As hours began to tick by in slow motion an ever present dread slept like a silent storm in the pit of her stomach. Eventually sunlight began to trickle out behind concrete pillars and he finally turned his attention toward her. Elizabeth's heart began to best faster as she watched his eyes turn from chocolate brown toward pitch black like a midnight sky. His smile turns cold and calculated as his footsteps sink into the red earth. Elizabeth, backs farther into the make shift, clear plastic tarp tent, as her heart begins to race.
She watches from a distorted view, as the man who once cared for her, picks up the aluminum baseball bat, she'd laid down near the concrete pillar. Her heart piercing scream, echoes throughout the still twilight, as his hands come down, first with the bat, and then finding her knife. She twists out of his grasp just enough so the slender blade is lodged in her left forearm but is met unexpectedly with another broken eye socket. She kicks and screams as his fists begin flying; eventually attempting to make an escape through the only proper opening carved through clear plastic. One arm slithers around her throat as he tries pulling her back by the other; Elizabeth kicks, again and again, until she feels an immense pain, cascading like wildfire, up her right arm, throughout her entire body. She feels her body begin to freeze up as she slides from his arms down onto the ground; it barely registers that he has stopped beating her and ran away until she feels his arms around her once again, except this time much gentler. He is panicking she can hear it in his voice as he practically pleads with her,
"Please don't go into shock. You can't go into shock. Look, here's what you do okay. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to lie, alright, I want you to tell them that I wasn't anywhere near you when you got beat up. Tell them, tell them that you got jumped but you don't know who it was by because you couldn't see them. Tell them there was more than one person who jumped you and I just so happened to not be here to protect you. Tell them anything but the truth."
As his words faintly register with her antagonized mind, she begins to feel a shift inside, like a dark stain has been made, and she's sitting there, watching it spread out over everything she once was. Sirens can be heard in the distance, as Elizabeth, casts a hardened stare, out across the deserted train tracks. She focuses on the sound, and counts off the seconds in her mind, giving herself something to try remembering.
Several minutes pass, and by now her attacker has already lifted her limp frame from the ground, he places her gently into a previously packed cart, and places a large blanket on top of her. Panic laces his every word as he utters almost silently,
"Please do not go into shock. They are here to help you. Please do not go into shock whatever you do. Remember what I told you."
The all to familiar feeling of fear completely shatters Elizabeth's core as she nods her head meekly. She lays in silence and listens to the paramedics question on everything that took place; without hesitation he makes up an elaborate lie about going to get food, coming back, hearing her screaming, and seeing three people run off down the train tracks. In her heart she silently begs with them not to believe him and as if by miracle it's almost like they can hear her. Elizabeth closes her eyes against the pain and tries to focus on breathing. She's been through hell before but it has never been this bad.