Book Excerpt Girl Within Girl 2: Healing

Book Excerpt

Chapter 19 - BELINDA

Waking up in hell is a disorienting experience to say the least. My personal hell took the form of drowning in a flood of memories, some of which I wasn't sure were even mine. It was as if I had been asleep all my life, and these horrible images were just dreams. I get the feeling that perhaps I never existed. Or maybe I just don't want to exist, because the only thing I'm certain of is that I want to die. If you could feel the desolation that was sucking me in, this conviction that you are nothing, worth nothing, you would want to end it all too.

How did I wake up?  Like an explosion, like the Big Bang, flinging pieces of me out into an empty space, held together only by a gravity of pure rage. I was naked with a man who was also naked, one of my tormentors from my dreams I assumed. The sex we were having could not have been consensual, but now he was the one in a vulnerable position. Convinced he was an enemy I must destroy, I tried to strangle him. Then he stabbed me with something. After that I retreated back into my netherworld.

When I came to, I was tied to a chair, as if my nightmares had been playing continuously, never to stop: another torture session was to begin. I was lightheaded and I knew they had given me drugs again. I was afraid to open my eyes. I heard a voice; someone wanted to talk to me. I didn't know where I was. "I'm floating...where am I?"

"You're with me, Sean Paisley."

I didn't know any Sean Paisley, but I was sure he was a doctor. "You're a doctor," I told him, daring him to deny it. I still didn't want to open my eyes. He said he was my friend.  "I don't believe you." And what was this friend shit? They always fucking say that. Now, it came back to me - I met this man before, he had taken me captive and stopped me from doing what I had to do. I cursed at him. Fucking bastard, he wanted to know why I wanted to kill myself. "It's over," I told him. Then I repeated a message that used to play in my brain incessantly.  "I wouldn't come back unless it was over. I have to end it."

Then he asked me to trust him. Yeah right, they all ask you to trust them.

"It's time to face all those bad memories, once and for all, and once you do that, you'll be able to function again without having to change into different people who don't have those memories."

"No, I won't. I won't relive them." But the truth was I was always reliving them. I didn't understand what he meant when he talked about changing into different people who don't have those memories. He mentioned women's names, women I seemed to know; said he was their friend, and he wanted to be my friend. "I don't want any friends."

He began telling me a story, about him and these women, but I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying. I felt nauseous, my head was spinning, I just wanted him to shut up and let me go back to sleep.

"Who was Dumpling? Do you know someone called Dumpling?"

A lightning bolt went through my brain, striking a sensitive chord that sent a surge of rage through me. "Fuck you!"

They're doing it again, probing my mind, irritating it, provoking me by bringing up my father. Now he was asking me who called me that, and he damn well knew who called me that.

"My father...my father called me that...low life scum-eating devil." A great grief gouged my heart, an enormous betrayal that consumed all my self-worth. "He took me. Used me for his pleasure. Then he gave me away."

Then the doctor kept mentioning a hospital, and familiar images, grotesque images, zoomed in at me from all directions. I had to tell him the name of the hospital before he would let me go back to sleep; told him of the other images too: the dark rooms, the electricity running through my brain, those fucking helmets...the sleep room...

And I guess I must have fallen asleep again.

It was as if no time had passed before I found myself trussed up again in a chair. That's what these bastards do: let you sleep for a while, then wake you up at irregular hours. Many times they wouldn't even let you sleep. For all I know, I could have been in this chair all night. Who was this man? "Who the fuck are you?" I screamed at him.

He told me his name, which I recognized, and told me he was a doctor, which I knew. Then he mentioned Katrina, who I thought I knew. This was like a recurring nightmare, playing over and over again. "Whose Katrina?"

"Oh, I think you know."

Could Katrina be me? "Is she one of their creations?"

"You could say that. But she's also part of you."

"Why am I tied up?"

"You tried to kill me. I'm afraid of you. If you promise not to attack me, nor do harm to yourself, I'll untie you. Is that a deal?"

I wanted him to untie me, so I had no choice but to agree. Once released, I could look for an opportunity to do what I had to do. "Okay, deal."

He grabbed this iron rod that you use to poke at the fire and pointed it at me. "I mean it, don't do anything foolish" He untied me, moving quickly, keeping as much distance as he could, as if I were a dangerous animal.  He stood up. "I'm Sean Paisley, I'm a psychiatrist and I met Nurse Katrina Slovak while assigned to Gottleib Memorial Hospital. I told you that already, but I'm recapping the story in case it hasn't sunk in yet. Has it sunken in yet?"

"Got it, Doctor."

"That is how you are here with me. Got that too?"

No, no matter how many times we go over this, I'll never get it. "Not exactly, not yet."

"Are you willing to listen?"

Why not? At the least it could buy me some time. "Yes."

He told me this crazy story which, despite the sheer lunacy of it, sounded as if it were not only possible, but actually evoked feelings of recognition, though I still did not fully accept that I was all three women. After that, he tried to tell me that if we worked together I could get out of this mess, but we had to trust each other. There's no way I would trust anybody, ever. But I told him I would trust him. Then he tried to put the moves on me, saying that when I was these other women I had sex with him, so now I finally knew his game. "You touch me and I'll kill you."

Hopefully he got that straight.

Then he tried the soft approach, the good cop role. "Let me make you a cup of hot chocolate. Would you like that?"

Sure, I told him. I saw an opportunity. I no longer had the urge to kill him; killing myself was more important. In my mind, this was an imperative.  I got up with an excuse to assist him. "Go sit down," I told him. "I'll bring us both."

I had been looking at that pointy iron rod for some time now. When he sat down I went for it - I knew it could pierce my neck easily. But he saw me and took hold of my arm.

"No, Belinda, you don't want to do this."

But I did. "Yes, I do."

He wouldn't let me, and I wondered why. He admitted that he loved me, but I knew that was not possible, for he didn't even know me. Still, I thought it was strange that he should say so, because no one else ever did, other than my low life scum-eating father. I began to have second thoughts. "You're a doctor, a good doctor, right?"

"Well, I'm not of those bad ones you met before. I didn't know you then."

"You think that if you did, you would've helped me?"

"I'm certain of that."

And I believed him. Perhaps this was some sort of turning point.

However, it wasn't enough to eradicate the haunting memories and flashbacks that confronted me at any moment that my mind was idle. Too much to bear, to re-experience what I went through...sleep was the only relief.

Time passed, days I estimated. He stopped giving me drugs, and that made things worse... gave my monstrous memories even greater clarity, so that they became alive...happening all over again. But what seemed an endless torment abruptly ceased at the sound of his moaning, which brought me back to where I was: in a cabin in the woods, with a man who claimed to be a doctor, and who was whimpering on the floor in the next room. I thought about the attention he had been giving me over the past few days, and so I felt obligated to find out what was wrong with him. First, I had to get out of these silly little ropes. I could have gotten out of them sooner, right at the beginning of this charade, but I didn't bother too, since the doctor put so much energy in tying them. And I didn't have much motivation. My urge to kill myself and him had waned until it just wasn't worth the effort. Now, however, there seemed to be another reason to free myself.

I knew I had done this before...I was taught this...I don't remember where or when...the knots were tied in an amateurish way, close to where I could access them with my fingers. It didn't take me long to loosen the knots as they were so shoddy, undoing them to the point where I could slip my wrists out. Then I went to the man who was suffering on the floor.

He looked terrible: shivering, sweating, making pitiful sounds. First thing was to get him off the floor. I amazed myself at how easy it was for me to lift him up and carry him to the bed. I ran the taps in the bathtub to make the water not too hot and not too cold in order to balance his internal and external temperature. Not sure where I learned that, but I didn't bother to question it. I put him in the tub and then I rummaged his medical bag till I found something suitable to administer to him. After what I thought was a sufficient amount of time I drained the water and toweled him down, then took him back to the bed. I got a glass of water and handed him the pill.

"Ibuprofen, I got it from your bag. It'll make you feel better, but it won't cure you. You've got what I think is a virus, so you're just going to have to ride it out until your body takes care of itself on its own."

"You're pretty good at taking care of people," He told me.

"Why shouldn't I be? I was a nurse, wasn't I?" I had been, hadn't I? He himself had implied that. "You're going to sleep here tonight. Next to me, where I can keep an eye on you."

I did not miss the fact that taking care of him was somehow therapeutic. It took my mind off my usual morbid thoughts and gave me a feeling of purpose and self-worth at the same time. I lay next to him and looked at him; he had a kind, handsome face. I fell into a peaceful sleep as I pondered that.

About the Book

Title: Girl Within Girl Book 2: Healing
Author: S.P. Aruna
Genre: Erotic Thriller
Trapped in a mountain cabin with three, possible four, women….every guy’s dream, right? Or could it turn out to be a nightmare?
Dr. Sean Paisley needs to find out how to bring these women together – his survival depends on it. To make matters worse, he’s in love with all of them….made passionate love to all of them. Throw in a nasty grizzly bear and the dark forces of the government and the situation becomes even more dire.
In the end, he was stuck with Belinda, a hysterical, suicidal, homicidal maniac of a person, confined together in the wilderness of the onset of winter. Now both their lives are at stake.

Author Bio

I’m a Cambodian woman of mixed blood, married to an aspiring author, and of course he had something to do with my idea to write entertaining fiction. We live in a little green house in the countryside in southern Cambodia. No kids yet, but we’re working on it.
I live on a large plot of land and I enjoy taking care of my trees, plants, and flowers. I also love embroidery, stitching to make beautiful pictures. It’s very meditative for me. And then I frame them and put them all over the walls of my house, which drives my husband crazy.
I’m a newbie when it comes to being an author, but being an avid reader with eclectic tastes (I enjoy reading just about any genre as well as non-fiction) has helped me in my plunge to write commercial fiction. Since I love erotic thriller type films, I decided to write an erotic thriller series. I like the challenge of devising a strong plot to embed my sexy scenes.

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