Chapter 5

It’s always the same dream. I am younger, possibly eighteen, I have on clothes that I left my mother’s in. I always try to pinpoint the dream, to see if it’s real. Some of it feels real, some of it feels fake.

I call it my demon dream because it can’t be true. Can it?

That person I watch that looks like me, can’t be, surely?

But it could, it possibly could.

Marina tells me I won’t remember my episodes. That my psychosis happens like an out of body experience.

I dreamed of seeing Derrick, then the voices came, telling me what to do and when to do it. Telling me I was worthless and the only way to make myself better was to prove them all wrong. The dream was blurry and I was fighting with this demon. He was older and looked familiar, possibly a father figure, if I’d have had one. He would follow me everywhere I went—to school, to Derrick’s, even when I would sit in the field waiting for my mother’s visitors to leave.

He was there yelling at me, telling me to get up and take what was mine. It didn’t bother me at first, I used to just push it off and move on, but he kept telling me persistently and everywhere I went, he went.

To make him disappear, for just a short period of time, I would dig my nails into my legs until I bled.

When he first came, he was nice, caring. Now, he was scaring me and making me question everything I did.

Was I doing it right?

Was his way right?

I didn’t know, and several times he would push me to my limit, making me think he was right.

It didn’t help that the only person I spoke to was Derrick, and Derrick was all I had apart from this man who would scream at me when Derrick offered me to others.

Yes! He would offer me then tell me he loved me.

My life wasn’t perfect, it was far from it. Still, I went on living, even when my demon would tell me to fight for it, fight for what I wanted. Those words were so foreign to me. You don’t fight people who care for you, the only ones who show you an ounce of being human. I’d never had that, so I took it any way I got.

Not understanding something, yet having it thrown into your face all the time, was confusing. My life was hard and complicated as it was.

I went home, that was how it started.

It was always how it started, wasn’t it?

The young innocent girl on her way home from school and boom, she was taken, kidnapped.

In this dream, though, I went home with the red Corvette sitting out front of my mother’s trailer. Knowing I shouldn’t go in or wanting to even go in. But it didn’t stop the man standing next to me telling me to go in. I let him in. I let him choose tonight to see if he was good, if he would keep me safe. It was a risk. I knew that it would either scar me even more or kill me in the process.

The man that was in our house was not a good man. He smelled of evil and was evil. His hands had touched me before, of which he had no right. Just because of who my mother was, that did not give a stranger the right to touch me.

“Do it, Milanka. Move.”

Putting one foot in front of the other was torturous. It was a battle of my will. I was technically fighting my instincts that always told me to never enter that house. Yet, here I was listening to a man whose name I didn’t even know, and who had stalked me for days, listening to him when he told me to go somewhere I knew was not safe.

“Shut up,” I hissed at him as my foot made contact with the first rickety step. It creaked as I knew it would under my weight. Then the second step did the same. Pulling the door open, I could smell everything before I saw anything. Smoke gushed out, and everything smelled of sex and drugs. The television was on and it was loud.

The smoke started to clear and I spotted him straight away. He had on no shirt, and his belly was rotund as he sat on our old couch. Looking around, I couldn’t see her anywhere, she was most likely passed out in her bedroom, as per usual.

He turned when he heard me enter. Shutting the door behind me, I tried to stand tall with my devil slash stranger beside me. He hissed at the old man looking me over.

“Scum,” he hissed again.

I couldn’t have agreed more—he was that and more.

“You came back, girl. Wanting what I give your momma, ha?”

I didn’t even answer him, there was no point. He made his way over to me, and I watched in horror as one hand outstretched and came toward me.

“I bet you taste better than her.”

I wanted to come back with a snarky comment but I wasn’t myself. Standing still and watching him was the best I could do right now.

“I’ve been waiting years to see you again.”

I had avoided him all this time, never entering my house when his car was parked out front. His hand clasped my breast through my sweater, it touched and rubbed, and I wanted to throw up straight away. Instead, the man next to me hissed in my ear. He hated this man more than he hated me when I didn’t listen to him.

“Move your hand, Milanka. Grab the cold piece of metal.”

It took me a moment to process, and to be able to move, as I felt the man’s heavy breath panting on me. My hand grasped a handle on the counter, then the devil slash stranger laughed when I realized what I had in my hand—a knife.

Then the devil slash stranger disappeared, leaving me with a man touching me and a knife in my hand.

His other hand came up and touched my other breast, I knew then I couldn’t take any more of it. That it was the last straw. I drew the knife upward, from the side of my leg and pulled it in between us, then I smiled a sinister smile as I stabbed it straight into his belly. His hands let me go straight away, and he dropped backward.

Feeling the power, I laughed when he dropped his hand on the wound that was now dripping blood, and his eyes looking at me like I was crazy. Maybe it was because I still heard my devil slash stranger laughing in my head. He was enjoying it, even if I couldn’t see him anymore.

This was what he wanted… for me to snap and do the unthinkable.

Well, I did, and now I wanted to do more.

Jumbled words left his mouth as he lay on the floor holding onto his stomach. I sat down next to him with the knife in my hand and started speaking to him.

“I don’t like you. I think that’s obvious.”

He grunted and cried out in pain as he tried to move.

“I think you’re revolting, disgusting… the lowest of the low.”

Turning, so I was closer to him. “I want to make you bleed. I want to hear you scream.”

I remembered the look of satisfaction that had appeared on his face, that first day, when he saw my discomfort, and the horror when he touched me. He got off on it. I didn’t. This, though, would be interesting and I would enjoy it.

He tried to push away, to move away from me, but I just placed my hand on his, the ones covering the wounds and pressed hard.

“He’s telling me where to stab. He’s telling me where it will hurt the most…” I leaned in closer. “Do you want to know what he’s saying?”

He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. I hadn’t. I could see clearly and understood my devil slash stranger even though I couldn’t see him. Raising the knife, I looked one last time at the man who didn’t deserve to hurt anyone else—he would never again frighten or scare me—and I plunged it into his leg, right next to his groin.

He would die slowly as the blood gradually dropped out and left his body, and I knew that my mother wouldn’t wake up before he was dead. She was basically dead to the world and would be for the next day or even two, depending what she took and how much she had ingested.

He started to scream, and just as I was about to cover his mouth, the door to my trailer opened, and standing there staring at me was Derrick.

In that exact moment, my devil slash stranger was back, and he didn’t look at all pleased that Derrick was there, and neither was I.

Why was he there?

He shouldn’t have been there. Has he come to collect me?

Usually, I was at his house every day and never want to leave. Today, I didn’t even tell him I wouldn’t be there. Maybe that was why he was looking at me with such wide eyes? He closed the door straight away and stepped inside. Derrick looked down to my hands then back to me, then to the man.

“Who’s this, Mil?”

I hated that name, only he called me that.

“You should go. Go now,” my devil slash stranger was screaming at me to tell him so. And I did, because I didn’t want him here either, I wanted to hear this man’s last breath all by myself.

Derrick stepped closer then leaned down, so he was at eye-level with me. “I think, I love you, Mil.” There was so much happiness in his voice in that moment. It made me smile because I had been failing for years to try to make him that happy. Even after everything I did for him, none of it made him smile at me like that. He reached out and took the knife from my hand then turned off all the lights. Grabbing his phone and using the light from it, Derrick turned to the man on the floor as he cried softly, and I knew he would die and Derrick wouldn’t stop that either. He would let him die as well.

“Start a fire, Mil, and throw your clothes on it.”

“My mother,” I said looking back.

He stood and walked into her shit room, picked her drunken ass up and carried her outside. He came back in and looked me over as I didn’t move.

“Lose the clothes, Mil.” I didn’t do as he said, because when I did lose my clothes it involved sex. Sex was not what I wanted right now. He removed his shirt showing his perfect abs, and threw it down to me. “I’m your alibi, Mil. Now change.”

Standing up, I pulled my sweater over my head and threw it to the floor, it landed on the man’s face and he didn’t even bother moving it. The knife clinked as it dropped from my hand and hit the floor, and I didn’t even look down for it.

Changing, I do it fast, and once I was dressed in only Derrick’s shirt, I noticed Derrick had the knife and was sliding it into his pants. The devil slash stranger was telling me not to go with Derrick, that I shouldn’t go anywhere with this man.

I didn’t listen.

I should have listened.

Waking in a sweat, I scrub my face with my hands. The doctor told me it was just a dream and that I shouldn’t remember the episodes, but it all feels so real, like every word and everything that happened I remember vividly.

It’s been over five years since I was treated. I live a steady life now, a normal life to the best of my abilities. But I’m worried that my bed stranger may shake things up again.

I’m hoping my demons don’t come back.

I’m hoping that I don’t get hurt so badly that they stir and make another appearance.

It’s always a trigger, isn’t it?