A Living Hell

A Sierra, Ryan, and James Fiction

Based on the characters created by Scott Fellows and Madison H.P.

Summary: "I still had my hand on my eye, and it was soaked in a thick coating of blood... And my hair was all crusted over in dried blood and vomit..." He did this to me... That bastard...

Genre(s): Angst/Crime (?)/Family/Hurt/Comfort/Mild Friendship

Ages: Sierra: 16

Ryan: 18

James: 17

Rating: M

Warning(s): Language; Violence; Gore (Some pretty gross visuals in this one.); Alcohol abuse; Sexual reference(s)/Scene(s)

See Chapter(s): "Lost"

Ah... This is quite... Different... From the first one. … Here, we introduce another important character in this... Ryan. In the summary, is she referring to James or Ryan? I don't know. Read. Find out.

Oh, and before you read this one, I am perfectly aware of all the punctuation "mistakes" in this. They were done purposely, to try and get something across.

P.S. This is less (more?) than half the length of the first one, so... Yeah. And, the lyrics below; I am perfectly aware they are not in the correct order, in relation to the whole song, but I didn't deem it wort it to type the whole song for the two lines that actually pertain to this story.

"If you only knew; I'm hanging by a thread the web I spin for you...

If you only knew; How I refuse to let you go even when you're gone..."

– "If You Only Knew" by Shinedown

Sierra's Perspective

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. "RYAN! I SWEAR TO GOD! IF YOU DON'T UNLOCK THIS DAMN DOOR!" I kicked at the door.

He'd locked me in the closet. This had been the third that week he'd done it.

Let me tell you something right now: Ryan was real sweet when I first met him and "fell in love" with him. He took me places, paid for my dinners, been a real gentlemen, holding doors open for me, and stuff, and he always told me how beautiful and sweet I was. He'd been real selfless and... Well, sweet.

But then his mom died... And he was depressed for several weeks. And you know, when you love someone, you're supposed to stick with them through thick and thin, right?

And then-then the boy came across his first bottle of beer... And. He. Was. Never. The same. He'd drink ANYTHING alcoholic, whether it'd be beer, or vodka, or liquor... Anything he could find to get himself wasted, stumbling over himself, mumbling incoherently, waking up in his own bile...

I don't think there had been a day since his first bottle of beer where Ryan hadn't either been completely wasted or hungover... And you think that's bad? Try a combination of both...

… And he took. My phone. Before locking me in here. So could I call my mom and dad to come save me from this living hell? NO!

"RYAN!" I shouted, kicking at the door even harder than the first time.

"SHUT UP, BITCH!" Ryan's voice shouted from the other side.

I screamed at him. Didn't say anything, just screamed. I pounded the door with my feet again.

"I SAID TO SHUT UP!"

I growled, willing myself to give it a rest for a moment...

Huh... You want to know something else? James would have NEVER done anything like this to me! Wait, wait... Wait just one moment...

WHY. DOES MY MIND. ALWAYS GO BACK TO JAMES? He was GONE! All because of some stupid accident, and his bitch of a mother who took him from me. MAYBE. IF THAT HADN'T EVER HAPPENED. I WOULDN'T BE IN THIS MESS RIGHT NOW! But there was nothing either of us could do about it... So, when he hurt me, it wasn't. His. Fault.

Ryan, on the other hand... Yeah, yeah... EVERYTHING that had been happening to me then was HIS fault. It was HIS fault for the bruises that covered my whole body, forcing me to wear pants and long-sleeved shirts everywhere and at all times. It was HIS fault for the fact that I was locked up in a closet, with no way to get help, given anything happened to me. It was HIS fault for even my fucking state of mind right now.

And I was going to die in here. Alone. And no one would know until they came across my rotting remains that would become the source of the rancid smell of death.

And James... He wouldn't even know, and he wanted me to have a happy life. WHY COULDN'T I GET JAMES OUT OF MY HEAD?

"MAKE IT STOP!" I cried at the top of my lungs, tears pouring down my cheeks.

I was going insane... I could feel my mentality slipping away...

Suddenly the door to the closet swung open, the light burning my eyes...

And there HE. Stood. The devil. In a black-haired-blue-eyed disguise. HE. Took the half-full vodka bottle in his hand and swung it at my head, shattering it, and soaking my hair and face in the horrible liquid that was now controlling the THING. That controlled ME.

Has anyone ever told you how much alcohol BURNS?

I screamed as it seeped into my eyes, squeezing them shut, trying to wash it all out by crying...

"I said shut up, bitch!"

I groaned.

"ANSWER ME!"

"I'll be quiet...," I said, in a whisper.

Could he just leave me alone? One guess: NO. Instead of locking me back up, he grabbed the bottom piece of the bottle, which was broken off, but still in tact, and shoved the jagged pieces in my face.

I screamed. How could he not expect me to scream?...

My eye, my eye... It was stabbing my eye...

"STOP IT!" I screamed.

He pulled it away, which made my face sting even more. I grasped my bleeding eye with my hand. I couldn't see out of it...

I longed for all this to be over with already...

But, nooo... I can't just have one thing go right for me. Instead of leaving me be in my own blood and sweat, he got down on me...

And ripped my clothes off...

And he... He took off his, too...

"No," I cried quietly. "I don't want to..." I was still a virgin, and I didn't want anything to happen to me... "No, please..." But my efforts were futile.

"Who cares if YOU want to?" he half-growled, half-laughed at me. "You're going to die anyway..." That bitter smell of alcohol and vomit made me want to puke.

… And he raped me. And it hurt... I don't even know how long he did it, but it hurt. I mean, my body was already bruised. I didn't need some 200 pound guy pushing on it.

But I couldn't fight him. He was too strong. And I was too weak. So what was the point? Too kill me even faster?

Eventually, he was satisfied. He got up, and left, locking the door again. And this time, he took my clothes and my phone.

And I was cold. There was a horrible draft on the hardwood floors in the Canadian winter...

(My family had moved to Canada when I was 13. Something about my dad's job...)

I felt around... Maybe there was a blanket or something I could wrap up in.

And guess what? After all THIS, I finally got a lucky break. There was a fur blanket in there, and I wrapped up in the warm furry side. I curled up into a shivering, shaking... bloody and battered ball...

I threw up several times before the night was over... I was crying so hard. And I didn't even know what time it was... I could have been in here for two days, and I wouldn't have even known...

The night slowly, slowly... Ever so slowly... Slipped by...

I drifted into some quite uneasy slumbers once or twice... Maybe three times... They were short, though... Like trying to sleep on top of a 104 degree fever...

But while I was asleep, and I find this very ironic, I didn't have nightmares of drunk dudes with glass bottles...

I dreamed of James. I dreamed of that time we were playing hide-and-seek in a sunflower field that we went to the year I was 5 and he was 6. I dreamed of one time, when we were about 9, when we cannon-balled into Lake Superior. I dreamed of that time, when I was 11, and he was 12... We sung to each other in the woods...

It's bad when you want to fall asleep and dream just so you can escape the living world...

I sat there, awake, after my last dream. I wasn't crying anymore. I'd given that up. It was making me feel even worse.

But then I heard someone outside... Oh-no... He'd come back...

But wait... That was a woman's voice... I pressed my ear to the door. (Yes, still grasping my bad eye, though it wasn't bleeding anymore...)

"Sierra?"

"Sierra, honey, where are you?"

"Are you in here?"

It was my mom and dad, and I literally cried from joy.

I thumped the door a few times to let them know I was in there.

And a few seconds later, the door opened. Slowly, hesitantly... Like they were afraid of what they would find, and of course, they should have been.

The longest two seconds of my life.

And my mom screamed. "Roger, call 9-1-1! Now!"

My hand had a thick layer of dried blood on it from my eye, and my hair must have been caked with vomit and blood, but my mom pulled me into a teary embrace nonetheless.

I survived my ordeal, thankfully. But I was blind, permanently, out of my right eye, the one that was stabbed. And I met new friends, and had an overall happy life after this, give or take a few times when... HE. Would show up again...

But at that moment, I was still scared. And I felt like there were only three people in the world who cared about me. There was my mom, Kayla, who was hugging me, and crying for me, and saying how sorry she was, but for what, I didn't know. And there was my dad, Roger, who was yelling and cursing, red from anger, at the operator to get an ambulance and police down there. And there was James, who, though wasn't here now, I knew would be by my side as fast as possible, if only he knew...

And it was at that moment, that, as soon as I could, I needed to leave this place. For a good while, anyway. I was almost 17. I had my life's savings, and my driver's license. I could escape this place... And be free...

I could go to Minnesota, and find James. I could go to New York, or Miami, or Vegas... You know, those places they always talk about being the best places for fun, and adventure, and excitement...

Or, I could go to LA-Los Angeles. Hollywood. And follow my dreams of becoming a singer.

But first, I'd have to plan this out...

I was on the stretcher now, and my my mom was there, holding my hand, still mumbling that she was so, so sorry for something that wasn't her fault. All the while the doctors were checking me out, finding out exactly what was wrong with me. Monitoring everything.

And I'd have to do this secretly... I'd have to lie to my parents... Not just little lies, either. Big lies. The kind that you don't forgive people for... And that was the scariest part of my plan...

We were moving then... To go to the hospital.

And I'd have to, have to, find James...

To let him know how I feel about him, that I couldn't ever forget him, and that it was driving me insane. To tell him my idea, to follow our dreams...

Yeah, that would be nice... I was in a day-dreamy state now... Not hearing anything but my thoughts. Me and James, singing together... Making a living from it... Spending the rest of our lives together...

And on that happy, last note, I fell asleep on the stretcher. … If only he knew.

Was that angsty enough for you? Sorry for that sudden close there, I couldn't think of anything else... I think you were able to figure out the summary-You know, who Sierra was referring to, by the very first lines... And I thought I was going to write something from James's perspective before this was over, but THAT, I decided, is another story, but based entirely off this one. Please review! And thank you for reading!