Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

him again in the chest. My arms were all wet and warm with blood, it spurted onto the couch and the floor everywhere. And as he fell to the ground I kept doing it. Then I went upstairs and got into bed. And that’s where the police found me forty minutes later. He had twenty-two stab wounds.”

Harry’s eyes widened. He quickly looked away, then looked back at me. “Is that how you ended up in the hospital?”

I tugged the covers in tighter. “Yeah, I..I.. had to go to court, but they couldn’t find a motive. His girlfriend didn’t know about what he had done to me, but she hired a good lawyer and they,…um…I couldn’t say anything. I was just, speechless. They were all looking at me.”

I tried to calm myself. I took another deep breath.

“They came up with different theories and talked about me like I wasn’t there. They held up pairs of my pants in the courtroom. It would have humiliated me, but I was frozen inside. So I was sent to the mental hospital because they thought I was crazy. Had gone mad with jealousy, I heard them say in the distance, even though they were right next to me. They said I was jealous of his girlfriend. Jealous that he wasn’t giving me enough money. He was spending too much time away from home and I got annoyed. So they sent me away. Mrs. Mack, my social worker, knew what had happened though, and I didn’t even tell her, she just knew. But since it all started, I have been getting these blackouts, depressions, and they just come and go, but it’s gotten worse in the last eight months. I just,..I just see no hope.”

I could tell he wasn’t sure whether to hug me or not. Instead, he sat cross-legged.

“I don’t understand why it had to happen to me. Why did I have to get a parent like that? Why did nobody notice, or care? And now, whenever I see someone suffering, especially kids, it just makes me sick. I feel like I can feel their pain, but it’s everywhere I look, and I don’t know why and you’ll think I’m crazy but, well, what happened to me, it feels like that’s what’s happening to everyone else but in a different way. Even the planet. It’s like, they’re taking everything good and worthwhile and, I just, I can’t describe it, all that’s left is bad stuff. I don’t know. Sorry.”

“Hey! Don’t be sorry.” He wrapped his arms tight around me as the tears burst forth. They dampened his jacket that was in my face. I could feel myself shuddering violently.

“It’s okay, mate. It’s okay. Let it all out.” His fingers stroked my head. I cried and cried till I wore myself out, seeing nothing but black as I smothered myself into his chest.

Chapter 39

I woke up under an avalanche of sleeping bags and jumpers, the moon beaming a silver light upon me. I glanced over at Harry, lying on the bare floorboards. He had his back to me with his arms wrapped around himself, shivering with nothing covering him but a jacket.

“Hey, what you playin at? Take your covers back.” I threw one of the sleeping bags over him.

“I don’t need it, I’m fine.” he said, trying to hide his shivers. “How you feelin’ anyway?”

“A bit better. Thanks.”

And I was. I knew it was going to be a long process, but I was so glad I had finally told someone and got it out between someone else other than God.

“That’s good. I mean it, you keep those covers.”

“Well, we’ll share them then.”

I wiggled across the floor, pulled all the covers over the both of us, then I turned my back to his. But when I heard his teeth clattering together, I turned and put my arms around him to try and share my body heat.

“How long was I asleep?” I asked.

“Couple of hours.”

“Have you slept?”

“No.”

We held each other for another ten minutes till he stopped shaking. He shuffled away, readjusted his jacket pillow, and folded his arms beneath his head.

The world was so silent. It was like we’d fallen into some otherworldly chasm. I glanced over from time to time, Harry was so still it was only by his blinking eyes on the sky that I could tell he was awake. The stars twinkled red and orange and yellow. A few odd shapeless clouds drifted over the cratered moon.

“Aisha?”

“Yeah?”

“What was your dad’s name?”

“John.”

He went quiet for a few awkward seconds. I wondered what he was going to ask me.

“John McGilvary?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just wonderin.”

“You think you’ve heard of him?”

“No... No I haven’t.”

There was quiet again. “That’s one of the worst things anyone can do to someone. For you to come through it like you have, and be as functional as you are, you’re incredible.”

“Well, it’s done now. I just want to put it behind me.”

The moon climbed higher and the temperature seemed to keep taking sudden drops. I pulled the covers tight to my neck, but it didn’t prevent the chill getting through.

I could feel his nervous energy. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Hm? Nothing…Well, it’s just,..it’s disgusting. The whole act of sex, to me, is disgusting. And men that have done that, over the years…” he shuddered. “We’re just animals. Chimps. I…” he didn’t say anything else.

“How many homes did you get passed around?” I asked.

“Seven. Eight. Yeah, eight. Three foster homes, three care homes, my parents, and my uncles. I’d been everywhere from Inverness, down to Manchester, back up to Edinburgh by the time I was thirteen.” He shuffled on the floor for the hundredth time in twenty minutes. “I’m gonna have to go back into town tomorrow and get some decent sleeping bags.