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Iris
People always assumethat being rescued is the end of a story. But I know that's not the case. Being rescued doesn’t mean you can go back to your life. It doesn't mean you can live happily ever after. That’s in fairy tales; it isn’t real life. Or at least that isn’t my life.
I know people think I should be grateful for the rescue, and I really am.
They think I should be able to shake off the last five years of my life, the pain, the darkness, and just get on with it. But I can't.
It's not like the darkness is always there. There are times, tiny little moments where I almost forget. I smile and laugh. And for those split seconds, I can feel the woman I used to be still inside me. She is still there, fighting to be let out, and then the darkness takes me again. And I am back to being the Iris I have been trained to be. The woman with no fight in her. The one who jumps at her own shadow and won’t meet anyone's eye.
I don't want to be the woman who people look at with sympathy in their eyes, but I can't just shake off what has happened to me over the last five years. And anyway, it's easier to just let the darkness take hold. And after the life I have had, easy seems like a damn good option. It means less pain and misery. At least it did when I was a captive.
“Iris?”
I started. Lifting my head from where I had let it fall back against the sofa, I stared almost unseeing at the woman in front of me.
Maggie, her name was Maggie. Although sometimes when the fog of misery was tight around me, I lost my grip on reality. Sometimes I forgot her name and called her mum. It's not even that she looked like my dead mother. They didn’t even act the same. But something about the old woman who took me in after my ordeal reminded me of the way my mother treated me when I was a child.
I blinked the fog away, and the smile that spread my lips was forced. More a grimace than anything else. She was worried about me. They all were. All the big, burly bikers of the Savage Sons and their women. Out of all the women rescued, I was the only one who hadn't gone home to try and restart my life.
I was the only one who couldn't. I didn't have a life there anymore. My parents were dead, my friends would have long since forgotten me. The only family I had was my daughter Violet and she was in the United States…somewhere,
I would and could not go anywhere without her. She was my only reason for living. THE ONLY REASON. Without her, I would have opened up a vein years earlier.
So, it didn’t matter if being there, surrounded by painful memories of the past, was slowly killing me or not. I was stuck there until we found her.
Or found her tiny, lifeless body. That was a possibility as well.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
I shook myself, forcing the mental image of my child away. It wouldn't do to dwell on those kinds of thoughts. I had to remain positive and trust the universe had a plan for me. According to Maggie. For a respected woman within a motorcycle club, Maggie had some really hippy dippy ideas. Not that I would ever tell her that to her face. She had been kind to me. Taken me in when I had no one else.
She was my friend. At least on my part.
Straightening up, I tugged the heavy knitted throw up over my body. The room was warm, but I was always chilly. Maybe that had something to do with the darkness as well.
“I wasn't asleep.”
Maggie's lined eyes widened and then narrowed slightly. She didn't have to verbalise what she was thinking. I could see how worried she was about me and I couldn't blame her. I was worried about myself as well.
I was slipping further and further away. Losing myself.
It was a scary thought.
But I was powerless to stop it.
“I was just thinking...” My eyes met hers and skirted away guiltily.
“Thinking isn't always a good thing for women like us.” Maggie settled herself on the other end of the sofa and side eyed me. “Trauma has a habit of revisiting us when our hands are idle.”
“Would you like me to do anything?” She was right about being idle. But sometimes I found it hard to find the energy to even brush my hair out, let alone anything else.
“Not if you need to rest, maybe some air…” She trailed off, her face creasing in sympathy as I jolted back like I had been shocked.
My eyes slid to the window. The day outside looked perfect, there wasn't a cloud in the sky.
“You could go down to the lake.”
