Alice got into her house and locked the door. But somehow she just didn't feel safe anymore. She kept seeing that awful masked face replaying itself over and over. The memory of him violating her just scarred her to no end.She walked into the dark room, not bothering to turn on the light. She didn't want to see herself and certainly didn't want to be reminded in the perspective of things that would make her drown in it.
She collapsed upon her brown floral sofa, that contained scattered pink roses and pristine leaves. She lay there a moment glancing towards the darkened ceiling with the small amount of white light filtering in from the nocturnal sky.
She then felt Fluffernutter, her Rag doll kitten jump onto her and tried to nestle into a cozy position. Somehow she could sense an uneasiness and Fluffernutter hurled herself quickly off into the lighter room, her kitchen. As Alice lay in silence, she could hear sounds of Fluffernutter crunching on her salmon & tuna dry cat food. Alice was kind of thankful that she had the couch to herself for a tiny bit as she absolutely wasn't in the mood to enjoy her lap cat for the present time.
Doug Cypress seemed to be a nice guy and she really did feel as if she owed him for saving her life because if he hadn't shown up, she could be stone dead just like Melissa Small. Melissa's pretty heart shaped face seemed to emerge from the shadows of last week to remind her of what could have been. That spiralling brown hair with locks rambling down an imaginary vine wrapped around her face, captured the sad emotions of all who had read about her in the newspaper, on the web and anywhere else that people would fatefully hear the news of Melissa's passing.
Melissa had been another mere college student just trying to make something of herself. She had been studying to be a doctor, but of course that lifelong dream of saving lives was never enough to rescue hers.
Finally after about twenty minutes of suffering in the blackness of her unspoken apartment, Alice decided she should at least turn on her lamp on the end table next to her. She clicked the black plastic switch and was sort of relieved to set sights of her Granny's peach lamp with the little yellow stripes on it.
Then she saw her brown leather notebook that Katherine had given her shortly before coming back to campus. She had written a little bit in it, documented notes about some of her classes and some little doodles for instance, smiley faces and a stray heart sticker.
Alice didn't feel like doing it tonight. And now the memory of the car ride back from the hospital had her really quiet. She hadn't wanted to talk about things with Doug as she wasn't ready to confide in him. She would much rather call Elena but then should she really bother?
However right now, she wasn't sure if she even wanted to tell her family about this. It was utterly embarrassing. And she hadn't decided to tell Doug what happened with the doctor's and the nurses.
She had been sitting there telling them about what had happened to her. Then they told her about all the procedures they would need to do. She listened as they told her they would need to perform a vaginal exam, collect a rape kit which consisted of semen, saliva, hair, fibers, clothing and evidence of grass or soil. She did agree to let them do some fingernail clippings and took in things as they told her they would have to do some blood tests, and check to see if she could have possibly had some internal injuries.
When she heard them talk about getting tested for HIV and STD, she cringed. Of course she didn't want any of that. And she took in information about the morning after emergency contraceptives.
They gave her some pamphlets of symptoms and signs to know if she would develop Rape Trauma Syndrome and other things that could occur after a rape.
So, they started to get her ready to do the procedures, and suddenly Alice sat straight up and became stubborn and wouldn't let them come near her.
"I don't want you touching me. Just let me go home! Leave me alone!"
"But it's very important you do this, Alice. It's for your safety and protection. If he gave you something, you need to be able to get tested so we can give you the treatment to get rid of it. Please. It won't be too long. You are risking going home with internal injuries that we can't have on our heads."
"That's fine with me. Just let me go, now! You can't force me to do this."
Finally after a great deal of trying to convince her to get it done and over with, they ended up letting her walk away untouched.
Now, as she sat on her couch, she felt so alone, used and abused. She was thankful that her attacker was dead, but now she was still angry with him for doing it to her. Forcing himself upon her against her will.
She got up from the couch, turned on some lights on the way to her bathroom and began to undress. She turned on the faucet and stepped into the hot shower and tried to wipe away the pain with her mango scented bath gel.
And it was really the worst thing she could do, as she didn't listen to them when they told her not to wash up. She was supposed to just wait a little bit. However, she wanted it all erased. Now.
And then what? What was to come next?
Jennifer Jo Fay
Copyrighted September 8, 2012
