Page 12 of Penance

Mercy

I ’m lying on my bed, my body wracked with convulsions as if it’s rejecting everything that just happened to me.

I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but let the panic devour me.

My heart slams against my ribcage, so hard and so fast that I worry it’s going to explode and kill me.

The plastic zip tie he’d used to bind me are cutting into my wrists, but I barely feel that pain.

It’s the terror that paralyzes me, presses me into the mattress until I feel like I can’t move even if I try to.

“God, please,” I whisper, my voice shaking. “Please help me.”

But I hear nothing in return.

I can’t feel Him here.

I am alone.

The taste of blood lingers in my mouth, coppery and thick. It coats my tongue, my lips, and the back of my throat. I gag at the taste, but it’s weak at best.

I don’t have the energy for anything else.

Is this my punishment?

Is this what I deserve for the horrible things I’ve done?

I’ve tried to live my life in the light, followed the path my parents carved for me. I’ve been a good daughter, a good Christian.

So why do I deserve this?

My eyes are wide, staring at the ceiling, but I don’t see it. All I can see is the attack, playing over and over again in my mind, every single word he said playing on repeat in my ears, like a broken record.

The room spins, the walls closing in, the darkness weighing down on me like mountains of dirt, covering my grave.

Run, Mercy, a voice inside me screams. Move!

But my body won’t listen.

It’s as if every muscle has turned to stone, frozen solid.

I’m stuck here. I’m trapped.

Seconds drag on until they become minutes, and soon enough so many have passed that I don’t even know what hour it is anymore, or what day.

The blood in my mouth has started to dry, sticky and thick, choking me. I want to reach up and claw it off my tongue, scrub it away, but I can’t.

I can’t move.

I can’t.

I just can’t.

My breath catches behind a wall in my chest, each inhale a battle. The room tilts and sways, flips upside down. The darkness living in the corners is moving, reaching out to grab me, to suffocate me where I lay.

A voice whispers in my ear, a high pitched, angelic voice that I cling to.

You need to go, Mercy. You can’t stay here like this.

I can’t move , I argue back. My own voice inside my head is an angry hiss. Why is she so angry?

I can’t.

You have to, the other voice says back, louder. You will die if you stay here. He will come back. He will hurt you again.

Die?

I could die?

The word is like a lifeline, thrown to me while I’m drowning in the ocean of my emotions.

Dying sounds nice.

It might hurt, but only for a little while.

Then, he couldn’t hurt me anymore.

I would be with God. I wouldn’t be alone anymore.

Maybe I should do that.

Maybe I could go into the bathroom and find a razor. I could slit my wrists in the bathtub and be done with this.

I could make all the pain go away.

My ring finger twitches, the first flicker of movement since this nightmare began.

Move, Mercy, the voice in my head insists, but louder than before. Get out of here. Right. NOW!

My arm shakes as I reach out, grasping the edge of the mattress.

The world lurches when I pull myself up, my head swimming and threatening to throw me right back down.

My heart slams against the cage of my bones so hard that I jerk on the spot, and I slide off the bed onto my hands and knees, but not for long.

My bound hands can’t support my weight, and I collapse with my face buried in the carpet.

Breathe, the angel reminds me. You need to breathe, Mercy. You need to find someone to help you.

I push myself up, get to my knees, and then when I push to my feet, the area between my legs screams in protest.

It hurts.

Tears sting my eyes as I finally stand, my thighs shaking and my hips aching.

Go! Mercy, go! The voice in my head screams. Go now! What are you waiting for?!

I manage one step, and I almost fall. I make it to the doorway and slump against it, breathing hard.

Another step.

And another.

One more.

I can see the front door from here, but it seems so far away.

Too far. It’s too far, I won’t make it.

I can feel the mess he left behind sticking my thighs together, and a wave of bile sloshes in my gut and rises up into my throat.

I shake my head, forcing the thought away.

I need to go before he comes back.

I limp forward, one foot in front of the other, stumbling down the hallway until I throw myself against the front door.

So close.

My hands are numb and cold as I fumble with the doorknob. It slips out of my hands more than once, and before long I’m crying, sobbing my heartbreak down my face.

I can’t get out.

I can’t get away.

Finally, I grab hold of it, and my numb fingers turn it, and the door pops open in my hands. A shaking groan falls from my lips, my own little sound of triumph.

I stagger out the door, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

What if he comes back?

What if he finds me out here?

He could get angry. He could kill me. I need help. I need to get somewhere safe.

The cold air seeping in from outside slaps me awake as I lurch out of my apartment, the door swinging shut behind me with a resonating bang. My breath catches in jagged bursts, the sound of my own wheezing echoing in the empty space.

One shaky step after another, I hurry down the hallway, my eyes trapped by the frame of the staircase, calling to me.

Safety.

My safety is just a few flights above my head.

My heartbeat stutters in my chest as I finally grab the banister, my breath tearing in and out of my lungs as I begin to climb—slowly at first, and then faster, until I’m running, propelling myself up the stairs so fast that I stumble and nearly fall.

I need to get to him.

I need to get to the safety he offered me, if only I had been smart enough to take it before. I can’t think of anyone else who might help me—anyone who would even believe me.

I need him, because I trust him.

I know he would never hurt me.

Even if we’ve grown apart after all these years, he wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t do anything like this to me.

I suck in a shaking breath as I make it to the top of the staircase, fighting for every breath.

It’s hard to keep going. I can feel the darkness creeping up on me, the weightlessness in my limbs that tells me I could pass out at any moment.

No. Not yet.

Not here.

I lurch forward, throwing myself down the hallway, my bare feet slapping against the cool tile until I reach the door one floor above my own. I had never been here, but I knew this was the right door.

Apartment #777.

I slam both fists against the wooden door, letting the rest of my pain escape with a shivering sound, a mixture of a sob and a scream.

“Please,” I cry, my voice shaking. “Please be home. Draco please? I need you.”

I glance back over my shoulder, my eyes darting to the pitch black staircase and every single shadow.

My eyes are playing tricks on me.

I can see demons coming to grab me, figures racing towards me, only to watch them melt away when I turn to look. I turn back to the door, knocking harder, until my palms burn and the bones in my hands ache.

What if he’s not here?

What if he doesn’t want to help me?

What if he tells me to leave, to save myself for once?

I would deserve it.

I would deserve all of that and more.

“Draco!” I call, louder. “Please!”

The sound of footsteps on the other side of the door silences the whirlwind of thoughts inside my head.

I hold my breath, my heart throbbing in my ears as the lock clicks and the door swings open.

Draco stands in the shadows, his tall frame shrouded in a crisp white t-shirt, and a pair of black sweatpants, his eyes narrowed with annoyance.

He looks like he was sleeping.

Did I wake him up?

How late is it?

But when his gaze lands on me, the shadows shift. Those cold, unfeeling eyes widen, raking from the top of my head down to my bare feet, curled against the cold tile floor. Something flickers in his gaze, an emotion I can’t quite place.

Surprise?

Disbelief?

“Mercy,” he says, his voice low. “What happened?”

There’s no warmth in his tone, but there’s no harshness, either. Just a quiet intensity that makes my stomach twist into knots. At the sound of his voice, something inside me snaps. I crumble, my knees folding in on themselves as I collapse against the door frame.

“Draco,” I gasp, my voice raw. “I didn’t know where else to go. I—I can’t…”

My words dissolve into incoherent sobs, my body shaking so hard I have to dig my nails into the wooden door frame just to stay standing. I feel his arms loop around my waist, holding me up. He’s so warm. I can finally feel how cold I am, and he’s so warm.

“Who did this to you?” Draco demands. His fingers bite into my flesh, holding on to me in a way that’s painful, but comforting.

I just stare at him.

I can’t breathe, can’t speak. I try, but all that comes out is a choked sob. I shake my head, my hair whipping around my face like tangled vines, sticking to tear soaked cheeks.

“Mercy,” he says, his voice softer this time. “Tell me what happened.”

“I… I was…” I grasp for the words, but they float just out of my grasp, leaving me with jumbled thoughts and broken sentences. “In my apartment. He-He hurt me?”

I sounded like a question, but I hadn’t meant for it to.

“H-he came in, and he wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop, and I tried.”

I suck in a deep breath, and it tears at my throat until the taste of blood is back. I can’t finish the sentence, the words caught in my throat like shards of glass.

It hurts.

Every word I try to say hurts so bad.

“Who was it?” he asks, his voice a chilling whisper. “Who hurt you?”

I shake my head, tears spilling down my cheeks.

“I… I don’t know,” I whisper. “I didn’t see his face. I—I just… I just need… Safe. Need h-help. Can’t—”

I can’t finish the thought, it’s just too hard.

The world narrows as Draco pulls me into his apartment. The door slams shut behind us, the sound echoing through my skull like a gunshot, and I jump so hard that I nearly land on the floor at his feet.

“You’re shaking,” he says.

Then I realize that I am. I lift my bound hands in front of my face, and I can see the way they shiver, as if bitterly cold.

“I need you to focus, Mercy. I need you to tell me what happened.”

I can’t. The words won’t come. All I can do is stare at the floor, at the dark hardwood shining in the dim light, glowing from a small black lamp sitting on a nearby table.

I fixate on a tiny knot in the wood, staring up at me like an unseeing, demonic eye.

It’s easier than looking at Draco, than seeing the concern shining in his eyes.

He pulls away, just enough to reach behind him and flip the deadbolt. The click echoes through the apartment, and I flinch again.

I barely have time to recognize what’s happening and Draco’s hands are on me again, and he guides me into the living room. His apartment is almost the mirror opposite of mine in every way, from the layout to the color scheme, but I can’t focus on that right now.

“Sit.”

I do, sinking down into a huge, overstuffed black sectional couch nestled against one corner of the living room.

My wrists are bound together, the plastic zip tie cutting into my skin.

I knew that.

I watched him do it, but I can’t stop staring at it. It seems like a foreign thing, and the longer I stare at it, the more it doesn’t make sense.

Draco’s gaze follows mine, and then he disappears into the shadows, in the direction of the kitchen. I listen to the sound of him rummaging through drawers, detached, as if I’m floating above my own body.

He slams the drawer shut, and I jump.

Again.

I can see the tension in his shoulders when he stalks back towards me.

“Hold still,” he says, kneeling in front of me. He’s holding a pair of silver scissors, glinting in the low light. The light bounces off the blade, and something deep inside me knows I should be scared, but I just don’t have the energy.

The scissors are cold against my skin, the metal blades slipping between my wrists and the zip tie. I watch as he cuts through the plastic with a snip, and I feel the blood rush back into my fingers as the ties fall away.

I’m free, but I don’t feel free.

Draco looks up at me.

“Better?”

I nod, even though it’s not better.

It’s not, and it never will be again.

But I nod because I want it to be.

I just want to be okay.

Draco gets to his feet, standing over me, towering above me like the statue of some long forgotten god.

“Mercy,” he says, his voice eerily calm. “We should call the police. You need to report this.”

My stomach churns.

“No.”

“Mercy, whoever did this is out there. They could do this again, they could—”

“I said no.”

There’s a sharpness to my tone, and I swallow hard.

“They won’t believe me. They’ll say I deserved it. That I wasn’t pure enough, wasn’t good enough.”

My voice breaks, and the tears are back, and they feel so, so hot.

“You can’t let them get away with this.”

“I can’t let them know,” I say, looking up at him.

“Fuck the stupid church, Mercy!”

I flinch again. Shake my head.

“You don’t understand, Draco.”

“Me?!” he barks. He’s angry. I can hear it. “ I don’t understand? Come on , Mercy.”

“This wasn’t the first time.”

“How long?”

“I’m pregnant.”

I say it like it answers the question, even if I know it doesn’t.

Maybe it does?

He already knew that. He was at the pharmacy.

The room begins to spin.

I feel like I’m floating again, like I’ll pass out.

I feel the weight of Draco’s hand as he reaches out, grabs my shoulders, shakes me just a little.

“Breathe, Mercy,” he tells me. “Stop holding your breath.”

Am I?

I am.

I feel the burn in my lungs as I suck in a deep breath, and the fog blows away.

Draco sits beside me on the couch with a sigh.

He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t speak.

After a while, my eyes feel so unbelievably heavy. I slump against him, curl up in his lap, and before I can even ask if it’s okay, I fall asleep.