Chapter Text
Eleanor’s foot taps erratically against the carpeted floor, a muted channel filling the otherwise peaceful room with restless energy. It’s so quiet in Luke’s office, with only the sounds of their breathing between them. Eleanor swears she can hear the blood rushing in her head, driving her mad.
Three months sober and her mind has never felt so clear and fast and cloudy and slow and loud.
Thump thump thumpthump thump.
Her heel bounces off the ground in an uneven tempo, the noise muffled by a thick layer of static gray fibers. Static, like the charged feeling in the air putting her on edge. Eleanor, drowning silently in a sea of static gray.
It’s officially her fifth visit to Luke’s office since her release from the detox center in the psychiatric wing of Wellington Hospital, and her 63rd day of ‘freedom’ from the life she’d always known. ‘Freedom’. A new word that people keep using with her.
Every time she sinks her teeth into her bottom lip, she can feel the word pressing on her tongue. Freedom.
Thumpthumpthump thump.
No one’s given her the definition of ‘freedom’, but she knows enough now about not having a job anymore and about sleeping in a bed of her own that she thinks she understands the concept. Freedom was that first shower in the hospital, hot water streaming down her back, soap suds in her hair without anyone else’s hands on her body but her own. Freedom.
When the raid (rescue, it was a rescue) first happened, Eleanor had been so scared. Some nights, when she closes her eyes, the memories of it flash behind her eyelids, all warped and blurred- a spike of adrenaline in her drug-induced fog. She’d watched the girls she’d worked with all tense with the same fear as a bunch of men in black complicated suits swarmed their house wearing helmets and carrying guns. So many of her boss’s (pimp’s) men died that day- some girls did too. Eleanor was one of the lucky ones though, who got to live and be put on a plane and brought ‘home’.
Home. Wellington. Freedom.
A slew of new words sat unused on her tongue, her heel thudding with each unspoken syllable. Beating them into Luke’s carpet.
Thump thumpthumpthump thumpthump.
It turned out her job, her past owners and bosses (pimps, Eleanor), and everything she’d ever known was a lie- all abhorrent lies. Her life had been so small and straightforward before. Do what you’re told or you’ll end up dead. There is no other way. What had been true there- in a warehouse, in a concrete basement with yellow walls, splayed across a filthy bed in a dingey motel next to the strip- no longer applies anymore. All of those past rules and truths have been ripped away and replaced by ‘freedom’.
(Her own bed at night. Untainted, unspoiled meals. Hot water. All given, without her body as currency.)
Even freedom has a catch though.
The first two days, Luke’s office felt tiny in the same way as a broom closet, the trunk of a car, a shallow grave. The off-white walls seemed to press in on all sides. It was nauseating but bearable.
Now, it feels endlessly huge. She walked in, sat down in the oversized armchair and all of the walls had retreated, taunting from afar. It was like she’d walked through the gateway to the rest of the world- so much bigger than anything she could’ve ever imagined. Watching the clock from only a few feet (yet miles) away, it’s near intolerable. Very near.
The catch of freedom is that there are oceans of choices to make and no one to tell you the right answer.
Thump, thump. Her feet on the carpet. In Luke’s office, where Luke sits quietly in his chair, breathing the same air as her, not registering the miles Eleanor’s mind has placed between them. Observing her, while pretending not to, his hands on his keyboard, eyes shifting to her face every so often, steady like the hands on the clock. Steadier than the inconsistent pace of her impatient foot. Tick-tick-tick. Screen, Eleanor, screen.
Nowadays, Eleanor finds her body unable to still, legs aching to take her someplace else- to take her back to the confines of the spaces she knows- doing what she’s told. When she concentrates on it, she finds it’s not hard to bat that cowardice illogical impulse down though. Remember the cost of the spaces we know?
Eleanor hated every pungent, sweaty romp. The inescapable state of being perpetually unclean. The bruises left behind and the putrid tastes and the bleeding. Being split down her center, spilled into, violated without ever knowing the word for it. Exploited for money. Her body as currency. Raped.
Nearly three months of freedom and it feels like her entire existence has been split in two: life before, and life after. Now that she’s gotten a taste of the after, she’s fighting to keep her head above it all, treading through seas of static gray carpets for another gasping breath of truth. Despite the wretched things she’d gone through though, part of her seems hellbent on staying trapped in the familiarity. The known. The before.
Eleanor’s fingers tense, clutching her armrests. Beneath the pad of her left index, she can feel a loose thread that she’s trapped down and fights the urge to pick at it- to yank on it and see if it will unravel- like the spools of thread that make up her own guts.
Distantly, she wonders if she has to drown that part of her to make it stop.
Eleanor supposes with all her inner turmoil, that this is where Luke and Cynthia are supposed to come in. Luke, her ‘therapist’ and Cynthia, her ‘caseworker’. Real people that don’t prod her with guns or drug her, with real jobs that don’t involve being pinned and penetrated- jobs that help other people- her.
Luke, across from her, and Cynthia, who waits outside huffing on a lit cigarette. They’ve been with Eleanor since day one of the after. She’s gotten to know them both well- their looks and smells and sounds. They talk to her more than anyone has ever spoken to her before and she’s terrified of them, and grateful, and desperate. Because she’s trying- she IS trying, but maybe the part of her that wants to stay in the before, has more control than she’d like to admit.
Maybe she wakes up in a cold-sweat, clutching invisible hands around her throat, and wishes she were passed out somewhere, strung-out and numb, where the dreams never touched her before.
Maybe it’s been three months since she’s uttered a word out loud to anyone and she's worried that small, defiant part of her won’t ever let her speak again.
Maybe she’s a waste of Luke and Cynthia's time.
Maybe freedom isn’t right for her…