Forgotten

!Warning Note! This story contains sensitive content. All content warnings are listed in order of severity: Mental/emotional distress, sexual harassment, mild physical violence, very light gore.

It came in with an erratic fading and clamorous ringing. The humid heat of bodies confined to a space far too small. The suffocating scent of smoke and rich tasting food. The tugging of her hand wrapped in another much like hers, but coarse and filthy with what seemed to be years worth of grime. And all the worse, the foul breath of someone whispering in her ear. Yet, the voice of this faceless man didn’t register as she shifted from the pressure of sitting to the weight of standing, and the beginnings of laughter worked to outshine any form of disgust that could arise in the young maiden’s mind. Instead, her belly filled with a sweet tasting amusement, like strawberries covered in chocolate, that warred against her grey hued smile. With a swell of gold tinted devotion and the taste of chocolate strawberries, she fell into the fondness of days almost forgotten, when her elder sister scolded her for playing in the mud when she was too small to do anything but cry. Although, the man she barely felt inclined to acknowledge, left her wistful memories unnoticed and unwanted.

“I thought Dame’s were supposed to be honorable,” the scruffy young man teased, smelling of ale and soot, as he led Eden—tall and adorned in her best dress of yellow and blue as her nostalgia faded into the ache of despondence—out of the lively tavern and away to somewhere hidden. Her hand twitched against his palm with a pallid laugh in response, ignoring the pang that prickled across her heart.

Narrowing and stowed away, damp bricks pressed into her back as her hair caught and tangled against its uneven textures. The sound of drunken sailors and laughing patrons distantly rang in the hollow of her ears, growing louder with the brightening silver hue of the cold moon and the warm glow of freshly lit candles. Shrouded in a darkness so thick and foreboding, she couldn’t see its beautiful refractions from deep within this hidden alley, nor could she be reached by the stretching candlelight that painted the cobbled streets. Her lungs swam and gurgled every time she breathed, filling with the shadows that cloaked her. It stained her from the inside out, like the old and empty jar of ink that her father shattered across his office floor when last they spoke. Amid the struggle of breathing, two arms curved along her waist, flimsy and strong, less than her yet more. They tugged and pulled her, pressed and moved without rhyme or rhythm. His lips pressed against her throat, cold and empty. Greedy and far too close.

What am I doing? Her mind wandered as her eyes fixated on the opposing brick wall, wishing to be anywhere else, wanting for feelings that had waned. For when something sweeter than this was a place to escape, pampered in gentleness and fancied for a fleeting moment. Where the emptiest of intimacies was enough to satiate her need for love, where gifts and flowered words meant nothing, but strove off the woes of her reality with their falsified spring. Yet, their nature had changed, becoming no better than the life she struggled through living. Her escape had become vanity. She was slipping away, becoming someone ghastly. Clothing herself in the grossly fabricated lies so many assumed her to be. In the corner of her eye, she caught sight of her reflection in a puddle at her feet and with each kiss, she was marked filthy. She was everything putrid and ugly. The ink staining her lungs and the bouquet of rust that blossomed along her ivory ribcage, pulled her further and further away from the beauty she needed to be. Shifting her foot ever so slightly, a tumult of ripples disturbed the puddle's surface. It splashed droplets of mud and sediment onto her boot, dispersing the disgust of her image as she burrowed her face into the slimy shoulder that failed to comfort her, utterly sickened by the loathsome person she was becoming. Finally understanding why she was so viscerally disappointing. Her innards painted in hues of orange and black, mixed with a sickening twist of yellow and green, her stomach knotted with each lifeless touch of his tenacious hands. Years of well-earned strength weakened as she tried to push away her suddenly unwanted companion, desiring to be free from the ugliness of herself and the man who enabled her descent into depravity.

Panic poked at the tips of her fingers, and her racing heart drummed against its brittle cage with a heavy drawling. Her mouth gaped with the intent to scream. To wail out her sorrows and bitter rebellion. To curse herself and ever ask why her beloved sister had so curly left her with this wanting, but her voice was stillborn. Vanishing before life could touch her. Stolen before she could be given, as another scatter of icy kisses smeared across her clammy skin. With weak fists and palms, she berated his back and shoulders, only to receive the firmness of his chilled embrace. Tears, tepid and heavy, rolled down her face, salting her tongue and blurring her vision. His arms curled around her frame, digging into her and cutting off circulation like a budding flower stifled by an endless maze of briers. Blind and starving for sunlight, she began to wither in his hold. Quiet sobs slowed her frenzied blows, dying her in hues of blue as a deep rumbling rolled under her feet. Hiccuping in a rush of air, an alarming shock of electricity hovered over her skin, the hairs on her arms standing on end. It buzzed along her spine and rang in her ears as she blinked away tears. The taste of iron sprawled across her tongue, drying her mouth with a sharp smiting. Dragging her eyes open and pulling her head up from his frosty shoulder, she looked at the man that now took the opportunity to kiss the edges of her mouth, finding something vile and predatory glinting in his eyes. Eden read each unuttered thought that played in his kisses and restless hands, bile burning in her throat, and her vision clouded with more than remnant tears. An animalistic ache for the hilt of her sword or the blade hidden beneath her bed filled her shaking hands, as she chastised herself for leaving them at home. His filth hung in the squeeze present on the soft tissue of her shoulders, and hummed with his pulse. Like a snake in the grass, his endearments, disguised as a life-saving oasis, were now exposed as venomous, and Eden balanced on the precipice of being bitten.

“You’re lovely,” the nameless man whispered against her skin, sending goosebumps across her body as she flinched at the resonantly blatant lie that tried to soothe her unease. She wasn’t lovely and neither was he. They were two ugly, parasitic little things that killed each other slowly. “Lovely..” he repeated, giving her every reason to scream without the express freedom to do so, when the rhythmic padding of boots against uneven cobblestones caught her attention.

A shivering breath filled her ink stained lungs with the dewy evening air, causing the ink to run down into the pit of her stomach after leaving dark splotches on her heart. She whipped her head towards the alleyways entrance, but more so towards the hidden end of the street where the sound she knew in soul and body approached. The golden hue of the tavern's candles and the cold moon that would mark her lonely, enticed her into a state of desperate begging and pleading for anything was better than the filth that ruined her painfully empty body. The padding drew closer, a saving grace amid whispered lies and the laughter of sailors that ignored her plight. The swaying of a handheld lantern brightened the moonlit street and began to mingle with the tavern’s warmth, burning Eden’s dim-set eyes and filling her with a stir of courage.

“H.. Help,” she said with all the strength she could muster, her voice weak and shaky, seeming almost foreign to her. But, to her relief, it was enough to stop the duty bound being as his lantern and glittering armor, like a heavenly savior, came into view.

Looking into the alley, with purpose and meaning, his soft glowing light shyly met the shadows that ensnared Eden’s body. “Is someone down there?” he called out, assured and authoritative, halting the hands and lips that left her frigid.

“Shh,” the weak fitted man huffed into her ear, “he’ll be gone soon.” His arms pulled her into his bony chest, marking her with the early signs of frostbite and drawing the moment into an unbearable pause.

There was shivering and the chattering of her teeth. Her skin burned and his stench began to overpower the jasmine of her perfume. The knight took a half-step forward, his light so close to banishing the shadows, when a loud clattering caught him by the ear as two large burly looking men stumbled out of the tavern with slurred yelling. Looking towards the commotion the knight began to turn with a light sigh, filling Eden with ants of fire. They scurried across her insides and crowded her heart, no, please, she thought, feeling as the cowardly man relaxed against her.

Staring at the strong back that began to recede, she swallowed the fear and panic that lodged in her throat, and shouted out, “I’m here!”

In a moment far too brief, a slimy hand clapped over her mouth, slamming her head into the rough textured bricks, the explosive pressure cutting her bottom lip on her teeth. A rush of anger, like a whirlwind, blasted through her chest and blistered her insides. With the need to release, she opened wide and bit into the flesh of his hand, his skin snapping against her canines with ease. The bitter taste of soot and the metallic sting of iron flooded her mouth, causing the man to yelp out, like a wounded pup, and release her as he barreled back towards the opposing brick wall. Reacting before registering, the knight and his golden lantern turned around, approaching with a practiced speed. The lantern whined and swung, before it was discarded at Eden’s feet with a shockingly loud clattering, even as it splashed in the puddle that reflected the parts of her that were unsightly. Its soft glow chased away the shadows and glittered off her skin despite how she shrank under the knight’s intensity, while mud and sediment splashed onto the hem of her dress.

The knight’s weathered eyes looked her over from head to toe, still aglow with the saving color of gold, but finding nothing of immediate concern, drifted to look her in the eyes with a question resting in the calm of his amber. “Are you alright?” he said, much softer and attentive, before taking the place between her and the man that cradled his hand, his thinly veiled predatory now plain for all to see.

“Y-yes..” Eden breathed as the stickiness of guilt that clung to the webs of her fingers, like dried blood, and the mud of shame that soaked into the hem of her dress began to set in, hindering her from looking him in the eye.