REWRITTEN
The date was November sixteenth, nineteen sixty three and time crept towards the last hour of Violet's shift.
Elaina exited the back room, hurriedly shrugging her coat on and looking out at the few people left eating their food in the diner.
Violet was wiping down the counter and planned to do the other tables when she heard her quick heels tapping on the floor and looked up.
"Violet, can you pick up that delivery from the store downtown before it closes? I've gotta head out early, my sister got her car towed and now I've gotta take her home."
Elaina untucked her hair from her coat collar and winced hesitantly.
Violet nodded, glancing over at the clock. She didn't mind at all.
She sighed in relief. "You're an angel - thank you. Make sure you lock up before and after you get back, yeah?"
She nodded and gave a little wave as the older woman left through the glass door, flipping her hood up as she swiftly made it across the parking lot to her car in the pouring rain.
It was getting near eleven o'clock and the store across town closed at midnight. The diner technically closed at half eleven, which would give her half an hour to make the twenty minute bike ride, but as she looked out across the near empty diner she figured she might be able to shut the place a little early.
A sweet pair of old ladies sat finishing their slices of cherry pies, still hooked in idle conversation over a newspaper between them.
A balding man with reddish hair sat finishing his coffee and doughnut, his hat set beside his plate and tie loose.
A quiet teenage girl who'd sat in a corner booth with some books spread out began packing away her things as Violet wiped down the counter. As she left, the girl tucked her hood over her head and sent a sweet smile at Violet who returned it as she left and waved.
Violet went to clear up what she'd left, collecting the two glasses and the plate that she remembered had pancakes and syrup on it. Thankfully, the girl had put everything to the edge of the table neatly so she could collect it, which was rare for most customers unless they were regulars.
She walked back, deposited the stuff next to the filled sink in the kitchen out back and when she returned to the front, the two old ladies were putting on their coats and bringing out their umbrellas. They left, and all who remained was the tired looking banker who always ended up being the last to leave on a Friday night.
Violet wiped down more tables, taking her time, silently urging the man to hurry up with his coffee so she could get across town quick enough before the store closed.
She knew his name was Gerald, but could never jokingly hurry him along like the Nuan or Caroline could of an evening.
She didn't have the charm for that.
At 11:32 Gerald finally stood and tucked his stool in, draining the last of his mug.
Violet walked over, trying not to look to eager to see him go. She rounded the counter casually and he checked the watch on his wrist, grimacing.
"Shoot, I'm sorry, I didn't notice the time," he apologised, placing his hat on his head. She shrugged lightly at him to signify it was okay. "My wife's gonna kill me. Say, I know you're technically closed, but could I maybe take one of those strawberry shortcake donuts to go? It might just save my life."
Violet noted he was ready getting the change out for it so complied, placing the pastry in the bag and folding the top down to pass it to him. He bowed his head in thanks and tucked the bag inside his jacket.
"Thank you," he nodded. "I'll get out of your hair now. You may not say it but I know I'm being a nuisance."
He chuckled a bit to himself and she chewed the inside of her cheek as he waved and left. She shook her head in amusement and wondered if that donut really was for his wife or if he'd secretly end up eating it in his car on the way home. Then again if he did, she'd probably never see him again as she was sure his wife meant serious business.
Violet cleared away everything and wiped over the spot he'd been sat at on the counter before chucking the rag behind the bar and heading off to the store room quickly.
She quickly used the bathroom before tucking the wad of keys in front pocket of the dress she had grown to like over time; their uniform was a blue colour with pink sleeve ends and collar, buttons going all the way up the front. (It was the pockets that really enticed her, because even in twenty nineteen half of women's clothes didn't have proper pockets.)
She tucked her hair behind her ears and left through the back door, locking it behind her. Her bike was resting against the wall under the little bit of shelter above the doorway, thankfully. It had stopped raining by now, but the bike would have been wet if not for it, and Elain would only chastise her if she let the chains rust.
She wheeled it out until she got to the parking lot and swung her leg over, brushing her skirt down before pedalling off.
There was something rather enticing about riding a bike out at this time of night - stores were beginning to close, people were mostly at home by now save for the night owls and party goers, and all that lit up the streets were flickering neon signs and street lamps.
The colourful light sent ripples across the wet road and mesmerised her as she made her travels, not at all bothered by the little chill in the air left over from the storm they'd gotten.
The roads were practically empty, save for the few leaving late from work to return home, so she had freedom to ride wherever she wanted. Still, she stuck to the right side for sensibility, although a small part of her wanted to wind in and out of the middle just for the fun of having all that space.
A couple of bars were open and pumping music out into the street, a couple of drunk partying teenagers leaning against eachother and laughing the night away catching her idle eye.
The next couple of streets she turned on however were almost dead quiet, most of the establishments like libraries and leisure centres early closers. By her count, Violet was just halfway there, passing by the big park when she noticed a shadowed figure leant against the back of his dark blue chevrolet.
The tall male was lit up by the blur of his cigarette smoke and the faint glow in front of his face, but as she focussed on taking the winding path past him towards the entrance of the park, it became just a blur in her peripheral.
The path through the park was a short cut that Nuan had told her about, one she'd started taking a month into collecting their deliveries. The park was a huge expanse of grass split by a range of footpaths that walkers could take, the left forking off to a dog park fenced off, the right leading towards a little play area at the top of a little hill. If you cut through the middle, it'd mean she didn't have to go the mile or so around the outside of the park.
Violet was so focussed on pedalling as she passed through the wedged open gate that she almost jumped in fright when a voice called out to her.
"Hey, I think you dropped something!"
Violet slowed, glancing over her shoulder towards the man who'd been smoking now standing in the pathway shed just ridden through. Her hand went to her front pocket, but she felt the weight of her keys still against her and was about to frown - thinking he must have been talking to someone else or had made some mistake - before she heard a scuffle of a shoe against concrete to her right.
(Tw for the below - SA implied)
She snapped her head round at the noise, heart leaping into her throat before a dark figure grabbed her. A scream caught at her throat as strong arms ripped her away from the bike off to the side quicker than she could grab the handlebars again. She frantically fought against the mans hold, surprising him at first as she landed on her knee but he wrenched her with him by her elbow, his other arm circling around her midsection like a snake lashing out. She felt the sting of concrete across her shins and knees as she was dragged further away from the path.
Her elbow swung back against something hard before she was dropped, barely able to catch herself. She landed on damp grass before something hard struck her skull, knocking her down, and the world around her went dark.
As time passed strangely, things came to her in waves that threatened to destroy her completely.
Faintly she became aware of the sound of an engine in her ears just barely past the ringing shattering her skull. Painstakingly slowly, her awareness came back, both a blessing and a curse as the pain in her skull subsided. The pain across her body, however, was suddenly very present, in some awful, aching, twisting way that she couldn't decipher.
Her eyes blearily locked above her on the raindrops running down the window, catching a glimpse of the pitch black sky. There was no glimmer of street lights or life around them, and each breath became suffocatingly sharp with the pressure against her chest.
The weight above her that felt like a death sentence. Her mind was slowly sent reeling as pure panic crawled it's way up her spine, choking her.
As the strength came back to her body, her thoughts collected in one frantic bottleneck like a train screeching across tracks, sparks flying, metal scraping - she immediately tried to push the person off of her and turn her head away with a noise of distress barely escaping her throat.
There was the sound of faint laughing in her ear, a voice lowly speaking up from the drivers seat, and it barely registered in her head as she tasted copper on her tongue that they had stopped moving.
Nausea rose at the scent of his acrid cologne, the sensation of him on her, the realisation that there was someone touching her and she couldn't get up - Violet locked eyes with the man from the diner, the one who had given her the most grief.
The engine was still rumbling despite their lack of movement, and no sound she made would break through that barrier.
There was a click from the front seat, and a tiny illumination of light behind his face looming in her blurry vision.
"Tell me to stop."
The voice above her sent chills down her spine, his breath fanning across her neck as she writhed. A noise of distress tore from her throat that became a choked whimper as his fingers dug into her neck like a vice, cutting off her airway. Her hands shot up to claw at his wrist, to shove at his shoulder to get him off of her, to release the pressure. She tried kicking up with her knees, heart pounding at her temples as disgust and panic filled her, but his weight was too heavy on her, pinning her against the back seats.
"Stop playing with your food," a calm, stoic voice came from the drivers seat.
The man leant back slightly, giving her view of the back of the other man's head, hand raising languidly to raise his cigarette to his mouth.
She knew the voice. The law student.
Violet rasped for breath, nails digging in as hard as she could, prising like claws at his hand at the base of her throat until he let off on some of the pressure.
Tears rolled down the sides of her face into her hair as she fought to catch her breath, but she felt his other hand lower to the side of her dress and the word stop died on her tongue, tears blurring her vision and darkening the figure above her.
"Do you think she even speaks English?" His voice mingled with the ringing in her ears.
"I don't really care." Said the voice from the front, his eyes still fixed forwards.
Her body was wracked with silent sobs that he ignored, and all she knew was that she needed the touch gone. She needed him off of her before she broke, before something in her mind shattered. She was drowning in panic, the waves hitting the rocks and dragging her under.
She couldn't use her powers to cloak and get away because all she could think was he's touching her and he won't stop, and she can't get him off-
Violet turned against his body, pressing her cheek against the seat to put any semblance of distance between them where she could. As she did, something sharp dug into her hip, and she felt her heart leap into her throat. Her hand wound down to her pocket where she shakily slid her set of keys out, covering them with her fingers and shielding them from view against the seat.
It took a moment for her to gather the will, but as his hot breath lifted from her neck, she lashed out, clawing the keys across his face as hard as she could muster.
She heard his hiss and the second he leant back to clutch his face, Violet shoved him back against the opposite door, kicking out at him. Her other hand fumbled for a second before grasping the door handle being her.
The scent of cigarette smoke cleared as she practically fell from the car onto the damp grass below. She scrambled around onto her hands and knees to push herself forward but he was on her within seconds.
He grabbed the back of her already torn dress as a sharp pain tore through her side, nearly sending her to the floor. She glanced a flash of a knife before she dug her fingers into the dirt and threw it back in his face with a scream.
She fell back as he released her. He caught himself on the edge of the seat, hand shooting up to cover his dirty, bloody face with a groan.
She kicked the open door shut against him with all her pent up fury.
It struck him hard and she heard him shout a slew of swears, but she didn't wait to see if she'd hit him hard enough before scrambling onto one knee and dragging herself up so she could break into a run.
Her hands shot to her side immediately where the tiny, cold handle of a pocket knife stuck out of her skin. She pressed against it and faltered, struggling to keep herself going with each bound sending shockwaves through her torso.
Her breaths came out in short gasps as she pushed away from the still running vehicle, leg muscles burning, sneakers nearly slipping on the wet grass.
Tears blurred her vision as she realised they were still in the park, but a part she was unfamiliar with, or at least at first glance without the help of daylight.
Violet just tried to run, stumbling and gasping in agony until she reached a path and pushed herself on to follow it until she saw a gate at the other side, her heart and body feeling as though it were going to give out at once.
Warmth spilled through her fingers clutched around the knife still in her.
As she reached the open gate, she glanced behind her just for a second, but she could no longer hear the running engine of the car, nor could she see any headlights.
Adrenaline pumped through her, managing to keep her upright, and she forced her aching legs on towards street lamps and away from the main road, terror clutching at her chest at the thought of them following her.
Confusion and turmoil threatened to drown her. The agony mixed with her tears and her trembling body, and the panic, the terror, it twisted inside of her like a roiling tornado, somehow forcing her onwards.
She couldn"t allow herself to heal unless she was safe. She had to move. Had to get away.
Safe. Safe safe safe where was safe which way did she turn which road should she take-
She took a sharp turn down an alley she blearily thought she recognised, and when she caught sight of the old bowling alley she at least knew she was heading in the right direction.
She stumbled through all the plausible shortcuts cuts she knew, ones that one would have to take on foot, leaving their car behind. Risky, but she'd face whatever was in those alleys than what had just happened.
She brought her hand up to her face, choking on a sob that nearly had her hunching over in agony.
She didnt know where her bike was or what time it was or which roads she had taken to even get to the park.
Her body was screaming for her to stop and now the tears were because of the pain she was putting herself through, straining under the pressure of keeping herself moving.
But she couldn't stop.
Now she was moving unsteadily slow, bleeding, barely able to see straight or catch her breath until she got to a different alleyway. It was wider and empty, leading to the back of a radio and television store - the same one she had been dropped in almost a year ago.
Why did she end up there now?
Violet couldn't come up with any coherent thought.
The diner was too close to where it happened, she didn't trust them to not be still chasing her. She had no friends to go to, no family. She couldn't ever explain what had happened if she went back to Elain, not with words, and certainly not in any way that would make it okay.
And it had all brought her back to this alleyway off of Commerce and Knox because it was the first thing her mind jumped to when the world washed away with panic.
Maybe it was a twisted way of being closer to everything she had lost.
Violet turned quickly into it and practically collapsed, her body giving up on her.
The panic meant she couldn't heal, couldn't fix it-
The girl landed on her hands and knees, gasping for breath between her crying, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.
She felt disgusting, like the ground could swallow her whole and she would reach for it with steady hands and let herself fall into it.
Her arms shuddered, holding herself up more difficult with the weight of a thousand hands clawing at her skin. They scalded like boiling water.
Violet had no concept of time passing before the sound of an engine snapped her out of her trance.
Terror clawed its way up her throat, just as his hands had done, and she jolted upwards. Shoved herself up on shaky knees, cradling the pocket knife still stuck in her side. Every step was like lightning shooting through her body. Even in the dark she could see her shins and knees scraped black with blood.
It was everywhere.
She tasted it.
She quickly tucked herself behind an alcove built into the wall, hidden by the lack of lighting, her heart racing.
The headlights slowly turned into the alley.
Violet covered her mouth with her free hand, pressing so hard against the alcove that she wished to disappear through it, but nothing was working and it made her want to tear her hair out in frustration.
Just as she thought the headlights might reach her, the engine shut off and so did the light.
Two car doors slammed shut one after the other and she flinched hard, breath catching in her throat.
Her eyes closed, just wanting to disappear.
Then she heard a woman start speaking, not a man, and didn't recognise the British accent as one she'd heard before.
"You're no fun, Diego."
Violet's eyes snapped open, fixating on the pitch black wall in front of her.
For a brief second she wondered if she had imaged it. Was she delirious? Was this what it felt like? She'd lost enough blood, she didn't feel coherent, didn't feel right - it had to be a trick of her imagination teasing her at her worst.
But the unamused voice that followed stuck a chord within her.
"That car had a smashed window and was probably reported missing by now. Excuse me for wanting us to change it so we don't get arrested!"
Why couldn't she bring herself to step forwards?
She watched two figures shrouded in darkness head for the back door of the store.
The male had longer hair than the Diego she knew, but she knew it was her brother the moment he had spoken, able to recognise his voice anywhere.
Her hand lowered from her mouth but no sound came out.
She watched them step inside, too quick for her, her brother holding the door open for the woman. The door began to close behind them and she forced herself forwards.
Violet took a weak step away from the wall before her legs gave out, the only sound leaving her being a sharp inhale.
"What was that?" The british woman whispered.
The door opened quickly and Diego cautiously stepped out, the woman peering over his shoulder curiously, both prepared for something worse than the little girl barely holding herself together on the floor.
Violet could barely lift her head.
There was silence for a moment before Diego stepped forwards to get a better look and she flinched back, eyes wide like a doe's, but unfocused.
"Violet?"
He made movement to rush forward and his arms went to help her up, but the girl fell back on her arms with a noise of distress, shying away, revealing her scraped up knees and what a bloody mess she was in.
The flurry of emotions his expression went through was rapid, and he couldn't seem to settle on one, but the sight of the blood was enough to have him angry. His mind raced.
"Can you walk?" He asked quickly.
She nodded without really thinking if she could or not.
"Okay, let's get you inside."
He could do nothing but watch as she used the trunk of the car to drag herself to a stand, arm reached out for her to take just knowing she would not take his help even if she was dying.
"Am I missing something?" The woman asked, confused and slightly concerned.
"She's my sister." His voice wavered. Anger, or pain, she couldn't quite tell.
Violet followed the two into the stairwell keeping as much distance between them and herself as possible, practically pressing against the railing. She gripped it with her good hand, dragging one leg after the other up onto the steps.
It was killing Diego to see her struggle so much and not be able to do anything about it. He hovered beside her with a hand out behind her back just in case.
"Will you please just let me help you?" He begged, trying to get a good look at her condition in the dim stairwell lighting, knowing it was bad but not quite how bad.
She gave him a sharp look from the side and stumbled almost quicker up the next couple of steps to put distance between them, as though scared he would.
"Don't!" She snapped shakily, ducking her head down in shame as her voice echoed and they were left in silence.
Diego stared at her for a moment, conflicted, his heart wrenching at just hearing her strained voice. He rushed forwards at the top of the stairs and opened the door, ushering her inside with Lila slowly following.
When the light turned on, Violet ducked her head down and sheilded her eyes as it burned.
"Holy shit, how are you even standing?" The woman asked, scanning her up and down.
The blood staining the side of her torn blue dress became all too evident. She practically hunched over her right side, pressing a hand over all of the blood.
Diego went into protective older brother mode instantly. "Who did this? What the hell happened?"
He tried to avoid glancing at her top section as her torn dress revealed a blood splattered bra, and bruised skin.
"Is that a knife?" The woman asked, furrowing her eyebrows.
She stood there, not answering, in a daze, just trying to answer their questions inside her own head first to rationalise what was going on, trying to keep herself tethered to some semblance of reality.
"Violet!"
Something in her blank expression switched.
"Don't- don't raise your voice at me!" She span, not raising her eyes to look at him but bristling like an alley cat about to strike.
His mouth snapped shut immediately and he looked down at her in shock.
"I haven't heard you speak in years and that's what I get?" He muttered distantly to himself. He didnt even know how he could ask himself that with the state she was in. It was like he was in shock purely from seeing her in front of him, much less so traumatised.
"Shouldn't have to tell you..." she murmured, her head turning to the left, running a hand across hef eyes to dry them.
She went to continue through the kitchen to the living room area, droplets of blood following behind her in a trail, not really knowing where she was going.
The two adults quickly followed her, hovering, not knowing what to do.
"Maybe you should sit down..." the woman suggested.
Violet swallowed, hesitating. Just standing she could feel all sorts of pain, a deep twisting sort that wasn't from the knife, and if she focussed on it - on the ghost-like feeling of fingers pressing into her neck, on the bruises across her body, her legs - she scanned the apartment, trying to keep herself awake, trying to keep herself from spiralling further into this pit she had dug for herself.
Everything felt wrong. Her skin, her clothes, the blood, the pain-
"Violet, who did this to you?" Diego demanded in a low voice.
She pressed her lips into a thin line, closing her eyes, trying to keep herself together.
"Why haven't you started healing yourself?" He asked seriously. "What's wrong?"
Everything. she wanted to scream.
She looked down at herself, stumbling back against the back of the couch. Her hands shook, slick with blood over her side. She moved her fingers aside to reveal the small blade handle sticking out from her stained dress.
He paled at the sight.
"Shit."
She stared blearily at her brother and wrapped her good fingers around the handle of the pocket knife and squared her jaw before quickly and suddenly yanking it out.
Lila's hands shot to her mouth. "Oh my God-"
"-okay, you didn't have to..." Diego grimaced, looking away uncomfortably.
Blood spilled out from the wound down her clothes, staining her blue skirt. She dropped the blade away carelessly, letting out a shaky breath before her legs gave out and she collapsed in a heap on the floor.
"Oh, Fuck!"
"Shit."
Violet's vision swam as she turned her head to look up at the blurry faces above her. But this time she welcomed the darkness with open arms and growing relief.