshing melody of magnificent blue. It was like drinking cold water after hours in the unforgiving summer sun. But he found himself struggling to humor the bliss of eye-contact when such a horror carved the plane just below.

He leaned down to plant a soft kiss on her swollen lips but she allowed him barely a peck before leaning back and surrendering to hysterics. His heart didn't feel broken but like it was slowly being torn, one resilient fiber snapping after another. His forehead remained on hers, more so the damp towel clinging to it, and he stroked her hair helplessly as she wept.

"I'm not the same girl anymore, Rach'." she forced out and had to take a great, stuttering breath before she could even continue.

This all sounds very theatrical on paper, sweet and dramatic and perhaps even cliche, but in reality it just was a series of tortured howls that was hard for anybody to listen to, even Cecil who was in the living room. As a matter of fact, her words were difficult to understand, each one forced out with a chorus of loud, chattering breaths and mangled noises of all sorts. There was no passion, no tenderness in this display... nothing but slayed humanity and animalistic release in its place.

"I was an innocent girl when you knew me... that's the girl you've been missing. This girl... you should want nothing to do her. I'm not even a girl anymore, I'm a...- a used up old rag. I've been... just a toy to him for two years and every thing that I was ever worth... was torn from me, and thrown around. You have no idea who you just kissed."

Her face was wrinkled like a bull-dog and her chin clenched and pitted. It did nothing but enhance the agony of her facial damage, especially as salty tears flowed down the slit on her face like a river of acid. He was feeling a staggering amount of pain as well, almost as if he felt her pain, and was stumbling over ways to soothe her if only for just a minute.

"Adeline..." he whispered, stroking her hair more frantically now. The anarchy which had long invaded his mentality miraculously presented itself disguised with composure. "Sweet Adeline... you're burnt, and bloody... and bruised. And your face is red as a tomato... and wrinkled together like a pile of old laundry. And you sound like a... mythical beast when you try to talk."

She was hushed for just a split second, stunned by his insults and wondering where they would take him. A faint smile then appeared on his face.

"But still, I look at you, for the first time in so long... and I still see that same light just... just, radiating from you, that I fell in love with two years ago; that makes me look down on every woman I've met since then, and up to you even when you're far away married to a..- a fucking monster." He was saying this to make her feel better, yes, but it was a truth that he had never managed to speak and his voice was now faltering and weak. Emotions had never escaped him in such a whirl before and it was as if his entire strength went with them. "I know that you've changed, and you've gone through hell since you left... I know you probably have a lot of problems in yourself now that need fixing. But I know you're still Adeline Hooley... and I know that no other woman will bring me light like you do, and if she could... well it's too late. I've already met you and I'll never really want anybody else again."

By the end of his speech, which expressed his feelings more than he ever had by a long shot, her face was smooth again and her tears were of a different orient. Her bottom lip trembled and her brow was suspended with disbelief. She stuttered but wasn't sure how to respond. He spared her an assuring, faint smile before walking around the bed and helping himself under the covers next to her. Still at a loss for words, she rolled over so her head could lay on his chest (battered side up) and put her quivering hand over his heart. He reached around her bare shoulders, wanting more than anything to pull her tighter but refrained in fear of hurting her. Instead, he traced his fingers on the outer satin of her arm and held the feeble hand which laid on his chest. He looked down as her face wilted again, her breathing clenched and she bit her bottom lip. The gems which were her eyes went dull and violent memories were haunting her.

"You can cry, Adeline..." for some reason she didn't seem like such an Addie-Priss anymore. "Don't hold it in."

And on that note, she let out a series of hoarse sobs which eventually trickled into high-pitched whimpers and rash, choppy breathing. She shook in his arms and by no means held it in, which of course was upon his own request but torture to him all the same. Cecil heard it from his stationary stance in the living room and it even pained him to hear, especially since all that he wanted to do was soothe his baby cousin. Knowing that Rachel was far more capable, he simply stewed in the hell which he was only revisiting and allowed them privacy.

Rachel's mind traveled down several avenues during Adeline's crying. He thought of how different things would have been if he would have gone after her when she left instead of tending to his outrageous boner. This brought him a world of regret and self-hatred much like what Cecil had battled. He also thought of the son of the bitch who did this to her, and that of course made him feel homicidal. But then his thoughts were able to drown out her cries and he noticed that Adeline Hooley was nude in his arms yet again. It was about that time when her sobbing fell to sighing and the occasional yawn. Her weak eyelids swept away any remaining moisture as they fluttered and she put a hand on his chest to separate her cheek from the warm, tear-saturated T-shirt that it laid on. He watched her fall into a graceful slumber, he himself in a trance which was very similar. At one point he had convinced himself that he had seen a faint smile surface on her lips for just a split second. It was false, wishful thinking but he was much too jarred to admit it.