Relatively Rainey Read Online Free Page A

round of nightmares brings more detail than the last. I suppose until my mind processes the entire event, I’m going to be forced to witness the explorations of my repressed knowledge of that night.” She paused, before adding another truth with a sigh, “Ernie, I don’t want to remember.”
    “Maybe that’s the problem, Rainey. You need to talk it out. You never have. Your dad was the same way, kept everything tight to the vest. He wouldn’t even talk to Mackie about the war for years. His demons came in the night too until he had to get help. Do you know when that was?”
    “No, I just remember his nightmares, his screams, and barking orders.”
    “Oh, those were mild compared to the early years. He shot a hole through the sliding glass door in his bedroom once. He was dangerous in his sleep.”
    “I never knew that,” Rainey said, wondering what else she did not know about her father. The first ten years of her life, she hadn’t known he existed. She didn’t come to live with him until she was fourteen. Parts of Billy Bell’s life remained a mystery. Rainey had discovered only a few years ago that she had a half-sister.
    “When you started coming to visit, Mackie and I told Billy he had to go to therapy, or he might shoot you during one of his nightmares. He went every day for a while. He’d check in at the office in the morning and then head to the VA hospital over in Durham before beginning his day. It changed him for the better. He still had the dreams occasionally, but they were never as bad.”
    “I knew he spent a lot of time with vets, working through their PTSD battles.”
    “He was working on his own as well, Rainey. You can’t keep those horrid memories locked inside forever. At some point, they are going to come out. The question is, will it be on your terms or theirs?”

    #

    The house was finally quiet. After feeding, bathing, and tucking the triplets into their beds, Rainey read to them until the last little eye closed. She and Katie went to bed a few minutes later, exhausted from the trying day. The discovery of John Taylor’s body had veiled the evening in somberness. Emotionally drained, they lay there quietly, each lost in thoughts of her own. Freddie, Rainey’s cat, was comfortably curled at her feet. With Katie’s head resting on Rainey’s chest, they drifted off to sleep.
    The movie in her dream began almost immediately. Rainey had experienced it many times before. Disconnected from her bound and gagged body, spread-eagle on the bed, she watched him rape her. Rainey saw him dig the scalpel into her flesh, as she floated above the scene, able to look on now without the heart-pounding panic of earlier viewings. Time had hardened her emotions toward the violence perpetrated against her body. The physical scars from those injuries had healed. It was the gaping wound to her psyche that had yet to close.
    She had come to view this part of the dream as the prelude to the impending nightmare. If she were lucky Rainey could force herself awake, before being thrust into the helpless body on the bed and returned to the pain and panic of the attack as if it were happening for the first time. But that was not to be the case on this occasion.
    He was at her ear, whispering, “You be a good girl now, or I will have to hurt her.”
    Rainey felt the plastic wrapped mattress beneath her body. She closed her eyes against the panic and the searing pain screaming through her body. She fought the bindings, flailing her head wildly from side to side.
    “Look at her,” he demanded.
    Opening her eyes to see an unconscious Katie tied on the bed next to her, Rainey's guttural cries were muffled by the gag while the nightmare continued to veer from its normal course.
    “What?” He asked, his eyes sparkling with delight behind the black mask concealing the rest of his face. “You don’t want me to hurt her?”
    Rainey glared at him through eyes nearly swollen shut, her breath fast and shallow, air