He's a monster

Faith wakes up slowly, her eyes trying to open for periods of longer than a few seconds. She fights to lift her head but it is too heavy.

She feels as if her head is filled with bricks.

She lifts it as far as she can and looks around her. She can see a light all the way in the corner of the room. The light is blurry and she can not make out the exact shape of it. Other than that, the room is dark.

She tries to move her arms and legs. She can't. Not because she is numb or her bones are broken but because they are tied tightly to a chair.

Faith is unable to move any of her limbs very well.

She wiggles her fingers, coming to the conclusion that she is not paralyzed.

She is tied to a wooden chair in the middle of the mostly dark room. There are no windows and only one door, which is locked and only one person has the key.

Calum.

Faith wonders why her memory and vision are so cloudy.

She wonders if she has been drugged.

She was. Calum pulled over in a parking lot after about an hour of driving and shoved a pill down her throat to get her to shut up. She was banging so loud Calum thought someone might actually hear her in his trunk. She fought so hard that Calum had to knock her out in order to get the pill down her throat.

I kept her asleep for a few hours after it kicked in. This made it easy for him to get her out of the car and inside his hideaway. He tied her up in the basement with ease and did not have to worry about her breaking free while he secured the rope around her wrists and ankles.

That would explain why her head is pounding.

She can't remember anything after Brian was shot right in front of her.

Her heart breaks in her chest again as she remembers the sight of watching him die right in front of her. She can still see the look on his face when he fell to the ground next to her.

She will always remember the way his eyes looked at her.

He is gone. He died. She will never get to see him again.

The only boy she ever really loved is both a traitor and dead. She will never get an explanation as to why he did the things he did to her.

She will never know if he really loved her or if it was all an act.

She will never know a lot of things.

Faith takes note of her massive headache and wishes she had access to an aspirin or another type of pill that could help with the pain.

She tries to scream for help but only a tiny whisper is able to escape from her dry throat.

Swallowing is painful. Breathing is painful.
Seeing Calum again is painful. Not seeing Brian again is painful. Everything is painful.

She wishes Calum would just get this done and over with. It's the torture that really kills her. She wouldn't even mind if he just shot her and left her there to die. She just doesn't want to be tortured for weeks again.

She can't go through that again.

She can't withstand that much again.

She can't live though another round of torture.

The first time was terrible but she knows this time could and most likely will be so much worse. She testified against him in court. She told the jury he was a monster, while he sat just a few feet away from her.

*flashback*

"I know this is hard for you, but you need to explain what happened in those long weeks. You need to share every detail with the Jury." Faith's lawyer tells her. He asked the judge for a private meeting with his client. The two of them stepped aside to talk.

Faith is too scared to look Calum in the face. She has been safe for a few months at this point but she still jumps at the slightest sound. She still can't sleep at night. She still can't function.

Faith nods and the two of them walk back to their places.

"Um-" Faith begins, finding her father in the crowd and feeling a sense of relief knowing that he is here with her. "In the beginning it wasn't so bad. I didn't realize I had even been kidnapped until I saw my face on the news." She explains. "It was terrifying. And from that moment on I- he-" Faith stops herself. She can't bear to utter the words.

Her lawyer takes the time to show the Jury pictures of the damage Calum did to her. The slideshow features pictures of the room she was tied up in for several weeks, images of her in the hospital after ensuing over six hours of surgery to remove all of the bullets from her body, and detailed documents of all the bruises and wounds she had on her body.

Faith holds back tears as she watches the slideshow.

Torture is bad enough while it is happening but no one understands that reliving the torture in your head can be just as bad.

"He's a monster." She whispers, just loud enough for the Jury to hear.

*end flashback*

A flood of light causes Faith to squint her eyes shut. She opens them slowly and looks up as high as she can without lifting her head.

"Why hello there dear,"