I’m applying the edits to Broken today. It’s amazing how much of this I wrote in the present tense as if I was still there while I wrote this. Then again, when I wrote this… I was. Here is an excerpt from Part Two of Broken: Transcending the Psychedelic.
WARNING: THIS CONTAINS GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AND IMAGERY. NOT SUITABLE FOR SOME AUDIENCES.
I was back in the room with no doors. Blue light spilled onto the floor and across Angel’s spine. She shook, she whimpered, she rocked, swaying to the music in her head. Slowly, she raised her face from the floor.
Crescents blackened her eyes as she peered through strands of hair. The madness had taken her. The madness was her. She shook and held herself against the death that clung to the air.
“It was you,” I said. “You who sent me those dreams. All those dreams.”
“You wouldn’t listen,” she said. Her voice was raw from the endless screams. Each word cut her throat and I could hear it bleed.
“And you left me,” she said. “You left me here with no doors.”
She hugged herself, her arms wrapped tight across her breasts.
“And you left me,” she whispered. “You didn’t listen. You didn’t hear and you left me.”
“They’re coming back,” I said boldly and before she could look at me in horror, the Death Men appeared and it was I, not she, who lay naked and cold and cowering in the dark.
And I could not breathe. I could not—
“Elizabeth?”
* * *
I opened my eyes.
I was in my kitchen again. I smelled the simmering stew. I heard my Cookie mew. I felt William’s arm holding me up from the floor.
“Maybe we should call it a night,” he said.
“No.”
I had to get through this.
“Elizabeth—”
“I have to get through this!”
The memories flooded back and I tried to hold in all the pictures and pain. I was drowning and I couldn’t hold my head above water. My lip quivered, I shook my head, trying my best to battle it all back. My hands shook, a tear spilled down my face and with it, the last of my strength.
“For six months,” I said. “He held me locked in that room! To fuck me! He used me! He left me, abandoned me while I cried. I wished for death! It was supposed to be better! The war was over! It was supposed to be over! There was no one! No end! I’m alone! I was locked in that room for six months! And no one knew!”
William didn’t move.
“I’m still there,” I sobbed. “Always there. And I can not get out. I can not… I will always be there. I’m locked in that room with no doors.”
And right then, after all the hate and the hell and the horror, I broke right there on the floor in front of William and sobbed like a fucking little pansy girl.
