Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Piccolo's Embrace ❯ Nightmares of the Past ( Chapter 7 )

It had been three years ago. She hadn't even known Piccolo existed back then. She had been 27 years old and dancing on stage in front of a willing, cheering audience. The applause, the red roses thrown at her feet, the adulation of the crowd all wooed her in heart and mind and she thought that nothing, not even love, could be better than what she felt when she were on that stage, everyone's sweetheart for the duration of the dance.

She still lived with her parents, Gregory Allan Flaxen and her mother; Patrice, at that time in her past, in a six bedroom house that was not as large as some of the mansions she had seen, yet not a bungalow by any means. Her parents never understood the desire she had to dance nor her dream of one day becoming the word's most famous prima ballerina.

At the time, they had high hopes that she would soon forget her dream, all of it's hard work, and settle into something more stable, such as helping her mother in her various pursuits to save certain wildlife and or participating in her sewing clubs.

They did not understand, having gained a lifetime of wealth already, why she would want to work so hard for something with so little monetary value. Her parents just never understood that one could find pleasure and pride of oneself by doing what they loved, regardless of the rewards. It was even harder for them to accept that their own daughter, their only child, wasn't going to turn out exactly like them.

It had been a wonderful show. She had danced lead in her favorite ballet of all time, Swan Lake, and stood on the stage, the footlights hot on her skin and sweat from her exertion beading and falling in rivulets down the sides of her breasts and cool on the back of neck. The feathers from her costume tickled her face and underarms as she bowed gracefully to the cheering people, loving every second of the special moment she spent on stage after a show, that special, almost intimate moment she had with her audience as she accepted any cards, flowers or, yes, hotel keys, though she took the other things home with her, she always left the keys back stage with the other girls.

She had been dancing with this troupe for five years now, since she turned 22 on May 5th. She had had her first ballet class at age five and never looked back. At 27 everyone, including her instructor, Mademoiselle Kalenski , knew that Alaura's talent was going to take her places. They all knew that Alaura knew it as well. She did not see him down there, out there in the crowd, mingled with the sea of faces and bodies, at least she told herself, years later, that she hadn't seen him, but she wondered, when the memories came back, just before the fear could claim her once more, if that were really the truth she was telling herself or was she merely choosing to see what she wanted to see in her memory? She blew her last kiss at the people, stepping back for the curtains to fall into place and turned as the other girls and boys in her dance troupe embraced her like the family they thought of themselves as being after five years together, congratulating each other on a perfect performance.

"Let's hope this one makes the papers, Flaxen." Dudley Rynheart, a mediocre dancer with a face to match, squeezed her left buttock quickly. She spun around and landed a hard punch to his shoulder but her just laughed it off, like it was nothing, and said; "Lighten up, Alaura, I was only kidding." And walked away laughing his annoying half-snort chortle.

"Don't worry, Alaura." Sissy Burke patted her shoulder, "We'll make the papers. At least you will. You were fabu!"

"Thanks, Sissy." She kissed the other girl's cheek softly and they parted, "You go on ahead to the cast party...I'll be there as soon as I can."

Sissy looked thoughtful, her shoulder-length strawberry curls catching the light from the ceiling, "Okay. Just don't hang around here long after people have gone home." She shuddered, "It's creepy enough as it is."

Alaura didn't think so. She liked every place they had preformed at and had developed the habit, more like a religious rite, now, after so many years, of walking throughout the building they had just danced in, on stage, and say a small prayer of gratefulness in every room of the building. She felt she owed it to whatever gods or goddesses of the dance that were watching out for her.

She had been in one particular room for quite some time, how long, she couldn't say, moments, hours, they both felt about the same. She had found the room were they kept all these framed photographs of the dance troupes who had preformed on their stage, dating back so far the photographs in some frames were black and white and cracking along the sides and some of the faces were hard to see.

The photographs were lined up along the walls, rows and rows of them, and there were also photo albums, most rather old with peeling leather and binding held in place by string tied and about to fall apart if one tugged too hard on it. She sat down on the floor, crossed her long legs up herself and lost herself in albums of old photographs of dancers long ago.

Suddenly, it sounded as if the entire building were falling down around her and she dropped the book she'd been reading as she pulled herself to her feet. She still wore her peach-toned leotard and white tights, her toe shoes dangled from a hook inside her dressing room. She thought she would fetch them before she left the place.

Without thinking, Alaura jerked open the door and stepped out into the hallway. Without warning, she heard a voice cry out for her to get down and the corridor, well, really, the corridor was gone, she saw, briefly, a huge, gaping hole in the ceiling and the night's star filled sky outside and above, before someone yelled something she didn't understand or a least didn't hear properly and the immediate area was filled with light so bright that she screamed and threw her arms up over her face, realizing that even as did so, she was too late.

Blind, her head feeling like someone had taken a hammer to it and played chopsticks on her skull, she stumbled backwards back into the photograph room. She didn't know what was happening or who it was that shouted or how the building fell apart, or what in God's name all those explosions just outside the door, or at least what sounded like explosions, were from, but she knew she had to get out of there. Alaura felt around the room, hoping that maybe she'd missed another exit or something, knocking over picture frames and tripping over the carpeting in her blind haste to escape.

In her fear she knocked over a table that had been the place of honor for a particularly pretty silver and gold jewelry box that she had been admiring earlier. As the box fell something heavy landed on her floor and she cried out in renewed pain. She leaned down and felt along the floor for whatever it was that had fallen out of the box. It can't be a broach, she thought, it was too large when it hit her foot and she could have sworn she heard it rolling.

Just as her fingers clutched it, she realized that she did not hear the loud noise any longer and wondered if whatever it had been, whoever it had been, had decided it wasn't worth it to tear up a rickety old building and had gone home for tea and cakes or whatever they did.

She heard and felt the door being blasted from it's hinges, rather than saw it. She held the odd, smooth, somewhat warm spherical object that had fallen from the jewelry box in both hands waist high, as she heard a gust of air and cast about, her sight worthless and her head still throbbing with pain, trying to find out who was there.

Laughter. Cold, heartless, sent a chill up her spine and she had the sensation, though she did not know where this thought came from, it just popped in her head at that moment, that she was facing evil. She spun about to where she thought he was, but found it odd.why did it sound as if he were right above her? That can't be possible.can it?

"I see you've found something that belongs to me, little bitch." She shook her head, unable to see or to comprehend what he was talking about, and backed away until she felt the coolness of the wall stopping her, "Give that to me!"

Alaura had forgotten what she held for just a moment, then , thinking back she realizes it wasn't the smartest thing she could have done that night, she gauged the distance from the exit and where he was according to the sound of his voice and, without warning, threw the ball as hard as she could towards where she thought the hole where the door used to be was.

They were on the third floor. She knew the walls had been blown up so that there was a straight drop, a few feet from the doorway to the room they were in, and guessed that if she threw it hard enough, it just may go over the edge and if his guy wanted it so bad he'd go after it and leave her alone.right?

"I can't believe you just did that!" He screamed at her, and suddenly he grabbed her roughly by her shoulders and landed a stinging back handed slap across her face. She tasted blood as she sprawled on the floor where she'd fallen, tears in her eyes, and wishing she had just gone to the cast party like she should have instead of hanging around here to do her stupid after- performance ritual.

"I don't have all day, but I have a little time to linger, girl." She half ran, half crawled away from him, screaming for him to please leave her alone, when she felt him grasp a handful of her hair and pull her to her feet. "I guess I can make time for such a pretty thing. Too bad that will leave nasty bruise." He clucked his tongue in mock sympathy, referring to her face were he had slapped her.

She reacted with elemental terror, raising her hands and raking her nails down were she knew his face was looming above her's, turning about and kicking and flailing wildly, in a panic to get away, by any means possible. She felt a wet stickiness under her nails and over her hands and knew she had hurt him, just a tiny bit, but instead of crying out in pain and anger, he seemed pleased at her efforts to try and fight.

She did not realize this, but Alaura was the mouse in his game of cat and mouse during those moments. He hadn't gone straight after the dragonball because he had every confidence that it would be waiting there for him when he was through playing.

He advanced on her, she was caught between two bookshelves and grasped one of her legs. Roughly, with no struggle what-so-ever, as if she were a mere rag doll in his grip, he pulled her out and sat on top of her, pinning her to the ground beneath him as he laughed cruelly down into her hair, his breath hot on her throat.

She thrashed about, desperate to get away, to get him away from her, but every time she moved, he just held her tighter, her hands, folded into tight, tiny fists pounded in a panic his shoulders and chest, but they were as insignificant as flies buzzing around an elephant's back, he just ignored her attempts at trying to stop him.

"Stop this.please.stop this.stop." She cried and her cries turned to sobs as he took ahold of her leotard at the front and ripped it from her chest, exposing her breasts to his hands and eyes. He bit her roughly, drawing blood from the side of her breast and she screamed with agony. He chuckled when she screamed and seemed to enjoy feeling her move in pain and fear beneath him.

When his hands ripped the rest of the leotard easily off her body and ripped a gaping hole in her leggings, she felt his hand between her legs and her fear quickened, she knew no matter what happened, she must not allow him to touch her.there. She screamed and whipped about beneath him, frantically reviving her attempts at getting him off of her so she could finally run away. She thought, in some irrational part of her mind, that if she could only get him off of her that she could get away from him.

"You can fight me all you want, you little slut." He said, punching her hard in her face, she felt the bones in her cheek right below her eye crack and the pain was so much that she couldn't even cry out, just a whimper left her, as the air was forced out of her lungs by the sheer force of the pain. Her right cheek still hurt from the slap he'd paid her a few minutes before, now the other side of her face was horribly damaged and felt that way as well. "It won't do you any good.though, it is fun for me."

He had split the material around the hole he had made in her leggings farther down her leg until he was able to just pull aside the tattered garment, despite her kicking and thrashing, and crying out for him not to hurt her, he found what he was looking for a proved it by shoving his fingers up inside her roughly, feeling her tightness. She became suddenly still, he thought she finally realized that she had no hope of escaping him and had decided to play along, at last, though it would be less entertaining.

Alaura did not understand what was happening to her. One moment she was fighting for her life, the next she felt as if she were floating, high above the room, looking down on herself and this stranger she had never seen before as he continued to hurt her. She felt as if she did not even know the poor girl on the floor there, oh, she felt a small connection, but she did not acknowledge it. She thought to herself as she watched him position himself between her legs, that that girl on the floor could have nothing to do with her.

She felt no pain where she was, high above them, watching, observing her own defilement with empty, emotionless eyes, as if she were watching an image on a screen. It wasn't real, she told herself as she watched him thrust deeply and roughly inside of her, it wasn't real. She saw the tears fall from her eyes silently, mingling with the blood on her face as he forced her body to move with his beneath him. It wasn't real, she kept repeating over and over to herself even as she felt herself being pulled back into her body, reluctantly, she screamed in her mind and tried to float back up, away, to where it was safe, away from what was happening to her there on the floor of the photograph room.

Alaura let out a deafening, terror-and-pain-filled shriek as she realized she was once again, back in the center of torment. She saw his fist above her face for a heartbeat of a moment before her world fell apart into blackness and her mind felt as if it were a mirror that had been viciously shattered.

Alaura gasped and sat up in bed. Her heart was racing and her body shook, she felt her face and felt the wetness of tears she'd been crying in her sleep. The sheets were all twisted around her body and she fell forward, sobbing into her hands.

Piccolo, she knew, had held her until she fell asleep and then left her to meditate outside in the darkness of the forest. She knew his ways, though at the moment she wanted him here with her to keep her safe, if only from her own nightmares of the past.

The memories she had of that night had always been just bits and pieces, like fragments of a photograph in a broken glass case, picture and glass mixed and both damaged beyond repair. She never remembered the entire rape, but certain feelings would bring back one or two images.

She realized, as she slowly recovered from the dream, that she had seen the face of her attacker. Her blindness had worn off sometime during the attack, and she struggled to hold onto that memory, but like ice melting under a hot water tap, they faded from her mind to swiftly for her to grasp and she beat the bed beside her with the flat of her hands in frustration.

Piccolo had known what happened to her, but only as much as she told him and what he could feel from her, which was enough to understand her fear and pain but not enough to go after whoever it was since she said she could not remember if she had seen his face or not or if she had, then she had blocked the image from her mind so severely that not even he had been able to reach into her mind and help extract it for her.

He sensed her terror from where he was in the middle of the dense forest and flew back to her, unaware that he would arrive too late to save her from the dream, but just in time to hold her as she clung to him in her need for security and comfort. If only she could remember more of what happened to her instead of just rubble here and there. He did not know how to truly help her, so he just kissed her face, rubbed her arms and shoulders and encircled his arms around her as he waited for her sobs to fade and her body to stop it violently shaking.

"Shh." She heard him say, "You're safe, Alaura. Your safe, now."