Behind The Mask (Nurses Book 2)
Read Behind The Mask (Nurses Book 2) Online
Authors: Renee Adams
TABLE of CONTENTS
Copyright Renee Adams 2016 Behind the Mask
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the Author. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover Design by Silla Webb
Interior Design by Silla Webb
Editing by Silla Webb
This book is for my “brotato salad” Justin. Thank you for giving me the character of Allyn.
To my hubster, Boomer. Thank you for believing in me, even when I wanted to stop.
To my gruesome twosome, Cori, hopefully you love it.
Hey momma, look, I wrote a second!
White hot searing pain spreads through my face. Blood drips down my forehead and into my eyes, blinding me. I try to scream out but blood fills my mouth, and I gag. But then the pain fades. Almost as if the nerves are deadened, and I can’t feel anymore. I know that not feeling the pain anymore is a sign that I might be dying. I don’t want to die, there is so much I haven’t done yet. So much in my life that I haven’t accomplished, things I haven’t seen, things I haven’t done. He climbs on top of me and paws at my scrubs and I know what’s next. I always know what’s next. This is all too real, the pain…the pain is too much. Vomit creeps its way up my throat and lingers in the back of my mouth, but it never actually comes out. I fight with all of my might, but I’m tired, so tired. The fighting never works anyways, he always has his way with me. He always uses me as a play toy, chewing me up and spitting me out. This never ends well, I always end up the loser.
Please God, don’t let this be the end. Please let me wake up tomorrow and let this be a nightmare that is just a little too real. Wake up, Cori, wake up. Please, someone, wake me up!
I wake up soaked…soaked through my clothes, sheets, and blanket. This is an every night thing, so by now I am so used to it. It has been four months since the prison riot. Four months since that bastard Xavier took over the prison I worked at and assaulted me in horrendous, unimaginable ways. Four months of nightmares, pain, misery…just four months of nothingness. Is this ever going to get better? The little voice inside of my head whispers ‘
not today
.’ I hate that little voice. I feel like it’s patronizing me every single damn day.
With a resounding sigh, I get up and change the sheets, throwing my sweaty ones into the corner to throw in the laundry tomorrow. I don’t know how much more I can take of this life. How much more I can go on pretending like I’m fine. I know Olivia and Damian are worried about me, and it’s nice beyond measure that they care. But I feel it’s pity more than worry. Plus, Olivia feels guilty. She thinks that it’s her fault this happened to me, but she doesn’t know the whole story. It’s something that is my own burden to bear, and I take it on willingly because I screwed up, I let myself get caught.
Laying back down, I try to go to my happy place. Well, what used to be my happy place. It’s the place I called out to when he was pushing himself into me; the place I called to when he was carving an X from my forehead to my jaw. Now, I don’t have one, because nothing is ever happy in this life. No, life is just filled with mistake after mistake, torment after torment, and we just go through the motions until we are cold in the ground.
Tomorrow or today— however you want to look at it— I start my new job. I’m surprised someone wants me to work for them. I’m surprised that someone wants me to walk in public. I haven’t done that in so long, leaving the grocery shopping to Olivia. The only time I leave my house is when I go to the doctors. See I used to be a healthy person, but after everything that happened I have doctor’s appointments what feels like daily but, in reality, it’s an every few weeks thing because they have to see how I’m healing.
I never used to be this way. I used to be the bubbly girl who was the life of the party. Girls wanted to be me, guys wanted to bang me. Now, they would probably string me up and call me names and laugh. I would probably scare small kids and make them think I’m the thing that goes bump in the night. But little do they know, the scary things look normal, not scarred up like me. The scary things walk amongst us, out in the open, free to do scary things to people who don’t deserve it.
Getting up from my freshly made bed, I look at the sheets and blanket and know that after tonight, they will be destroyed. Shame really, but it happens every night, the nightmares and the screaming. I have to be at work in five hours at six am sharp, and I won’t go back to sleep. Sleep eludes me. We have this cat and mouse game where sleep ducks and weaves out of my grasp every night. I’m lucky if I get four to five hours of shut-eye a day. The docs have prescribed me sleeping pills, but that makes the nightmares worse. I have tried therapy as well, but that made the nightmares happen three or four times a night so that shit had to go for my sanity.
I think starting this new job tomorrow is making the nightmares happen more frequently. Ever since I accepted the work, the nightmares have gone up in intensity, sometimes with me screaming in my sleep or waking up tear stained from crying. It all feels too real. It all feels like I’m trying to crawl my way out, of the memories that plague me in unimaginable ways.
He took that from me. He took my sanity, my life, and my safety. He killed any and all dreams I had for myself when he took me against my will. I can’t even say the r-word because I get a sick feeling in my stomach, but I know what he did, hell everyone knows what the bastard did. On top of him taking what he wanted from my body he left not only the emotional and mental scars to deal with, but he had to take it even further and carve an X into my face. Even from the grave that piece of shit is still ruining my life.
