Truth of Dark Pasts by Serena Wood (free children's online books .TXT) 📖

Chapter 20 “Forgiving and forgetting

 

☯River☯

When she left I had fully prepared to block out any noises I heard and for a few minutes, I manage to zone out. I vaguely hear her opening the door to the basement and after that I don’t hear much else. Gradually I do start to hear some faint noise and instantly I try to block it out, assuming Ellie’s misery has started.

But as the noise grows louder, I realize it’s not a sound of misery. It’s a soft moan of pleasure. Confused, I try to sit up and listen in on whatever it may be. It takes me a minute to get pass the drugs but finally I move into a position that allows me close enough to the noise to hear more clearly. As I thought before, they aren’t a stream of agonizing screams. They’re quiet moans and when they leave the girl’s mouth, they sound nothing like she’s in pain. Instantly, I recognize the moans that I usually hear faintly over me, I’m usually too distant to recognize them as sounds but now all I can do is focus on it. Chloe isn’t hurting Ellie, at least not physically.

She’s doing the same thing to her that she does to me. The realization hits me like a granite wall, I let out a small gasp as I feel my chest tighten. Why is she doing that? It doesn’t make any sense, she can’t stand the idea of Ellie; she wouldn’t be forcing sex onto her like she does with me.

I gradually force my limbs to leave the bed, ending up on the wooden floor on all fours. I collapse onto the floor after a minute, unable to hold my body weight up until the drugs wear off a bit more. For now, I have no other choice to lay here until it does. I take advantage of that, turning my head to press my ear against the floor. I’m greeted with more sounds of Chloe’s pleasure and I move my ear away immediately, like it burnt me.

My assumption was right, but I still don’t understand why.

I have no choice but to lay here and listen to it carry on until Chloe lets out a few more moans and then it stops abruptly; much to my relief. She stays down there for a few more minutes, talks to Ellie, probably feeding her. And then I hear the metal door close and Chloe walks back up the stairs. She doesn’t head immediately for my room, instead she goes to the bathroom across the hall and I hear the shower start a minute later.

She doesn’t come back for hours, she showered, wandered around the house, and at some point she even left for a while. In all the time she was gone, the drug had finally worn off and I had managed to stand. I rush to pull on the set of clothes she left for me in the loveseat. As I pull the shirt down over my head, I hear her come back into the house, slamming the front door shut. I sit down on the edge of the bed as she makes her way down the hall. I manage to take a sip of water from the glass on the nightstand before she reaches the door. I set down the glass and stare at the door, waiting for her to open it. For at least a minute, she doesn’t; she just hovers near the door.

Finally, the door creaks open and I glare at her as hard as I can manage as soon as her eyes meet mine. “Why did you do that?” I growl at her as she shuts and locks the door behind her. “Do what, sweetie?”

“You know exactly what, I heard you. How could you do that to her? What happened to focusing on us, weren’t you trying to fix things?” I use her own illusion of our relationship against her and she frowns, moving to stare at her feet.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you, really. But I had to.” She steps closer, trying to reach out for my hand but I pull away. “Why? Was I not enough for you? You had to use her too?”

“No, that’s not it. I would have been content with having you. But I saw how you two used to be, I could see it in her eyes. I had to take it away. I made things right with you, but she was still there. I had to balance it out.” her explanation sends a shiver of anger down my spine, but somehow I knew it would. I knew whatever excuse she used to abuse Ellie like that would infuriate me.

“So because you’ve had sex with her now we’re even somehow? You’re really going to stand here and use that as an excuse for what you did?” I stand up and almost move to push on her shoulders, but I stop myself just in time. I know very well by now any violence I direct towards her comes back to Ellie.

“It’s not about getting even, I had to right the wrongs you two did. I didn’t want to do it, but it was necessary to fixing our relationship.” a small part of me still wants to speak out against her claims, but I know that telling her the relationship she thinks we have isn’t real, then she’ll only take it out on Ellie more. It’s been less than a week but already I’m adapting to the rules of the insane world she has us trapped in.

I’m still hoping somehow I can use that to my advantage. “Alright… I understand.” I mutter with defeat, usually I would make a point to not show weakness but I’m trying to adapt in hopes I can trick her.

“That’s good, that means we’ll be okay. I’m sorry it had to be like this, but you have to know your part in all this too.” she does this every time we talk, she tries to make me feel bad for what she thinks I did. For now, I’ll play along, but she’ll never find a way to really get through my head. She’s never going to make me believe the story she believes.

“I understand that too.” I try to sound convincing but I can’t manage to force myself to apologize, I’ve done nothing wrong afterall.

“I’m glad you’re finally seeing my side.” She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me lightly, trying hard not to force it like she has before. I know by that kiss that having sex with Ellie wasn’t the only thing she changed in her plan to get me back. She’s up to something.

“I think I realized something else when I was down there with her. I’m going about this all wrong, I know that now. But I’m still going to try to fix things.” the loving smile that she usually makes a point to keep around me suddenly falters and a serious expression falls onto her features. “I think that I can… forgive you now. In the back of my mind I guess I never really forgave you for what you did, but now that everything is balanced; we can move on. I can be kinder… maybe one day even to the both of you.”

For the first time since all of this happened, her words actually manage to restore some of the hope my spirit had lost. “Really?”

“I don’t want you to see me as a monster, I’m not. I’ve just had to resort to... drastic measures in order to sew us back together. But that’s over now, I’m hoping now that it’s done you can see me like you use to. Once upon a time you use to think very highly of me, you know.”

“I know.” I grumble, trying not to spit out something about how that was before she went off the deep end.

“Good, you’re getting better. Back to your old self. I’m going to make us dinner, I went out to the market and got fresh vegetables. I’ll let you eat at the table with me if you promise you’ll be good.” it sounds like something you would say to a child and I have to bite my tongue to keep from hissing an insult at her. “That sounds fun.” I mutter instead.

She leaves me with a kiss on the cheek and as soon as the door closes, I collapse back onto the bed. Tears stream down my cheeks once the effect of it all hits me. What she’s doing is horrible. Maybe one day I could forgive her if it were only me in the picture. But what she does to Ellie somehow manages to affect me a thousand times more than when she rapes me. Even now I find it hard to believe that I could think like that, ever since my uncle, I thought that there was nothing worse that you could do to me. But I hadn’t thought about someone hurting the girl that has taken care of me and managed to put me back together ever since we were kids.

It feels like she’s taking my angel from me.

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Chapter 21 “A Family By Force”

 

It’s been at least two months living under Chloe’s control. I find it completely mind blowing that she can leave the house every single day and seem so normal to the outside world, while in fact she has two girls that she tortures daily locked away in an abandoned house. It makes me wonder how long she’ll do this. If she’ll eventually kill us and bury us out back. If she’ll stumble across some other unsuspecting soul, fall in love with them and repeat the process. If she’ll do this for years until the cops finally catch her, like you see on the news; she could go down in history just like all the other serial killers before her.

“Honey, what have I told you about the table scraps?” I adjust the ropes that bind me to the table to look back up at her fearfully. “I just thought she could use a little more food.” I glance down at Ellie sadly, silently apologizing for being caught feeding her.

I remember clearly the first time Chloe had allowed me to see her, it had been a little less than a month after we ended up here. Actually seeing her in that state shattered what was left of my spirit. She had been easily overpowered, submitting to Chloe like a dog to it’s master. I couldn’t prevent myself from acting out of Chloe’s set character. I sat down beside her and pulled her into my arms, rocking her