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  VICTIMA

  Copyright © 2018 by K. R. Leikvoll

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  rev. date 7/22/2018

  by

  K. R. Leikvoll

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements:

  As a thank you for all of the wonderful help, I would like to acknowledge Alena Zhukova, Alin Silverwood, Miranda Mayer, Rain Stickland, and Shéa MacLeod.

  For Isabella and Dylan, there are not enough words in the world to describe my love for you.

  "It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles— then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or demons, heaven or hell"

  — Buddhist proverb.

  Chapter One

  It was an incredibly average day. Well at least to me it was. Some people might have called it a "beautiful" day, but it wasn't. The sun, uncovered by the usual rainclouds, was beating down on my face making it hard to focus. My college class was mostly silent, working diligently on a test. The constant tap tap tap of their pens was irritating. The mutters from the meatheads on our football team only added to the difficult task of remembering an impossible number of formulas. Their voices were a low, annoying hum.

  "That girl? The crazy one?"

  I knew they were talking about me. I didn't need to look back to confirm it. That had been my nickname since I entered the school system. The insults seemed to carry from high school to college, even though I didn't know half the people there. Maybe it was the aura of awkwardness I emanated. Maybe it was from the few years I had to spend in a mental hospital. I didn't care either way. Their taunts were always enough to get to me. I put my half-finished test on my professor's desk and dipped out.

  The sun was even more blinding as I began my long walk home. I wanted to cry, but I kept it in. Bullying was my life; I hadn't known anything different. Didn't stop it from destroying me every single time. I knew I was normal, even if everyone else didn't.

  The large portion of my "craziness" was due to James. He was the reason my parents locked me up. The reason they kept me away from other kids. The reason I couldn't have friends. It didn't matter to me. I would rather have James than other friends. At least he understood me.

  Oh... James was my guardian angel, my best friend, my big brother. He usually came to me at night and kept me company for as long as I could remember. I mean, my oldest memories were of him—not of my parents. James never went away over the years; he just came back every night to hang out and watch movies with me.

  It would've been a fantastic relationship if everyone else could see him, too.

  My parents started to have an issue with him when I was around thirteen.

  "Aren't you a little old to have an imaginary friend?" they'd ask me. That was back when I was open about seeing him. I would talk about him every day to my parents because I didn't understand why they thought he was imaginary. Figments of your imagination can't hug you, right?

  They could only tolerate my detailed fantasies for so long. Around the age of fifteen, they started carting me off to psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists. Each came to the same conclusion: I had to be a paranoid schizophrenic. Not only did I have James, but I also heard an occasional voice in my head. Scary when I was younger, but I was used to the voice screaming, "You cannot escape."

  In any case, they kept me in a hospital until they could figure me out. They put me on so many different antipsychotics—lithium being their favorite to stuff down my throat. It didn't matter how many pills they pumped into me, the voice didn't fade. James didn't fade. He showed up less frequently, but he still came to see me. Because of this, they kept me in the loony bin for two whole years. Finally, I lied about not seeing him anymore. They sent me home. I dumped my drugs into the toilet.

  I was not relieved to see that my father's car was in the driveway when I got home. Opening my front door as quietly as possible, I tried to sneak up the stairs. No such luck. My dad was sitting guard in the living room.

  "Pass your test?" he asked.

  "Maybe," I responded trying to retreat upstairs.

  "See anything?" he followed up with while flipping through the TV stations. I just shot him a glare and ran up to my room.

  I was much more comfortable there. My room was my sanctuary. I was surrounded by books that let me escape my sad reality, video games and movies that let me waste time. That's what my life felt like... a waste of time. Everything was a waste when James wasn't around.

  I crawled into bed and put a rerun of Futurama on. I closed my eyes. I wished desperately to be anywhere else. I wanted to leave my stupid town and go out on my own. Somewhere I could start over and pretend to be normal. Maybe even some place where it was just me and James.

  In my dreams, we were completely alone. I didn’t have to worry about judgments or stress. Even sleep didn’t take him away. I had memorized every line on his face, every expression, every tone of voice. He wasn’t only my friend, or a simple mental projection, he was truly my guardian. It was difficult for me to accept the truth that he "wasn’t real"—especially when he was the one protecting me from harm most of the time.

  I still have nightmares about the house fire that happened around the time I was eight. The firefighters told my parents that I must’ve climbed out one of the windows and dropped from the second story. Nobody believed me when I told them that it was actually James that brought me to safety. Nor did they believe me the time I was saved from nearly being hit by a car… or the time a group of bullies jumped me and came down with a violent case of food poisoning the next day. James tried to manipulate all of the tiny aspects of my life to make it easier on me, even if it was his presence that made it hard in the first place. Despite all the hell I went through, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I loved him after all.

  A knock on my doo
r jolted me from my peaceful nap.

  "I'm going to a barbeque tonight, Val," I heard my dad say as he opened the door. "Do you want to come? I won't make you, but your mom won't be happy."

  I sleepily looked out from under the blanket.

  "I'd rather drink spit."

  He nodded understandingly. "Call me if you see anything. Love you," he said as he shut my door. As if I would tell them anything. They'd just toss me back into the hospital.

  I watched his car leave from my upstairs window. Like clockwork, I turned and James was sitting on my bean bag. Only there was something off. His messy blond hair was in its usual mass on his head. His kind green eyes distracted me from the circular scar on his right cheek. He was wearing a white hoodie and black joggers.

  Only... the hoodie wasn't completely white. It had red across the pockets. It took me several seconds to realize that it was blood. His face was in a calm state of discomfort.

  "James!" I shouted, confused, and ran to his side. I touched his jacket, and red stained my hands. He let out a stifled groan when I pressed into him. My lungs struggled to inhale; I was propelled into a nightmare.

  "I'm fine," he said in his normal, soothing voice. "Reach into my pocket for me, doll."

  Horrified, I obliged. I hesitantly tucked my hand into his damp pocket until I felt a cold object. It was only cold for a moment though. When my skin brushed it, it was like I had put my hand on a stove. I let out a pained scream and pulled my hand out. It was completely drenched in his blood. The smell of copper hung thick in the air.

  "What's going on?" I asked, my face covered in tears of confusion. "Let me help you!"

  I picked up my cell phone. My finger hovered over the "9." Who could I call? It’s not like the police would be able to help us.

  James grabbed my other arm and pulled me in front of him.

  "I'm fine. I already said that, Val. I'm going to need you to trust me."

  Distraught, I looked at him as pure turmoil seized me. My whole body was shaking. There was so much blood...

  He removed the object from his pocket. In his stained hand, a small ring glistened in the light. It was made of frosted white crystal that wasn’t entirely transparent, like it might have been carved from a piece of ice. When I saw it, I was overcome with an inexplicable, dreadful sensation. My body was screaming at me, "Run. Run. Run."

  The ring was literally burning into James' hand. I could smell the scent of his palm cooking. It started as a reddish mark on his skin until his flesh began to peel away like paper next to a flame.

  "I need you to put this on," he whispered yanking my hand toward him. I tried desperately to pull away and run. He brought the ring closer to my finger.

  "Stop!" I screamed, clutching the doorframe with my other hand trying to get away. "Please don't do this." The whites of his bones were starting to protrude from whatever the ring was doing to him. It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen.

  He ignored my cries. He ignored my fear. He slipped the ring on my middle finger.

  I was somewhere, but I was nowhere. I was falling faster and faster into a deep tunnel of darkness, Alice tumbling down a rabbit hole. I braced myself, waiting for something... anything. It felt like a true death, absolute nothingness.

  Then the falling stopped. I was floating, suspended in an empty space until I was met by the gaze of a singular red eye. It opened and stared down at me as if I were in a bottle. The darkness was as dense as water, constricting my body on all sides the longer I kept its gaze. The pressure alone was suffocating.

  "You thought you could escape me," a deep voice whispered from every direction. It was everywhere and nowhere. "You thought you could play God. Not this time... no."

  "What's happening to me?" I screamed from terror. I tried to claw through the darkness as if the surface would save me from drowning. Deep laughter erupted from the edge of the shadows.

  "You can never escape."

  I was ripped back to reality. My eyes burned from the light in my room. My head was so dizzy, I felt like I was going to be sick.

  I puked into my lap. Over and over.

  "I never lied about you being special all these years," James' voice said, bringing my focus back to Earth. I glanced back up at him in shock. The puddle of his blood was saturating my carpet. "Your mom... your mom wanted me to make sure... that you got that stupid thing. Don't ever take it off. Don't ever let someone take it from you."

  My mom? What was he saying?!

  I couldn't respond. I crawled weakly to his side, forgetting about the ring on my finger. I pushed on his wound through his jacket; I had to keep pressure on it. He could bleed out. He could die...

  James took my hands away from his injury and tucked me into his chest.

  "It's no use," he whispered stroking my cheek with a bloody hand. He closed his eyes.

  "Lux Eterna."

  In my arms, I held the body of my only friend.

  "James… no, no, no. You are going to live," I said in agony. "We’re supposed to get that cabin in the woods."

  I shook his body.

  "James."

  I held him as tightly as I could.

  "James... please, James... please don't die."

  His form disappeared from underneath me, slowly dissolving into nothing. I tried to hang on but all I was left with was ashes.

  My consciousness went completely blank. He couldn't be... he couldn't be dead... he was going to come back in and say it was only a joke. But he didn't. I sat in his blood... a pale reminder of his existence. Unable to comprehend reality, I ran.

  I ran down my empty street and into the empty forest... our empty forest. I could hear myself crying, but it didn't register as my voice. The path beneath me gave out several times. I fell over the trees. I fell over my feet. I tore my way through the brush to my hidden path.

  Our hidden path. A path nobody but James and I knew. I couldn't think. I couldn't feel. In the clearing, I could see my bridge and the tiny island he had discovered just for us. I don't know how young I was when he led me to play there the first time. It went from tag, to relationship troubles, to a relaxing place for us to be alone. Our secret world.

  Our secret world with the absence of him. He wasn't there. I never expected him to be there, but my heart told me that was where I needed to be. I walked toward my bridge. It was made from the forest itself, twisting over the passing stream.

  I looked at my hands, covered in his dry blood. The crystal ring he had placed on my middle finger was squeezing hard. It clung so tightly it was cutting into my skin. No matter how hard I tried to pull it off, it wouldn't budge. I crouched down to the ground and cried.

  James dying was one thing... the ring and that crazy mental trip? Absolute insanity. That's it, wasn't it? I was completely, utterly insane. James was gone. There was nobody else there for me. Nobody else to keep the voices away. Nobody else to protect me from the world. What would my parents say? How long would they throw me away again?

  I stood up and walked slowly to the edge of the bridge. Just beyond it, the water crashed over the side and down the mountain. I could see sharp rocks at the bottom. Numbly, I took off my bloodied jacket. I tossed it behind me and edged closer.

  The wind caught my hair and my body, blowing me back from the edge, as if nature itself was begging me to stay. I fought it and sat down on the bridge with my legs hanging off, facing the falls. I could see the doctors strapping me down again. I could see my parents’ disappointed faces, but I couldn't see James. My poor broken angel...

  Who would bother to save me?

  I closed my eyes and jumped.

  Chapter Two

  I was falling endlessly.

  I kept my arms wrapped around me tightly, expecting my bones would shatter at any moment, but it didn't happen. My equilibrium was thrown off entirely, as if I was traveling through a spiral versus plunging to my death. The falling sensation finally came to an end. Somehow, I was standing upright nearly unscathed.

&n
bsp; There were some glimmers of distant purple before my knees buckled under the weight of my body. I dropped to the ground with a thud. The earth was solid beneath me. There was no more rain, no rushing water, no smell of the forest.

  "I cannot believe you are stupid enough to jump off a cliff. Not even a thrall walks off a cliff. A thrall…" a voice said from above.

  A dude's voice. I thought it was James for a second, but the voice was cold and monotone. I felt like I was spinning after a roller coaster in the meantime. My stomach reacted before I could even think of getting back up. Disoriented, I puked again.

  "Listen, if this is death, you can eat it. I’ll walk myself," I rambled holding my head. If I wasn't dead... well, worst suicide attempt ever. I should've just shot myself or jumped in front of a car. A tight grip wrapped itself around my arm, and I was ripped to my feet.

  "You almost killed yourself!" the man's voice said in disbelief. Massive hands gripped my shoulders and shook me viciously. "You stupid idiot!"

  I opened my mouth angrily ready to retort, but I couldn't. All words were lost once I registered the world around me. An orange Jupiter-sized planet was hanging in the sky, threatening to slam into the ground I stood on. It was cloaked by lavender—which appeared to be the color of the cloudless sky. It was barely distinguishable by the sheer number of white stars that seemed so close I could touch them. In the center of the sky, a colossal nebula hung within the heavens. It was hands down the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

  "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," was all I was able to say.

  "Oh, and a mental case, too. Just lovely," the annoying man's voice said.

  When I was able to take my eyes off the universe, I turned my attention to my aggressor. The first thing I noticed was that he was around two feet taller than I am. I looked like a child in comparison—which was rather humiliating. He was wearing a black fur cape big enough to be a throw rug, covering some sort of high collared tunic. I couldn't spend too much time staring at his clothes though; his face was captivating for a random, annoying asshole.