Page 41 of Echoes From Within

I open my mouth to ask them how they knew where I lived but decide that it doesn’t really matter.

“Come on, babygirl,” Travis says, opening the small back door. “Let me walk you inside.”

I fold the blanket as best as I could and lay it back down where it was before exiting the truck.

Travis reaches out his hand and I accept it without hesitation. My body feels as if it’s on autopilot. On one hand, I’m glad that Travis and King stopped me before I completed my task. But on the other hand, nothing has changed. I still feel stuck.

“You should have let me finish,” I say when we reach the porch.

“We’ll talk about all of that in the morning, Sophia,” he says. “For now, I want you to get some rest so that you’re mentally ready for that conversation. Can you do that for me?”

Rest?He wants me to rest? I haven’t been able to rest since the night I was taken.

But, I don’t say any of that. I simply nod.

“Good girl,” he smiles, and a warmth surges through my body. “Go inside now, baby. I’ll be back in the morning.”

I grab the spare key from the hide-a-key rock next to the porch and, ignoring the growling sounds coming from Travis, turn to unlock the door.

“One more thing to add to our conversation,” he says.

When the door is open, he slowly reaches out and gently presses me into the house.

“Lock the door,” he demands.

With a sigh, I close the door and lock it.

“Goodnight, babygirl,” he says before walking back to the truck.

I watch from the tall window beside the door until the truck is out of sight. Then I’m alone.

Again.

And that warm feeling vanishes.

I know that they’re going to take care of the doctor issue. All doubts about them working with the police vanished after hearing their conversation about the doctor’s future.

I don’t even feel bad about that. Call me a monster all you want but knowing that he’s going to suffer after everything he put me and all those other people through makes me giddy.

But I still feel empty.

Stuck.

The guard? Maybe I need to find him next. I know the punisher was killed in the raid so maybe if I killed the guard I would feel free.

I’m not even worried about Malachi. I never even saw his face. I know he’s the one who orchestrated the entire thing. He’s the one who received money for having my body beaten, raped, and impregnated so he could sell my baby.

But his face isn’t the one I see in my nightmares.

It was always the punisher, the doctor, and the guard. But the face I see every single time I close my eyes, asleep or not, is the man who raped me repeatedly each night for weeks before I got pregnant.

But he’s already dead. I know this for a fact because he was the first person I looked for when I got out.

But his death hasn’t appeased anything inside of me. Just like I have a feeling the doctors or the guards won’t either.

Maybe I’m just broken. Maybe they broke me to the point of no return. I’m damaged, a mere fragment of who I once was.

I make my way down the hall and it feels as if I’m walking through a swamp surrounded by a heavy fog. Each step feels like a battle as the bad images I try so hard to keep at bay burst to life. It’s almost as if I’m watching that year of my life play out on the walls of my parents’ home.