(Trigger warning: Violence ahead ⚠️)
A gasp ripped out of her arid mouth, eyelids slit open.
Tears streaming down Neva's temple, blurry eyes staring at the grey ceiling above.
"You're awake?"
Neva flinched at the sudden, deep hoarse voice.
She glanced at him.
He lay beside, so close to her face.
She now realised, the heaviness of an arm wrapped around her waist.
The man with dark, esoteric eyes, buried his gaze into her cocoa orbs.
Where her long and full, curved black lashes, viscous from tears blossomed a round, rosen, beautiful almond shaped eyes.
His hands reached to caress her scarlet cheek. In a daze Neva whispered: "Rhett."
Ishmael halted.
His jaw clenched. Gaze darkening.
He rudely grabbed her jaw, her cheeks squeezed.
Neva's faint eyes sobered further.
"Don't ever take this name again." He seethed.
Neva blinked at him, senses clearing, eyes roving over his features.
Her lips trembled.
How can this be her verity? Where does she live? In a nightmare? Or in realism?
If she didn't know better, she would have lived in the illusion of Rhett's warm glistening eyes in his, dark sombre ones.
She choked out a sob. Praying it to be a nightmare. He retracted his hand, eyes softening at her closed ones, flowing thick droplets of crystal tears.
He hovered over her, and kissed away her veiled lids.
She shuddered from the touch of his adulterant, flaying lips.
He kissed the tip of her nose, down gently on her lips.
Her palms met his chest, and she pushed him away with all her strength.
"Don't." He didn't even budge.
"Please take me back to Rhett." Neva begged—foolishly hopeful eyes looking at him.
"I won't. I can't." He closened to her ear.
"Because I've burned them.
And they died a deserving dead." He whispered.
A claw rended her heart out of her chest.
Neva's iris' trembled.
She was haunted. This brutality rotting her senses away.
"No," Neva breathed out.
"You're lying."
Ishmael, amused looked down at her. "I didn't lie, my love."
He slid away her hair, kissing her neck, nibbling with his teeth there; marking her as his.
Her chest was heavy, rising and falling briskly.
She whimpered, them cried at the memories unravelling of her happiest times.
The cries turning so heart-wrenchingly loud, echoing around the four walls.
Neva attempted to shove him away with shaking hands.
But she only angered Ishmael.
He pinned her hands down on the either side of her head.
He kissed her on the lips, forcing his tongue, devouring the taste of her mouth.
Neva's tears were unceasing.
He was doing it again; killing her again.
He parted their swollen lips.
Then with one hand he gathered her wrist and pinned her hands over her head.
He shredded her differing dress that he put on her himself.
He could not hear her screams, as she greived. Head simultaneously weaving Illusions.
He bruised all over her delicate skin, gorging her stiff body.
Her cries tormented her—heart aching.
It hurt to breathe. To suck in air.
She enabled to feel him exploiting her flesh anymore.
She felt not the raging pain down her abdomen no more.
She discarded this body, while her soul she secured inside her beloved husband and son.
Face buried in the crook of her neck, he was nailed to her. His breathing was ragged as he drove into her.
His burning form, this agony, heavy grunts decayed her.
The violence derived the cries of thousands—the soul melting in the raging lake of achernon, the creatures of abyss, eating her flesh inside out.
She numbed her senses; and prayed to be somewhere else.
There with her loved ones.
With a flickering faith left in the perishing soul; she prayed again to die.
She blamed everyone; yet no one.
She hated everyone... Yet no one. For it was her, her fault alone.
She closed her eyes, the darkness swallowing her all. Then she would awake her in the arms of her her husband, their son—warm and breathing in her embrace.
For she denied the nightmare; their tragedy; and now Neva breathed through Illusions of Utopia, her garden of Eden.