Eyes Wide Open pt 2
Meryl was asleep in the car ride home from Maine to New York.
Initially she was in a peaceful sleep but it quickly turned into a nightmare only it wasn’t a nightmare it was much, much worse it was a memory…
She was still in her cell, trapped as Jack’s prisoner. The world around her blurred in and out of focus, her body was on fire with pain and when she made an attempt to move her arm she remembered she couldn’t because her arms were chained above her head.
The pain was worse than it had ever been. She came to the conclusion she had to be dying.
She’d been raking her brain for days trying to come up with a plan to escape and yet she couldn’t come up with one. She was coming to the painful conclusion that she was going to be chained to this pipe forever, Jack’s prisoner forever, and she would never know life outside of these concrete walls again.
She felt the tears streaming down the bridge of her nose and onto the blood smeared floor. She knew she was crying but after having spent so many hours over the last several days doing nothing but crying she barely had a filter on it anymore. Swallowing several times in an attempt to calm herself down she felt like she was swallowing shards of glass.
Curling herself into a ball the best she could she tried to make herself as small as possible in an attempt to disappear. Then she heard the creak of the door and saw a small stream of light pierce the darkness of the room, she could see the outline of his body, hear his clunking footsteps caused by his boats and hear the faint sound of his breathing.
She had always hated the word hate believing no one truly hated another person but now she knew that wasn’t true. She had never truly hated anyone in her life but this, what she felt toward Jack, was worse than hate it was pure loathing.
He was back and once again he was coming for her.
He stopped in front of her and uncurled her from the ball she was in, turning her so she was laying on her back which caused her to wince in pain due to the bruises that aliened her shoulders, spine and back.
Feeling him slam into her over and over again she honestly didn’t know if he even enjoyed the act anymore, then again she could be wrong he did it so frequently now that she had a hard time believing he was attacking her for just the sake of attacking her.
He finished and stood over her in an imposing, threatening matter, per usual. Then he grabbed her neck telling her his favorite new catch phrase. “You know I could kill you if I wanted to and no one would ever know.”
What he didn’t know was that he was already killing her; every moment she spent down here, every time he touched her, every time he slapped her, every time he told her that no one would ever find her and by the time they did it would be too late, it was all killing her and with every day that passed she could feel herself loosing yet another part of herself to him and the pure evil that consumed him.
By this point she felt that she had lost the ability to even speak. She knew she could she just hadn’t in so long. When she was alone it seemed pointless and almost crazy to talk to herself and when he was in the room with her she didn’t want to even give him the impression that she even registered his presence in her last fleeting attempt to wield some control. He had taken everything else she wasn’t going to give him that as well.
That was when she woke up sweating and shaking.
She realized she was no longer in the room with Jack and was with Don safely on her way home.
She just wished she didn’t feel so uncomfortable with him. Don had never been anything but wonderful to her and yet she couldn’t stop herself from fearing what would happen after a few weeks or months had passed and Don wanted more from her than she was able to give. There was a limit to anyone’s capacity to understand and she feared what would happen when Don reached his limit.
The entire time Don had been driving he found himself glancing over at her every few seconds, especially after she fell into what quickly turned into a fitful sleep.
He couldn’t stop looking at her face; the bruises and healed bruises that covered her beautiful face, the scratch marks on her forehead and neck, her swollen lip, her sunken cheek bones, the dark circles under her eyes, the marks he was able to make out on her neck due to the way the sweater fell on her smaller frame. He could only imagine the marks that were under her clothing and his mind began to race with images of what he could only suspect had gone on in that concrete room.
She hadn’t confirmed it, yet, in so many words but Don knew in his gut that Jack had raped her. It would have been bad enough if Jack had beat her, which he had, but to know that Jack touched her in that way, had forced himself on her it made Don fell physically ill and he swore to himself in that moment if he was ever given just a few moments alone with that monster he would beat him within an inch of his life and make him beg for mercy.
They were nearing the house when she woke up in a panic shaking and sweating profusely from what he suspected was a horrible nightmare.
He was desperate to find some words to comfort her, desperately wanting to talk to her about what she had said prior to getting in the car and beginning their journey back to New York.
“Thank you for coming to get me.”
He still couldn’t shake the tone in her voice and the look on her face when she said those words to him. It was almost as if she was surprised that he had come for her at all. He wanted her to know that as far as his feelings toward her were concerned nothing had changed. She was the love of his life and no matter what had gone on while she was being held by Jack he in no way held her responsible or saw that as a flaw in her character.
There were so many things he wanted to say but didn’t know how to.
Yes this was still the woman he had married 34 years ago, the woman he had 4 children with, the woman he had built a home and a life with, but she wasn’t the same and he knew there was no way she could be after everything that had happened. Not after the accident, her memory loss, Jack re-inserting himself into her and his life, the unspeakable things he did to her over the last several weeks. He knew she would never completely recover from all of that and he was worried that she was going to push him away for, what she would consider, his own good. He didn’t know how to help her without scaring her.
When Don pulled the car into the parking garage that was adjacent to their building and parked it in his usual spot he slowly placed his hand over hers.
Waiting until she made eye contact with him. He rewarded her with his infamous Don Gummer smile and said.
“Nothing happens that you aren’t ready for we go at your pace. You tell me what you need and that’s what we’ll do.”
She wanted to burst into tears at the gentleness that radiated from his voice. His voice was so different from Jack’s. Jack’s voice was cold, manipulating and evil. While Don’s voice was warm and caring. She knew Don couldn’t be more different from Jack and yet she was afraid; afraid of going into their home, afraid of seeing her children, afraid of the questions that were bound to be asked, afraid of what the coming days and weeks would bring, afraid that no matter how much time passed she would never fully, truly recover, from what Jack had done.
It wasn’t fair to put Don or the children through that and yet no matter how much she wanted to talk to Don and tell him all of this she couldn’t, at least not yet. She wanted to give him some hope that it was still her and that no matter what had happened the woman he had married, the woman who had mothered his children was still inside of her and one day this would all be nothing but a terrible nightmare.
Softening her face and giving him a small smile. “You are an extraordinary man, after everything that has happened the last couple of months you have never once faltered… no matter what happens know that I will never forget that. I will never forget how lucky I have been to share my life with you.”
He couldn’t keep the smile he had plastered on his face. The tone in her voice, the look in her eyes, it was the same as when she had thanked him for coming to get her. This wasn’t Meryl and he wanted to cry because every time she opened her mouth to speak it wasn’t the self-assured, funny, witty woman he fell in love with. Instead it was a broken, beaten down woman who sounded defeated.
“M I’m not going anywhere; no matter what you say or what you do, no matter what happened while Jack had you in that room…”
She placed her hand, the one that was not in his grasp, to his lips and stopped him.
“Don’t make me promises you can’t keep. There are things that happened in that cell, things that Jack did that you will never be able to come to terms with, and I know this because I was there, I was the one these things happened to and even I can’t come to terms with them. Once you know everything you will never look at me the same way… listen this isn’t the time or the place I’m just trying to say.” Moving her hand away from his lips and over to his cheek rubbing away the few tears that were slowly falling. “Thank you for loving me.”
Knowing now that he had to say something, had to try to convince her that he was in this with her until the end. “Looking at you I can only imagine what went on in that room, but it’s still you. I look at you and I still see the woman I met 35 years ago, the woman who made me fall in love with her harder and faster than I ever thought it was possible to love another human being, the woman who agreed to marry me, the woman who made me a father 4 times, the woman who has decided every day to share her life with me. You are the greatest part of my life and no matter what you tell me, no matter what I find out that is never going to change.”
With that he was crying. He had been trying so hard to keep it together, not just for her but for himself. He feared that if he started crying he wouldn’t be able to stop.
Meryl’s heart broke in her chest. Seeing him fall apart, listening to what he had just said. She wasn’t sure if she believed him but she knew that he felt he was speaking the truth.
She couldn’t imagine what the last couple of months had been like for him and she knew in that moment if the roles were reversed she would be falling apart at the seams.
Un buckling her seat belt and moving her body so it was closer to Don’s she wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her head in the crock of his neck. The physical contact was making her incredibly uncomfortable but in this moment it wasn’t about just her. It was about him. It was about being there for him. It was about thanking him for sticking with her when anyone else would have ran off screaming.
TBC...
Got this up as fast as I could.
So thoughts, opinions…? Anything you have to say don't hold back...
Initially she was in a peaceful sleep but it quickly turned into a nightmare only it wasn’t a nightmare it was much, much worse it was a memory…
She was still in her cell, trapped as Jack’s prisoner. The world around her blurred in and out of focus, her body was on fire with pain and when she made an attempt to move her arm she remembered she couldn’t because her arms were chained above her head.
The pain was worse than it had ever been. She came to the conclusion she had to be dying.
She’d been raking her brain for days trying to come up with a plan to escape and yet she couldn’t come up with one. She was coming to the painful conclusion that she was going to be chained to this pipe forever, Jack’s prisoner forever, and she would never know life outside of these concrete walls again.
She felt the tears streaming down the bridge of her nose and onto the blood smeared floor. She knew she was crying but after having spent so many hours over the last several days doing nothing but crying she barely had a filter on it anymore. Swallowing several times in an attempt to calm herself down she felt like she was swallowing shards of glass.
Curling herself into a ball the best she could she tried to make herself as small as possible in an attempt to disappear. Then she heard the creak of the door and saw a small stream of light pierce the darkness of the room, she could see the outline of his body, hear his clunking footsteps caused by his boats and hear the faint sound of his breathing.
She had always hated the word hate believing no one truly hated another person but now she knew that wasn’t true. She had never truly hated anyone in her life but this, what she felt toward Jack, was worse than hate it was pure loathing.
He was back and once again he was coming for her.
He stopped in front of her and uncurled her from the ball she was in, turning her so she was laying on her back which caused her to wince in pain due to the bruises that aliened her shoulders, spine and back.
Feeling him slam into her over and over again she honestly didn’t know if he even enjoyed the act anymore, then again she could be wrong he did it so frequently now that she had a hard time believing he was attacking her for just the sake of attacking her.
He finished and stood over her in an imposing, threatening matter, per usual. Then he grabbed her neck telling her his favorite new catch phrase. “You know I could kill you if I wanted to and no one would ever know.”
What he didn’t know was that he was already killing her; every moment she spent down here, every time he touched her, every time he slapped her, every time he told her that no one would ever find her and by the time they did it would be too late, it was all killing her and with every day that passed she could feel herself loosing yet another part of herself to him and the pure evil that consumed him.
By this point she felt that she had lost the ability to even speak. She knew she could she just hadn’t in so long. When she was alone it seemed pointless and almost crazy to talk to herself and when he was in the room with her she didn’t want to even give him the impression that she even registered his presence in her last fleeting attempt to wield some control. He had taken everything else she wasn’t going to give him that as well.
That was when she woke up sweating and shaking.
She realized she was no longer in the room with Jack and was with Don safely on her way home.
She just wished she didn’t feel so uncomfortable with him. Don had never been anything but wonderful to her and yet she couldn’t stop herself from fearing what would happen after a few weeks or months had passed and Don wanted more from her than she was able to give. There was a limit to anyone’s capacity to understand and she feared what would happen when Don reached his limit.
The entire time Don had been driving he found himself glancing over at her every few seconds, especially after she fell into what quickly turned into a fitful sleep.
He couldn’t stop looking at her face; the bruises and healed bruises that covered her beautiful face, the scratch marks on her forehead and neck, her swollen lip, her sunken cheek bones, the dark circles under her eyes, the marks he was able to make out on her neck due to the way the sweater fell on her smaller frame. He could only imagine the marks that were under her clothing and his mind began to race with images of what he could only suspect had gone on in that concrete room.
She hadn’t confirmed it, yet, in so many words but Don knew in his gut that Jack had raped her. It would have been bad enough if Jack had beat her, which he had, but to know that Jack touched her in that way, had forced himself on her it made Don fell physically ill and he swore to himself in that moment if he was ever given just a few moments alone with that monster he would beat him within an inch of his life and make him beg for mercy.
They were nearing the house when she woke up in a panic shaking and sweating profusely from what he suspected was a horrible nightmare.
He was desperate to find some words to comfort her, desperately wanting to talk to her about what she had said prior to getting in the car and beginning their journey back to New York.
“Thank you for coming to get me.”
He still couldn’t shake the tone in her voice and the look on her face when she said those words to him. It was almost as if she was surprised that he had come for her at all. He wanted her to know that as far as his feelings toward her were concerned nothing had changed. She was the love of his life and no matter what had gone on while she was being held by Jack he in no way held her responsible or saw that as a flaw in her character.
There were so many things he wanted to say but didn’t know how to.
Yes this was still the woman he had married 34 years ago, the woman he had 4 children with, the woman he had built a home and a life with, but she wasn’t the same and he knew there was no way she could be after everything that had happened. Not after the accident, her memory loss, Jack re-inserting himself into her and his life, the unspeakable things he did to her over the last several weeks. He knew she would never completely recover from all of that and he was worried that she was going to push him away for, what she would consider, his own good. He didn’t know how to help her without scaring her.
When Don pulled the car into the parking garage that was adjacent to their building and parked it in his usual spot he slowly placed his hand over hers.
Waiting until she made eye contact with him. He rewarded her with his infamous Don Gummer smile and said.
“Nothing happens that you aren’t ready for we go at your pace. You tell me what you need and that’s what we’ll do.”
She wanted to burst into tears at the gentleness that radiated from his voice. His voice was so different from Jack’s. Jack’s voice was cold, manipulating and evil. While Don’s voice was warm and caring. She knew Don couldn’t be more different from Jack and yet she was afraid; afraid of going into their home, afraid of seeing her children, afraid of the questions that were bound to be asked, afraid of what the coming days and weeks would bring, afraid that no matter how much time passed she would never fully, truly recover, from what Jack had done.
It wasn’t fair to put Don or the children through that and yet no matter how much she wanted to talk to Don and tell him all of this she couldn’t, at least not yet. She wanted to give him some hope that it was still her and that no matter what had happened the woman he had married, the woman who had mothered his children was still inside of her and one day this would all be nothing but a terrible nightmare.
Softening her face and giving him a small smile. “You are an extraordinary man, after everything that has happened the last couple of months you have never once faltered… no matter what happens know that I will never forget that. I will never forget how lucky I have been to share my life with you.”
He couldn’t keep the smile he had plastered on his face. The tone in her voice, the look in her eyes, it was the same as when she had thanked him for coming to get her. This wasn’t Meryl and he wanted to cry because every time she opened her mouth to speak it wasn’t the self-assured, funny, witty woman he fell in love with. Instead it was a broken, beaten down woman who sounded defeated.
“M I’m not going anywhere; no matter what you say or what you do, no matter what happened while Jack had you in that room…”
She placed her hand, the one that was not in his grasp, to his lips and stopped him.
“Don’t make me promises you can’t keep. There are things that happened in that cell, things that Jack did that you will never be able to come to terms with, and I know this because I was there, I was the one these things happened to and even I can’t come to terms with them. Once you know everything you will never look at me the same way… listen this isn’t the time or the place I’m just trying to say.” Moving her hand away from his lips and over to his cheek rubbing away the few tears that were slowly falling. “Thank you for loving me.”
Knowing now that he had to say something, had to try to convince her that he was in this with her until the end. “Looking at you I can only imagine what went on in that room, but it’s still you. I look at you and I still see the woman I met 35 years ago, the woman who made me fall in love with her harder and faster than I ever thought it was possible to love another human being, the woman who agreed to marry me, the woman who made me a father 4 times, the woman who has decided every day to share her life with me. You are the greatest part of my life and no matter what you tell me, no matter what I find out that is never going to change.”
With that he was crying. He had been trying so hard to keep it together, not just for her but for himself. He feared that if he started crying he wouldn’t be able to stop.
Meryl’s heart broke in her chest. Seeing him fall apart, listening to what he had just said. She wasn’t sure if she believed him but she knew that he felt he was speaking the truth.
She couldn’t imagine what the last couple of months had been like for him and she knew in that moment if the roles were reversed she would be falling apart at the seams.
Un buckling her seat belt and moving her body so it was closer to Don’s she wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her head in the crock of his neck. The physical contact was making her incredibly uncomfortable but in this moment it wasn’t about just her. It was about him. It was about being there for him. It was about thanking him for sticking with her when anyone else would have ran off screaming.
TBC...
Got this up as fast as I could.
So thoughts, opinions…? Anything you have to say don't hold back...