When the offer of money came, I hardened my expression, replicating the daughter she’d always known to ease her confusion. Then I left. Money is my mother’s answer to everything, hence why I made it a point to never to accept it. Family money came with strings, expectations.

After a failed attempt to connect with my mother, I saw a psychologist in the hopes that, with a vague summary of my circumstance, she could help correct the faulty wiring that Alex had done to my brain.

There were a lot of questions about feelings that, as it turns out when you actually feel them, make you uncomfortable. I canceled the next session.

I wondered if I should go to the police. Make a report on Alex. But really, I didn’t feel traumatized. Was I a victim? My brain was faulty and I was lost—but I had escaped, and there was a body out there that would dredge up more questions than I was prepared to answer.

Useless.

I was wandering the city aimless and confused and utterly useless, and I was starting to become angry. I always had a strategy. I always had a purpose. I had been more than content with my life, and now I was questioning my entire existence.

Then there are the dreams. Or rather, the nightmares. Waking up drenched, heart pounding so hard I’m terrified I’m having a heart attack. Reliving the torture in such vivid clarity, I wake with strands of hair tangled around my fingers from trying to tear the electrodes off my head.

But the nightmares aren’t what frighten me the most.

I’m stirred awake by the memory of Alex’s touch. His intense, pale-blue eyes as he stared into me, as if seeing a part of me I never knew existed. The way the weight of his body on top of mine felt comforting. And when he told me he loved me…the way it tore through my entire being, obliterating the darkness.

I fear him. I fear myself. I fear the emotions he forced on me, and I fear the loss of them.

What I experienced underneath that waterfall grips me nightly, and my hatred for Alex is tied to those indefinable feelings I have for him. Alex is a stain on my soul.

Trying to erase that dark, sordid blemish has only left a hole. There’s an emptiness now, a cavernous chasm where I was torn in half, and I lost some vital piece of myself at that cabin.

I’m frightened I’ll never feel those feelings again with anyone else.

God, the polarizing madness of these thoughts is unbearable. The crushing height of it right there with the depth of this torrid love, this insufferable anguish, that torments me more than any physical pain.

I’m shattering…just like those fucking clocks.