Apartment 307-11 (Bruises)
TWs: Gore, brief mention of emeto, creepy and unstable whumper
Morning didn’t come for a long time. Elora’s body clung to sleep as it fought desperately to even begin to heal the severe wounds that had been inflicted the day prior. Merely surviving was beginning to become much harder of a task then she’d ever hoped it would be; waiting around for someone to save her wasn’t quite working out, and neither was saving herself. She was having to fight tooth and nail just to live, which was both exhausting and incredibly depressing.
She finally opened her eyes as she felt a hand roughly shaking her shoulder, jerking her body around until she begrudgingly awoke. She pushed stray hairs away from her face and tried to roll over, but the man’s voice was booming with its volume and closeness to her ear.
“Elora. Get up. It’s almost two o’clock.”
She wanted to tell him to fuck off, that if he was going to torture her, she had every right to sleep however much she wanted to, but she knew it was irresponsible to be causing any trouble in the state she was in. Her body had withstood so much abuse in the days she’d been there already, she feared that without time to heal, anything else major could easily tip her over the edge of life and death, make her pass out and not wake back up.
And hell if she was ready to die.
“I’m awake,” she said in a dull, monotone voice, her eyes still adjusting to the light streaming into the room through the opened blinds. She sat herself up, slowly, cringing at the pain of her ankle dragging along the sheets.
“Good,” she heard him mutter, and she resisted the urge to scowl at him. The last thing she cared about was his approval, and yet here she was, walking on eggshells to avoid setting him off. What a mess she’d gotten herself into.
“I’m not going to do anything today,” he told her. For some odd reason, it wasn’t very reassuring. “I’m not stupid. I’m not trying to kill you.”
Her lips moved much faster than her mind. “Gee, thanks.”
He shot her a glare. It made her skin crawl, just the pure intensity in his eyes.
“Watch it.”
She did. She didn’t want to, but something about his tone and expression made her deeply uncomfortable to the point that she feared doing anything but precisely what he wanted.
“You wanna take a shower? You need it,” he said plainly. God, he couldn’t even extend a kind gesture without being a douche about it. Elora wanted to spit back that she wondered why she needed a shower. Maybe it was the layers of dried blood coating her skin, or the dirt from being mercilessly dragged along the ground the night of her kidnapping. She kept her words to herself, though, responding only with a nod.
She could already imagine it, the warm water running down her body, washing away the blood and the sweat and the dirt and the fear she was certain he could smell. How she craved it, the simple pleasure of being clean-something she’d already lost.
“Okay. Up we go, then.” The man lifted her up from the bed, an arm tucked beneath her knees and the other behind her back. She hated every minute of being so close to him. His breath smelled like cigarettes and his shirt was scratchy. Every bit of her body screamed at her to get out of his grip, but she was stuck, without another choice in the matter. A bitter horror fell upon her at the realization that this was her new reality whenever she had to move around the apartment. It wasn’t like she could get up and walk around. The persistent throbbing in her ankle was a painful reminder of that.
At the very least, the walk was short. He just carried her into the master bathroom and set her down in the tub. It was slightly roomier than the one she was usually kept in, but clearly much more used. A couple bottles of mens’ 3-and-1 wash lined the ledges and the floor was damp.
“Might be weird not standing up, but you’re smart. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Elora nodded, but the man just stood there, leaving the air stale with the silence in the room. She looked up at him for a moment, trying to gauge what he was doing, what he was thinking. She hoped he’d leave. While she knew he probably had a difficult time trusting her alone after the mishap yesterday, privacy was still a much-appreciated commodity. He stared at the wall for a second, not looking her in the eyes, before muttering about grabbing something and walking out. Elora froze, fearing he was going to bring back some awful instrument of torture, but instead, he merely returned with a pile of items in his arms. An old, worn towel and washcloth made the base, with a haphazardly-folded set of clothes atop it, and faded, half-used bottles of drugstore shampoo, conditioner, and body wash over that.
He set the stack down next to her, on the floor by the tub. “Yell when you’re done,” he told her. And that was it. He left.
There was no catch, no earning her prize or cruel tricks. He just left her alone to shower. It was like he felt bad. He should feel bad. But she shook the thought of vengeance from her mind, deciding to just focus on the mercy she’d been shown. She knew she should savor it while she had it, as she doubted it would last long.
Awkwardly twisting her body to avoid using her broken hand, she grabbed the bottles and set them on the ledge of the bathtub, then carefully removed her clothes, grimacing as she had to stretch the cuts lining her arms and drag fabric along her broken ankle. Once she finished, she finally turned on the shower, tensing as cold water rained upon her, but practically melting once it ran warm. It was soothing, though it did slightly sting the wounds it hit. Still, the benefits far outweighed the harm and she shut her eyes to fully take in the comfort, wishing she could stay right in this moment until she was found. Enveloped by the warmth, the man only a passing thought in her mind.
She began with the shampoo, taking her time to work it into her scalp, washing away the dirt, blood, and oil that had built up over the last few days. It felt so nice to be clean, to be free of the filth coating her body. She savored every moment as she washed and conditioned her hair, then took painstaking attention and care as she scrubbed her body with the washcloth, carefully avoiding or only gently dabbing at the wounds littering her body. And even when she had long been done, she remained on the floor of the tub, letting the hot water soothe her aching body as she stared ahead at the wall. She feared that taking too long, though, would make the man suspicious-or worse, angry. So, despite not wanting to and not having a clue when she’d be given this privilege again, she turned off the water and began to dry off with the towel. She didn’t want to get the clothes she’d been given all wet, so she awkwardly and rather maneuvered herself up to sit on the side of the tub. She quickly found that getting dressed was just as much of a struggle as getting undressed-especially as her skin was still damp. Pulling on the plain undershirt and blue sweatpants earned quite a few hisses of pain, and she was more than relieved when the task was over.
There was a sort of longing ache in her heart at the fact that the clothes weren’t hers. It was just another thing that had been stripped from her, another bit taken away. At the very least, though, they were clean. It didn’t seem like they’d been washed, just taken straight from a cheap bulk package. That was probably what they were. Elora didn’t mind, though. At the very least, they were comfortable, and clean. Both fit her relatively well, too, though the legs of the pants were short on her.
She was about to mournfully call for the man as she’d been instructed to do when she looked over herself, just one last time, and found her staring down at the massive bruises covering her fingers and ankle. She’d been preoccupied with getting clean earlier, so her eyes had just skimmed over them, but now that she took the time to really look, she was horrified. They were so much clearer now that the blood was washed away, looking almost cartoonish as she stared in disbelief. Deep shades of blue and purple wrapped her entire ankle joint as it stuck painfully out to the right. She knew that she should set it, but she didn’t have the slightest clue how, and it was far too severe to heal magically. All she could do was look on in shock at how misshapen it looked, how it almost seemed like a watercolor painting, colors coating and speckling the skin. Her fingers, too, were a horrific sight, curled in on themselves, swollen and multicolored. She couldn’t look away from her mangled hand and foot, feeling sick at how mortifyingly intense they were. She wanted to vomit at the mere sight of them, at the thought of the logistics. How many surgeries would it take to fix this when she got out?
If she got out.
Tears slipped down her cheeks and she abandoned the thought of calling for the man at all, just gawking at her injuries, letting the severity seep in, and bawling. Time slipped by quickly and soon she’d been in the bathroom for almost an hour, which prompted the man to come in and check on her. He knocked on the door and called her name, and she startled, her shoulders trembling. She didn’t respond, just sat there until he burst in, swung the door open himself. Their eyes locked and he saw the redness around her eyes, the puffiness of her cheeks. His brow furrowed for a moment. He hadn’t done anything wrong to her, what was her deal? But his gaze followed hers back to her broken limbs, and he gave a knowing sigh.
An awful guilt crept up in him and his expression was stone cold.
“I’m not a bad person, Elora.” His voice was firm, but thick, with a sense of sadness to it. Elora looked up at him from her spot perched on the side of the tub, shocked by his sudden entrance. Her eyes were still teary, threatening to spill more at any moment.
“I’m not.”
The girl still didn’t say a word and Clyde felt his guilt start to turn to anger. “Stop looking at me like that. Like a-like a sad fucking puppy.”
Elora’s bottom lip shook. She sensed it, his rage. She knew that, no matter what she did now, things weren’t going to end well for her. They never did, when he got mad like this.
“I’m not t-trying to-”
“Shut up,” he shouted, and her mouth suddenly closed, her eyes still wide as they stared up at him.
“I’m not a bad person,” he affirmed. “I did what I had to. You-you never fucking listen.”
Elora had no clue what to say, what to do, so she merely nodded in agreement. Sure. Whatever he wanted to believe. Whatever he needed to hear to not hurt her even more when she was already-when she couldn’t handle any more.
The man advanced towards her and she nearly screamed in pure terror. She wanted to back away but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. He bent over and gripped her chin and she inhaled sharply, eyes watery.
“Say it,” he seethed. “Say it. I’m not a bad person.”
She was forced to look in his eyes, their faces just inches apart as he jerked her chin up. Her voice shook as she spoke. “You’re-you’re not a b-b-bad person.” A sharp inhale ended her sentence, petrified that it wasn’t right. That it wouldn’t be enough.”
He released her chin and she felt relief flood her for all but a second before he shoved her off of the ledge of the tub. She landed flat on her back on the tile floor, the air knocked out of her lungs by the force of the fall. She wheezed and tried to sit up, but he was upon her in a second, kneeling on her chest with his hands around her throat to restrict her breathing even further.
“Say it like you mean it,” he insisted. There was nothing but anger in his eyes.
Gasping and sputtering, Elora wheezed, “You’re not a bad person!” Her tone was desperate. She felt like she was dying. But that was all the man needed to hear. He eased off of her and stood, brushed himself off, then simply picked her up from the ground and slung her over a shoulder, a far cry from the gentle way he’d carried her to the bathroom in the first place.
He was grinning. Relief washed over him. A cool, calm feeling.
“You’re right, Elora. I’m not. I’m not a bad person.”
tags: @exploringspaceinpyjamas @all-whumped-out