Sorry, part four: The Darkest Ages...

Links to the rest of this story: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven

Until I moved in with Jack, I never realised exactly what he was like. of course, there'd been warnings from various parties: my parents, fearing his bad influence; Sorry, who I thought was spoiling my (supposed) happiness; even Jack's landlady. Fool I was that I ignored them all. Three days into our new life, he became almost lethally possessive.

We'd rented a house that needed a lot of work, and the landlord had agreed to do this in the first few weeks after we moved in. It was such a warm sunny day, so I put on shorts and a skinpy T shirt, thinking nothing of it. The workmen were there that day, but these were clothes I'd always worn around Jack, no matter who had been around. There was nothing too revealing about it! But when Jack saw me coming down the stairs, he flew into a fit of rage, ordering me back upstairs and demanding that the workmen leave immedietly. "What have I done?" I begged. There was fire in his eyes as his hands closed around my neck. The world became blurred and all went black.

When I finally came around, Jack was rocking to and fro in the corner. "It was the demons", he said. "They told me to do it!" I wanted to leave, then and there, but he wouldn't let me. He told me over and over that he loved me, it would never happen again.

Never again? No. Just a thousand times more. I became more scared of what he' do to me if I left than if I stayed. And it got much, much worse, so that he wouldn't even let me go to the payphone to call my parents, or to the Doctors to collect my contraceptive pills...

A few months later, my periods stopped and I knew that I was pregnant. I was more terrified than ever, not ready for a baby with this man who seemed to love and hate me equally, while knowing there was nothing I could safely do to change my situation. There's more to that story than I'm ready to tell just now. I hate those bad memories. My hands are shaking as I type.