Remorse

Adrian bestrode atop her supple frame, his hand entangled in her silky ebony hair and he thrust into her. He stared deeply into her sickly green eyes, infected with the look of betrayal, and awash with tears. She bit her bottom lip in an attempt to stop them from flowing freely down her cheeks as she silently pleaded with him to stop. He wanted to, but he didn’t feel in control of his faculties. As he moved to pull away, he instead dislocated himself from his body; floating above and watched his own sweaty, muscular body defile her smaller frame. She hadn’t said no, nor fought against his advances, but her body was screaming at him, against him, that his touch was unwanted. He tried to reach forward and grab a hold of himself, but his hand just passed through his writhing body, so he resorted to yelling in his own ear; cursing at himself. He suddenly found himself lying where she was; paralysed under the weight of himself, being stared down at with his own grey eyes, tainted by an animalistic demeanour. The pain broke through his resolve, and he tried to call out, but he made no sound.

He was finally released from his nightmare, shivering from smothering embrace of a cold sweat, his sheets and clothing clinging to him like a desperate lover. It was a dream he was well used to; he dreaded the eclipsing darkness of sleep that would trap him once again in the nightmare memory of his deepest regret. He almost longed for the days of sweet denial; where it wasn’t his fault and he could find a million excuses to continue laughing at her accusations, but it was a time long since passed.

He had begun to doubt himself with the dawn of the #MeToo movement and he found himself obsessively reading the stories that were familiar with the ones his ex-girlfriend had spun about the experiences she had had. It had become a daily ritual for him; wake up, log on and read, instead of getting ready for work. His friends had found it a comical trend, and he was finding it harder and harder to laugh along with them as he started to see himself in the stories. He couldn’t live in the denial that they seemed content to stay camped in; the alternate was to admit to it and be forever branded with it. He wasn’t sure why he was affected by it more than the others, perhaps it was the fact that at the back of his mind, he still bore witness to the pain he had never wanted to cause disfigure her face, her wrist scarred and her red flushed cheeks stained with tears as she spat the word “rapist” at him while she attempted to come to terms of the trauma she had been forced through by his hand; his body. At the time, he hadn’t processed it; thinking she had lost her mind, he couldn’t be a rapist. The word itself was dirty, and he shivered at the thought of it. Rapists were horrible people, who didn’t have girlfriends and had no respect for women; he had both. He had never forced himself on her, never pinned her down, and the mere thought of it made him feel sick. He couldn’t be a rapist; she had contacted the police in her naivety, and even they didn’t believe he was complicit to any crime. Yet, as he had learnt about the different circumstances, the different ways rape could happen, it changed the way he felt, and the nightmares were born from the guilt that came with it. Adrian felting it wearing at his soul, making his existence becoming more exhausting with each passing night.

There had to be a way to fix this, he thought as he sat up, swinging his leg over the side of the bed and ruffling his blonde hair with his hands, he couldn’t go on like this, living a daily life of dreading sleeping for the nights, and the living for the guilt. It became who he was to himself, and he couldn’t exist any other way anymore. Others had noticed, asking him questions, watching him with concern, or just forgetting he existed all together. So he just sat on the edge of his bed, feeling the fragments of his mind shatter further, the emotional burden fraying at his waning sanity, he had to find an end to it. His thoughts wandered to his ex-girlfriend, wondering how she had managed to get through it, if she did. He found himself scrolling through the names on his phone, hovering over hers hesitantly “Thalia.”

He looked up, in his mind’s eye he could see her sitting on the bed next to them, a mischievous grin painted across her face as she waited for him to get the dirty joke she had just told. He closed his eyes, feeling her warmth against him and breathed in the memory of her scent, his heart constricting from the ache of her absence. He opened his eyes and tapped her name, with minimal hope that she would answer,

“We are sorry, but the number you have dialled does not exist…” he clicked it off, scowling at himself for trying. He stood up, putting on the nearest clothing that passed the smell test, passing through the threshold of his bedroom into his hallway, making his way to the kitchen and dining room to force cereal down his throat, though he had lost his appetite a long time ago. As he chewed, he remembered her, the begging look in her face when she had re-appeared again in his life. She had just wanted to acknowledge what he had done. A simple task he refused to humour, because he didn’t believe it. The constant nagging, the guild trips, the silent treatment he gave so she would give in and provide him with what he wanted; a few measly minutes of pleasure for him, and pain for her; she would wince and he would pretend not to notice so he wouldn’t have to stop. What he wouldn’t give to be able to go back and apologize to her now. To hold her and put the broken pieces of her back together so she could be whole again; and just so maybe he could have a dreamless sleep again.

He sat at his dining room table, absently sipping at his coffee as he scrolled his way through Facebook, not taking in the smiling faces and dog pictures making their way through his newsfeed.

He stopped scrolling, writing ‘Thalia Jones’ in the search bar, searching through the others that shared her name, but not finding her smiling face amongst them. He slammed the phone down, almost angry that her presence was devoid from his timeline. Though, again, he wasn’t surprised. She had made a bid to raise awareness for rape and the broken justice system that favoured the abuser over the abused; sharing her own stories, telling friends, being increasingly vocal on social media. It was not very successful, his friends had trolled her page, commenting on her posts some obscene and mostly offensive things, degrading and belittling her, making up their own stories. She wasn’t well received by the other victims in her community either. They had deemed her experience not worthy of the survivor title, because she hadn’t been violently raped. It was quiet, passive and a lack of action against advances. She had also attempted to reach out to him, to tell him she forgave him, so she could move on, and they didn’t like that. She hadn’t seen him as bad after all he had done, she said it was a mistake and that he didn’t know better because it was how society had raised him. It made him roll his eyes when he read it, but he couldn’t help but think that perhaps she was right, after how they had treated her versus him. He was protected, while she was villainized, and he didn’t have to do anything but sit back silently, and watch it unfold before him. He did nothing to try and make the situation better for him, and it only added to the guilt he was a prisoner to.

He picked up his phone again, opening Google and typing her name again, hoping to find some sort of trace of her. He felt his heart drop as he finally found her, he was finally able to track her down; “Thalia Jones’s death brings light to sexual assault, suicide link.”