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Chapter 5

My eyes fluttered open and I scanned my surroundings. At first my mind didn’t seem to register where I was but I soon realized that I was in my bedroom, laying on my bed. Nervously, I ran my hands over my body, which was drenched in sweat, to check for signs of the assault that it had endured the night before, but I found nothing. Even the gun shot that I had sustained had seemed to have miraculously healed over night. That’s when it dawned on me, the entire episode had been nothing more than a dream, a very vivid and way too realistic dream, but a dream none the less. I looked over at the clock, it was eight in the morning. At least I had slept the entire night, I thought to myself. I’d half expected to be waking up very couple of hours or so from fear. I guess my imagination took care of the fear for me. Shutting my eyes, I took a deep breath and released it, hoping to calm my nerves.

Exhaustedly, I brought my hands to my head and ran my fingers through my hair which I found soaked in sweat. I sighed at this. I couldn’t believe that I was already having nightmares; nightmares that had such an affect on me physically and mentally. Shit, I couldn’t believe that I was having nightmares to begin with, nothing had actually happened to me. Benji and the guys had intervened before anything could happen. Benji. If the whole thing had been a dream, that meant that Benji was alright. For some reason I felt relieved at this realization. Relief that I was alright hadn’t even completely set in yet and here I was worrying about whether this stranger was alright.

Hell, who was I kidding? I already felt like I’ve known Benji forever and I don’t even know anything about him. Just a few days ago if you had said to me that I would be feeling that about someone I had just met by the end of the week I would have had to fight back the urge to bitch slap you because in my mind, at least in my state of mind at that time, things like that didn’t happen, they just couldn’t happen. That was all of that Hollywood bullshit that movies are made of, you know, those things that most women swoon over when they see then they dream about it happening to them one day. They imagine that fairy tale ending where the valiant knight comes to the rescue of a bruised and frightened princess and saves her from danger and everything is suddenly perfect and they live happily ever after.

Now I believe that shit, I know that’s pretty fucking stupid right? I’m definitely not living a fairy tale that’s for damn sure because my life has been anything but a fairy tale. I’ve been faced with hurdle after hurdle and dealt with so much shit that I can hardly believe that I have even the slightest emotional strength left in me. I guess that humans really are as resilient as people say we are. Well, at least I hope we are. I rubbed my eyes after I pushed myself into a sitting position on my bed. I wanted to talk to Benji but I needed to go get his phone number. I walked down the stairs and into the living room where the pad that Benji had written his number was still sitting. I reached for the phone and dialed in his number.

“Hello?” a groggy Benji answered after a few rings.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” I asked. Of course you did dumb ass, I told myself, people don’t sound like that when they’ve been up for a while.

“Yeah, but it’s okay, I don’t mind. What’s up?” He asked, his voice perking up a bit.

“What are you doing right now?” I incurred.

“Nothing, why?”

“Because I want you to come over. I want to talk to you about something but I don’t want to do it over the phone,” I told him seriously. I could hear him moving around on the bed after I had spoken.

“Alright, I’ll be over in like a half hour,” he told me.

“Thanks Benji.”

“No problem,” he replied then hung up. I pressed the end button on my phone and sighed. I was going to tell Benji about my dream. He was really the only one that I wanted to tell it to. I didn’t even want to talk to my sister about it, she didn’t need to hear about all of that. She didn’t need to know what might have happened to me yesterday in that alley. Benji was there, he already had an idea of what would have happened had he and the guys not been there. I put the phone down and went back upstairs. I needed to take a shower before Benji got here. I was probably beginning to smell from all of the sweat that covered my body. I walked into my bedroom and pulled out some clean clothes. I had settled on wearing just sweats and a loose fitting t-shirt. After the day that I had yesterday, all I wanted to be was comfortable. I was glad that I didn’t have to get dressed for work. While I was at the station yesterday, one of the officers had called my boss and she gave me as much time off as I needed. I was probably only going to take a couple of days just so that I could get my thoughts together enough to be able to work a full day.

I walked into my bathroom and turned on the hot water in my shower and let it run for a minute, letting it heat up. I turned and looked at myself in the mirror. For some reason, I didn’t know what to expect, I had a strange feeling that I wouldn’t recognize myself. When I finally confronted my reflection, I saw myself. I looked like shit with dark bags under my eyes, my skin was a lighter tone than usual and my hair was a complete mess. My eyes themselves seemed different though. There was something to them now that wasn’t there before this happened. Who the hell knew that that was exactly because realistically it could be a number of things. It could be the great distrust that I have for society that I had inherited from my experience just the day before. It could be the fear that has now seemed to have taken control of my senses. The more I thought about it, the more reasons there seemed to be for this sudden change.

Once the stream started to fill the bathroom, I reached into the shower and adjusted the temperature by turning on the cold water. After a moment or so of fiddling with the knobs, the water was finally at the perfect temperature, not too hot but not too cold either. It was just perfect. I took off Benji’s hoodie and let it drop to the floor (I really needed to give it back to him. Maybe I’ll put it in the wash and have it clean for him. I’m gonna probably be talking to him for a while any way so it’ll be ready before he leaves). I took off the rest of my clothes and stepped into the shower.

My dream last night made me feel so dirty. I wanted to clean the feeling from my body. I sighed, knowing that if a dream could have this affect on me, there would be no telling what I would be going through if he had actually raped me. I grabbed the bar of soap and vigorously started to run it across my body, hoping to wash way the feeling of violation on my skin. I rubbed until my skin turned red. I scrubbed my entire body the same way. Finally, when I felt that I was clean enough, at least as clean as I thought that I was going to be before Benji got here. I turned off the water and reached out for my towel. I dried myself off quickly and got dressed. I ended up putting Benji’s hoodie back on (so much for cleaning it). Just as I walked out of the bathroom the doorbell rang. I quickly made my way down the stairs and to the front door. Opening it, I saw Benji standing there with his hands in his pockets.

“Come on in,” I told him softly. He smiled gently and stepped inside of the house. I guided him into my living room where he took a seat on the couch. “Thanks for coming.”

“Hey, you said you needed to talk to me and I told you that I was there for you when you needed me,” he replied kindly. I looked over at him and sat down on the chair opposite the couch.

“I had a really bad dream last night,” I told him, getting straight to the point. I really didn’t want to drag this whole thing out. “I dreamed that they guy who attacked me had followed me home and raped me.”

“It was only a bad dream,” he told me, obviously sensing the fear that had washed over me when I spoke about the dream. “Dreams can’t hurt you ya know?”

“This one was so real,” I replied with a tear rolling down my cheek. “I could feel him touching me and it was so fucking horrible. When I woke up this morning, at first I didn’t know that the whole thing had been a dream. I was checking for the bruises. In the dream, he had shot me and I touched myself, looking for the wound to see how bad it was, but it was gone. Before that, I could have sworn that it actually happened to me. I was so scared for you because I thought that if he had followed me home then he might have followed you and Joel home and I thought that he would do something to you guys,” I admitted, my tears flowing freely. He looked into my eyes, and I could see the sincere concern that he had for me.

“Come here,” he said patting the empty seat on the couch next to him. I sniffled and moved over. When I sat down, Benji pulled me close to him, wrapping his arms around me. I sighed into his chest. “You’re gonna be alright and the police are gonna get this ass hole. He’s not going to come after you again.”

“I know, I’m just so scared.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” he said softly. “Everyone gets scared at some point in their lives.”

“Even you?” I asked.

“Even me,” he replied.

“What scares you?”

“A lot of things. I usually don’t get afraid for myself because if I did, I wouldn’t be where I am right now because I would have been too scared to do some of the things that I needed to. I usually get scared for the people in my life. They’re all important to me and I want to make sure that they are safe and happy at all times. Sometimes I get scared thinking about what might happen to the people I care about if I can’t do anything to help them,” he admitted. I snuggled closer to him, wanting to feel the safety I felt in them yesterday.

“You’re a good person Benji,” I stated. “I’m really glad that it was you that saved me. You’re really helping me.”

“I’m glad I can help,” he told me. “When I got home last night, I was thinking about you and what’s gonna happen to you. Ummm.. I just want to be sure that you’re okay, so I was thinking, do you think you’re gonna need some kind of therapy or something?”

“Benji, I really don’t know right now. Honestly, I’m not sure I can talk to anyone because I’m having a lot of trouble trusting people right now,” I admitted. He pulled his arms a little tighter around me.

“That’s fine, but if you ever need any kind of therapy, I can pick up the tab…”

“Benji that’s completely unnecessary,” I replied immediately, pulling out of his arms so that I could look at him face to face.

“I know it’s unnecessary but I want to do something to help you…”

“You’re already helping me more than you know,” I replied. He looked at me and licked his lips. I wanted to lean over and kiss him but I held back because I didn‘t want to scare him anyway because right now, I really needed him. Suddenly there was an awkward silence between us and it was becoming unbearable. I shifted a little. “I just…” I started then stopped myself.

“Just what?” he said.

“It’s nothing.”

“You can talk to me about anything ya know,” he said, his voice assuring. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want to hold back any more. I had almost died last night. I had almost lost everything. I was able to see that I should be more grateful for the things that I had. Benji was one of those new things and I wanted to enjoy him as much as I could. I leaned forward and brought my lips roughly onto his.