Save Me From My Nightmare

Her tall bony figure stood in the reflection of the mirror, brandishing the scars of a relationship she never thought would happen to her. Each twist of her once curvaceous hips caused another wince to crease up her blue eyes. A fresh set of scars sliced their way around her waist and up her stomach, burn marks appearing on the top of her breasts. Turning around slowly, she showed off a new array of colours and shapes in the form of bruises and cuts. Her black hair fell softly over one shoulder, showing off the bandage that stretched over her collar bone and onto the back of her joint to hold it in place. The dip below her spine showed a red iron mark where he pressed the burning metal to her flesh.

I gasped. This couldn’t really be me staring back at me. Not wanting to look at the mirror anymore, I grabbed the jewellery box Iain’s mom had given me and threw it at the glass. Shards of sparkling ice tumbled to the floor like snowflakes, raining down on the cream carpet in a shower of glitter. They sparkled in the sunshine streaming from the window, glimmering up at the ceiling and creating a patter on the solid white. My breathing was rapid, the adrenaline from doing that causing me to stop thinking about the pain that washed through my every muscle. Falling onto the edge of the bed, I knotted my good hand in my hair and allowed my tears to drip onto my thighs.

‘Alright, lovey, you’re just going to feel a little prick and then your whole lip will go numb, okay?’ the plump nurse smiled at my battered face, obviously picking up on how painful it was by what she saw. I nodded at her explanation, biting the inside of my cheek as he caught my chin under her slender finger and made me look up slightly, the thin piece of metal sliding with ease into my flesh. I winced, but didn’t say a word. It was pointless saying anything, what the hell could she do? ‘You took quite a fall, huh? A black eye, badly split lip and cooking your hand. Not your day, eh?’ the nurse said soothingly, rubbing my good hand as I tried to force a smile. ‘The doctor will be with you in two minutes, he’ll look over your hand then we’ll fix that lip.’

The doctor she was talking about walked in suddenly, taking one look at me and tutting as he rubbed his stubbly chin. Pushing his glasses up his nose, he gave the nurse a wary glance and put his clipboard down at the end of the bed. I knew what he saw. A girl lying even to herself laying on a hospital bed waiting for him to make her better in order to be back here in a couple of days with yet another injury. He brought a pen from his breast pocket on the white coat he wore, pulling up a chair next to my hand and smiling at me reassuringly. I tried to smile back but failed as my lip burnt with pain.

‘Okay. What I’m going to do is poke the ends of your fingers in order to check there’s no nerve damage. Is that alright?’ Nodding my head slowly, I watched cautiously as he brought the blunt end of his pen down on the tip of my thumb. I winced, telling him each time I felt another wave of pain. ‘Well, everything seems in order. It doesn’t look like you’ll need any surgery on it, but we’ll have to take a check up in two weeks in order to make sure it’s healing as it should. I’m just going to rub some antiseptic on the hand, then wrap it in a special gauze that will cool the burns. We may have to burst the blisters after a while, but we’ll take it as it comes.’

Thanking him as best I could with a slurred speech due to the numbing of my lip, I watched him leave as I my head lulled back into the pillow behind my head. Just as my eyes were about to close, the nurse plodded back in wheeling a tray and some other stuff on green paper. I sighed. ‘Just going to fix your lip and you’ll be on your way. Have you got someone to pick you up?’ the nurse asked conversationally, pulling a lamp into my face so she could get a better view of my lip. Shaking my head as best I could, I closed my eyes and braced myself for the weird sensations. ‘Dear, you shouldn’t drive with a hand all wrapped up. I don’t want to see you twice in one day, not that you’re not a lovely woman. I just don’t want to see you hurt.’ If only.

When I returned from hospital with everything cleared up, I took my laptop out onto the garden in order to watch the sunset as I typed away at the draft for my new book. It was going to be a series again. They were about a girl who’d moved away from her past and found herself surrounded by werewolves outside her home in the woods where the town is situated. Iain hasn’t read any of my stories, I won’t let him. My laptop is the only thing he isn’t allowed to destroy because I normally keep it under lock and key under the bed in a safe bag that it won’t get broken in. Everything is safe under a password he would never crack in a month of Sundays.

But, I ended up slamming the scarlet computer down in frustration having only one hand to type with is harder than I expected. Letting out a deep, cleansing breath, I leaned back in the chair and looked towards the sun as the ocean began to engulf it in its midnight shelter. My knees were drawn up to my chest watching the world pass by from my spot on the garden chair. I could use some guiding light, some place to go, I thought to myself. Allowing my head to lull back against the high back of the chair, I let my eyes close as the sound of the ocean crashed upon me in a soothing manner. Only the gentle waves penetrated my calm and the occasional rustle of sand as dog-walkers and joggers ran passed the fencing of my garden.

‘There you are.’