Plead

How did I manage to forget?

I turned around slowly and looked into a set of haunting eyes that clenched around my heart in the tightest grip that I have ever felt. One that ran a cold shiver down by whole body as I stood there frozen, staring at a Liza with tears brimming in her eyes.

“L-Liza. I-I…” I took a step forward, with my hand reaching for her, but she turned a little sideways, showing her disapproval, which instantly stopped me in my tracks. Guilt heaved on my shoulders like a heavy boulder that didn’t want to budge at all as I slouched and looked down in shame. How could I forget?

“You are leaving.” The words came out so sad and slow out of her lips like a broken feather. I didn’t know what to tell her or rather do to make this wrong a right.

All this time, I waited around to find Liza and escape with her. All the trouble I went through, the opportunities that I missed. All for her. And yet now that I was given then miraculous chance, the easiest so far, I didn’t even think of Liza once. I didn’t know that shame and guilt could crumble anyone in such a way as presently as it was.

She placed a hand on her belly, the baby, and took a deep breath in. perhaps she was about to say something, but I beat her to it.

“Lizzie, you know how these people are. It’s not safe. We need to get out of here.” I tried to muster up as much of determination as I could in my voice, and expected her to turn a blind eye to my blunder mistake. If only she forgets and forgives my mistake, then we could escape from here together.

“Why do you keep on being so disobedient? Why are you so selfish? Why can’t you just do what they ask of you?” Her voice was louder than I expected it to be. It scared me because if the other people in the house heard her, then they might wake up and all my plans of escape will go down the drain. Furthermore, the future that I would have here would become far less habitable. One that I didn’t plan on experiencing at all.

“Liza. You know why… You keep asking me the same questions again and again, but you never seem to ask yourself why you are letting this happen to you. Why did you lose hope, Lizzie?” I took one step forwards, towards her, instead of running to her so that I could hug her, remind her who she is. A person whom she has forgotten or rather buried six inches deep.

“Don’t you get it? What do you think will happen when you escape?” She turned towards me again and spat the words out of her mouth with an unexpected irritability in her voice. “Okay fine, let’s just imagine that both of us do escape out of here and then what? Where will go? What do we have out there? Let me tell you what we have. Just cruelty and pain. Immense, unbearable pain and loneliness. I can’t trust anyone. I can’t be with anyone just because they use me every time. Every. Fucking. Time” Her angry tears streamed down her cheeks as she clenched her eyes shut with the remembrance of a haunting past that I had yet to know.

“What do you mean?” I wasn’t sure if she meant me as well. Was I too engrossed in myself and my pain to completely ignore hers? Yes, there were times that I noticed her being lost into the space and I never intervened because I thought that it's best to let her come to me instead of me poking and prodding in her business. I should have realized that even after all the similarities we had, we might always want different things. Perhaps she needed someone to poke and probe in her hidden sadness and help her let out the trapped feelings inside of her. Something I failed to do massively.

“Do you remember the guy I was with? Yeah, Max, my boyfriend. He was cheating on me the whole time we were together. And I knew it for the longest amount of time, and yet I stayed with him. Why? Because I thought I deserved it. I thought I deserved being cheated on and having a boyfriend who is not loyal to me. And guess what? He was cheating on me from the second month since our relationship started.” A hysterical laughter escaped out of her lips as more tears streamed down her cheeks.  She was anything but happy though.

I had no idea about whatever she was talking about. For a moment I thought that she must have been joking because if it’s true then I never knew Liza at all. I just knew a fiction of her and her true self was this that has finally revealed itself from out of the curtains of a grand show that was just about to begin.

“Yeah, so fuck him, fuck them and fuck the whole world outside. It’s me and my baby now. And I can’t let the world take the baby away from me. Not even you and your attention seeking needs.” It hurt. Really, really bad. I didn’t know what to tell her. But what I felt most was guilt that pressed on me harder than ever. If only I was a little less engrossed in myself then perhaps things would have been different.

“B-but Lizzie, don’t you see? You are doing the same thing to yourself again. You are letting them do wrong things to you. Being captivated, kidnapped and trapped inside a house. They are denying us freedom. We can’t do what we want unless they want us to do something. A-and look at yourself. One of them already forced themselves on you.” Time was ticking and no matter how much I would like to ask for her forgiveness and plead at her feet, we needed to escape before those two men become aware about this whole situation.

“Who told you so?”