With Shaking Hands She Spoke || Self Para
Gemma swallowed, glancing over to the man who sat next to her, holding her hand tightly despite how uncomfortable he must have been. He tried not to show it, but she knew he had to have been tired of it. This had been one of the main topics of discussion for a little while now, and she just felt selfish talking about it all the time. The brunette could have kicked herself for spilling the beans about the parties to him while she was drunk, she didn’t intend for that to ever come out. It just wasn’t worth it; she just wanted the whole thing to be over. Gem wanted to live her life, but every time she turned around, there was something new to worry about. Zayn had to feel the same way, she just knew it. She felt it. Gemma felt the distance between the couple when they spoke about her problems the previous night, and she hated it. Gem knew Zayn loved her, but she was afraid that if things like this kept popping up, he wouldn’t want to anymore. And that was something she wouldn’t be able to take. Another thing she loved lost to Jack. Gemma just wanted to beat him once and for all.
When they called her name to the stand, she cringed at the sound of her last name and briefly wondered if she could just be ‘Gemma’ until she shared the last name of someone else. Shaking the thought, she stood, walking to the stand as the bailiff walked with her, ready to take her oath. After she spoke her oath she sat in the squeaky leather chair that was behind the wooden bar that her lawyer had laid her papers on. She didn’t need them, she still wasn’t sure of what she was going to say, but Gemma had faith that God would be with her. He would tell her what to say. That was all she could hold onto.
First, her own lawyer came with the questions he had to prove her point. Those alone were tough, but she could only imagine what the defense lawyers would have up their sleeves. She looked up from her papers to see Jack staring at her, a smirk apparent on that arrogant face of his, and that knocked the wind out of her. It blew her mind straight out of the water; all of the words she had prepared for the first question wiped completely clean from her brain. He was ready to watch her crumble to pieces. “Uh...Um…W-What?” She stuttered, trying to grab hold of reality again. Her lawyer asked the question again, a concerned look flashing across his face. This time, the question registered in her mind; he asked at what age she had been raped for the first time. “S-Sixteen.” She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to stop thinking about the look of her face.
“Okay.” The man glanced at the minute keeper and nodded before moving on to the next question. “Can you tell us what happened that night?” And all of a sudden she was there again. She was sixteen years old, the smell of aging alcohol invading her nostrils, and back aching from the hard hit against the wall as her clothes were being ripped from her virgin body. Tears threatened to fall as she slipped from reality once again and felt the past creeping at her insides. No, she had to do what she had to, to win this. If she wanted to move on, and live a happy life with her Miracle Boy she had to get through this and win. She had to make those future children of theirs proud of her.
“I…” She paused, swallowing her tears before glancing at her Zay hoping to gain confidence from his face, “I…I remember being scared, he had…already started beating me by then, that was one of the main reasons I wouldn’t have sex with him willingly. I couldn’t bring myself to do that with someone I didn’t love.” Gemma paused, glancing into best friend’s eyes, giving her a small sad smile. “I was a v-virgin. And he was being pushy, but I found it in me to keep pushing back, and then he just…broke.” Gem looked to Jack whose smile was ever present. “He threw me into the wall and I was so stunned I couldn’t fight…back, I could smell the alcohol on his breath.” Tears fled from her eyes as she zoned into the moment; telling the story. “He was merciless; I remember it as one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever been through.” Gem solidified for the jury, running a hand through her hair.
“Was this in one of the videos?” Her lawyer asked sympathy leaving his face.
The tiny brunette nodded, “Yes. He’s made me watch it more times than any of the others.” She added looking away from her boyfriend, feeling entirely gross. Gemma couldn’t look at anybody, not anybody she knew especially, she felt foreign and dirty at the thought of everything she had done.
“And how often did he rape you, Ms. Styles?” He asked, almost as if he was a robot. “Al…Almost every day for six months, and then he had to s-stop. We got into a car wreck and I was pretty disabled for about four months. I…lost my chi…child.” Her jaw clenched before she released it again, feeling the need to finish. “He… started back again two months ago, same pattern with a little more anger because he started drinking even heavier.” She finished, wiping the tears from her face.
“When did the abuse stop?” The insensitive questions continued.
“About…two weeks ago.” She paused, trying to figure out how to word what had happened. “Because of the way I lost the baby there was still pieces of...” She choked, tears blocking her airway. “Her left inside of me…Jack didn’t let me stay in the hospital long enough for that part of the accident to be thoroughly examined, and I was at a…friend’s flat when my body started to actively re…reject her because of the beating I had taken the n-night before…and they took me to the hospital because the pain was so intense.” Gem explained, still not telling the whole truth. “He helped me keep away from Jack after that.” She settled, trying to keep Zayn as little in the story as possible, he didn’t need to be anymore wrapped up in it than he already was.
After a few other unimportant questions defense took the floor in front of her and she nearly had a heart attack waiting for the first question. Gemma looked to Jules, trying to focus on how gorgeous the girl was to occupy her thought while defense got their stuff together. Gem shot her another sad smile just as Jack’s lawyer came upon her, a nasty glint in his eye.
“Ms. Styles, could you possibly give us a reason that my client would release videos convicting him as a serial rapist?” The defense started early, already questioning her truth, but she expected it.
“To be honest with you…I don’t think he cares. He wants to hurt me, and he wants to hurt the people I love. That…or, my doctor brought up the thought process of ‘If I can’t have her, no one can’ and it just may make sense in this situation. Who would want the girl whose videos are on the internet?” She asked rhetorically, explaining her idea of why it was happening.
“That’s a bit of an egotistical theory, coming from a girl with as much…baggage for lack of a better word, as yourself isn’t it?” The lawyer antagonized.
“I would be…the first to admit that the thought process I mentioned shouldn’t even be mentioned according to me, had he not said it himself.” Gemma retorted.
“Explain yourself.” Rude.
“I went back to get my stuff from the flat we shared and my friends tried to come to protect me, but one of them is pregnant…and they shouldn’t get hurt because of me anyway, and they were in the living room because they thought he was asleep on the couch…but I was in the bedroom with him, trying to keep him from them. I have a…head thing that could kill me if too much trauma is done to a spot on my head and he took me, and he just started shaking me…hitting my head against the wall purposefully each time, saying that if he couldn’t have me…that no one could.” Gem glanced at Zayn before straining to bring her vision to Jack who looked absurdly smug, for a person who had just been told on. He really didn’t care what happened to him.
The lawyer looked take a back, Jack had obviously left that part out. “He tried to kill me because of it…why wouldn’t he want to make me miserable even if he was at stake too?” Gemma left another rhetorical question for the jury to think on.
The lawyer seemed to back down, obviously looking at his papers for a question that was even valid after that, but found none, he whispered to the judge before she nodded and sent him back to his seat. The judge looked to Gemma before starting to speak. “Is there anything else you would like to add before we go to closing statements?” The kind judge asked Gemma, but Gemma just shook her head, knowing inside that she had a whole new world of things to add. As the judge went to release her back to her seat, everything in Gemma’s head started to spin.
Gemma saw her and Zayn’s future children crying at her funeral, a matured Jack standing in the corner a smirk adorning his face as he had obviously done the honors. She’d let him off easy. Gem couldn’t let that happen, she couldn’t let her children who didn’t even exist yet hurt like that. Her breathing became labored as she thought about it, different situations that could rise and hurt the children she didn’t have yet forming in her mind. She didn’t even realize that she had been staring at Zayn as she had her episode. When she looked up, everyone was staring at her, the judge had her eyebrow perched, questioning Gem’s sanity. So, with her hands shaking, she spoke up.
“No. No. No. I’m not done, I change my mind.” Tears sprang to Gem’s eyes. The judge looked surprised but nodded all the same.
“He let other people rape me too.” She started looking up at the ceiling, trying to force her tears back. “He got his friends to pay him to come and rape me. He would tie me down, blindfold me so I couldn’t say who it was, and let them rape me. All the time. At least twice a week, there were parties; the more they paid the more they could do, ranging from intercourse to actually being allowed to cut me if they were into knife play. Kicking, biting, whatever they wanted. Competitions to see who could make me scream the loudest. In pain.” Gemma added, tears falling freely, the dirty feeling overcoming the young girl. The feeling made her feel, worthless, empty even. Until she looked at Zayn.
When she shifted her gaze to her boyfriend, she didn’t feel dirty or worthless or anything of the sort. She felt relieved. Relieved that she had already said it, relieved that her nonexistent children wouldn’t have to see the sort of pain that she saw for them before, and relieved that it was over. The judge released her to her seat, still shocked at what she had heard. Gemma walked back to her seat, blocking out the closing statements, just sitting, reveling in what she had just done. She felt slight pride in herself for being able to do that, mostly because as insane as it sounded, she was doing it for her children.
Now, all she had to do was wait, wait for the jury to decide what her life was going to be like, but hopefully, they were able to see inside of her like her boyfriend always seemed to be able to. Gemma needed them to have been able to; she needed him to go to jail.
She needed the nightmare to be over.
