Cruderia, First Hill
Oliver was feeling a bit groggy and slightly tipsy. He couldn't walk straight without wobbling in his steps. He had only about three to four bottles of beer last night but now he felt like crap and his body ached like crazy.
He had difficulty recalling what had happened the previous night. All he knew was that he was with his friends—the three that came into the city for a small business—and they had bought drinks. After drinking a few bottles, he had blanked out.
He sighed and shook his head to both clear his vision and to lessen the abominable headache that threatened to split his head in half.
He pushed the door open. He stayed in his family house which also meant that he had to put up with his father and few cousins who also wanted to stay over. This was mostly the reason he loved going away sometimes.
The moment he entered the living room he stopped for a while. Everyone was there—including a few uncles and aunties and a few unknown faces he had never seen before. He scanned each and every face in the room but only found that each had a gloomy or pissed up face.
The moment his eyes landed on his father's face he saw hatred mixed with regret and disappointment as he looked back at him. Oliver frowned a bit as he failed to make head or tail of the situation.
His eyes continued on till they landed on an unfamiliar figure seated beside his aunt. She had long black hair and she looked frail as if she had been crying all day long. Her face was twisted but besides that he could tell that she was indeed a beauty—one he wouldn't pass on the opportunity to ask out.
On further observation, she was shrinking with fear the moment she noticed his eyes on her. She seemed to want to shrink to a sub-atomic size just to go unnoticed. What was wrong?
He raised his hand and wiped the corner of his mouth before asking, "What's going on here?"
Several hisses came from different corners and even though he couldn't pin point who hissed exactly but his senses told him it was from his 'good' cousins. He knew that in their eyes he amounted to nothing—a waste of breath and resources.
His father, Mr Eduardo, looked up at him heatedly before answering with gritted teeth, "It's good that you asked that. You know how disgusted I am with you right now?"
"Excuse me?" although Oliver knew that his life style hasn't been the most appropriate in the family and that his father felt a little ashamed of him but he never imagined in his wildest imaginations that his father would outright say it to his face.
"This is how you go around bringing shame on the family name, huh?" he looked at his female cousin with a perplexed look. Another amusing thing he discovered was that he didn't actually remember her name since they didn't even have a good relationship.
He then turned to his older brother for an explanation but Lucas slowly shook his head as if the words were too heavy for him to say.
"Clearly your mother's death had left a hole in you and I thought that I would be able to raise you. God, I did try my best to raise you but you never obey me.
"You drink out, you get drunk, and you waste money and refuse to work like a normal adult and now this? You had to rape someone?"
Rape!
The word echoed in Oliver's tipsy mind and it felt like a bolt of lightning had struck his body causing every feeling of intoxication to abandon him like a taboo. He became more and more confused as he listened.
He raped someone? That's impossible!
"What are you talking about? I didn't do any such thing!" Oliver was adamant about it.
At this point, Lucas—his older brother—brought his phone and showed him the video, "the people who saw you threatened to use this against the family unless they get money—a huge amount of money."
Oliver was deaf to the explanation and quickly grabbed the phone to look at the impossible with his own eyes. Although he didn't remember every detail of what he did last night but he still recalled that he woke up at the same bar he drank in!
He didn't rape anyone. The moment the video began playing his heart tightened bit by bit till he became suffocated. He could no longer watch the scene in front of him and instead covered his face and his headache returned in full force.
In the video, he was naked while sleeping on top of a girl with black hair that spread all over the bed like she was under water. She was unconscious and naked as well with her thighs a bit bloody. It showed clear signs of rape.
However, this wasn't the part that gave Oliver a mortal fear. The actual nightmare was that the unknown lady that was sitting close to his aunt was the girl in the video!
It all made sense now. The way she shrunk back the moment she saw him, the fear in her eyes… it all made sense to him now. Yet, despite seeing the video, he couldn't help but wonder how?
Lucas took his phone away from him and sat down again before explaining, "according to Miss Valerie here, she woke up at one point and saw you on top of her. She recalled that the person who raped her was reeking of alcohol too."
"Wait," Oliver raised his hand as he fought off the feeling of nausea, "you said that she recalled, didn't she see my face during the rape?"
"No, she was blindfolded," Lucas explained slowly. She glanced at Valerie—the girl that was raped—and continued, "At one point the rapist— which happened to be you—took off the blind fold by mistake and that was probably when you fell asleep."
"Don't call me that!" Oliver detested the name. All his life he had never thought that one day his own family would brand him as a rapist.
He turned to Valerie and pointed to himself, "you, did you see me f**k you? Did you see me do it directly?"
"Stop!" his aunt spoke up, "you're scaring her!"
Oliver was heaving but now that he looked at this Valerie, he noticed that she was quivering in fear while hugging his aunt as tightly as she could. His mouth hung open in shock….