Underneath my exterior that tries to convince the world that yeah, I’m tough as fucking nails, there lies that same frightened child, who still hears her screams and pleads for mercy, the same time, every night, begging for him to leave her alone.

But every night he haunts her nightmares, her fevered insomniac dreams, which threaten to consume her in their flames. She can still taste him on her, and it’s been a hundred years, or maybe just a couple seconds, but his touch on her skin has stained her. Permanently.

Can I forgive her? Maybe not. The thing about all of us is that underneath our faces we present to the word we’re all just helpless children at heart. We cannot take care of ourselves in the end. She told him, once, not to bother her, to leave her the fuck alone. He didn’t listen. She almost reveled in the chase, the fact she was important enough to be pursued and in those last few seconds she was the gazelle to his lion, ever so graceful, beckoning death come.

Then he pounced.

The blood was nothing. She was planning to be a medical student. What’s a little blood? Yes, it was hers. It wasn’t enough to cause anything she’d die from. He told her if she screamed he’d kill her. And that foolish, naïve child, who had taken over her rational thought, stayed silent.

She could have screamed. She didn’t.

And when they found her, bloody and broken, her soul shattered, they did everything. They cleaned her cuts and fixed her wounds and tried to burn the memory from her mind; they tried to appease her by reiterating that no, it wasn’t her fault. It was never her fault. She knew this. It was the child’s fault.

When the child slinks out, sometimes, she is at her worst. She threatens to kill it and burn it and purge it from her system, but it is as deeply entwined into her as the guilt and shame are.

What if she had decided to wear a black dress? He always said black made her look pale. Perhaps she would have been unappealing, uninviting, causing him to rethink what he originally thought, to leave her alone, to zip back up his – enough. Guilt comes with the territory.

She pretends that she’s fine. Everyday she lies a little more as her smile grows brighter. But maybe they just don’t see that it never reaches her eyes. There’s blood on her hands. She could have saved the others. She should have. It was never her job… but was it? Isn’t it always? 
Forgive and forget. She can forgive him. But she can never forgive herself. Her dreams are becoming fragmented, crazily colored, terrifying. It’s over.

They call it survivor’s guilt, but she thinks that maybe she’s not really alive.