The Darkness Within Read online

  The Darkness Within

  Taylor K Scott

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2021 Taylor K. Scott

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the author.

  Warning: The following work of fiction describes content of a sexual nature. It also discusses sensitive themes including violence and rape.

  Dedication

  To my loving family, Bryan, Charlotte, Evelyn, Mama Sue and my sister, Liz. Also, for anyone who has suffered from abuse in any way, shape or form. I hope I have written a story worthy of you all.

  Musical Influences:

  True Love – Pink (feat. Lily Allen)

  Try – Pink

  Denial – Sugababes

  Hate How Much I Love You – Rhianna (feat. Ne-Yo)

  Breathin’ – Arianna Grande

  Author’s Note

  This story deals with a number of themes that may trigger some readers. They include rape, bullying, and depression. It centers around teenagers, which I’ve tried to reflect through their thought processes and decision-making. I hope I have done their story the justice it deserves and have shown sensitivity towards the issues covered in this book. I am fortunate to not have suffered from sexual abuse, but I have lived with mental health issues. For many years I tried to hide my anxieties because I didn’t understand them. When I finally felt able to talk to someone about it, things became a lot easier for me. Everyone’s experiences are different, but I would encourage anyone to seek help if they are feeling lost and in need of support.

  Prologue

  Amelia, 15

  “Excuse me, Miss Thomas?” the young, male police officer asks me but begins to speak again without waiting for my reply. “We’re looking for your brother, Grant Thomas?”

  The female officer next to him shuffles forward, revealing the flashing vehicle on the road outside of our house. The pitch-black, moonless night makes the lights all the brighter for the curtain twitchers in the neighboring houses. Before I can make sense of its presence, a noisy clearing of the throat refocuses my attention back onto the solemn, firm expressions, plastered on both the officers standing before me. My body shivers with an uneasy feeling, one which is spreading rapidly to every extremity of my body.

  “Is he home? Or your parents?” This time, the female speaks with a pitiful smile on her face. Maybe because I’m only a fifteen-year-old girl and a woman seems far less intimidating than a male officer, who I now notice easily reaches up to the top of the doorframe.

  “Yes, they’re all here,” I answer in a voice that betrays my fear. “Mom!” I shout out into the room behind me. I don’t even turn around because my body has ceased to respond to even the most basic of instructions. Both police officers offer me uncomfortable-looking smiles while we wait for the shuffling footsteps from outback to approach us. The time it takes my mother to finally reach us feels like years given the intensity of the situation, and I’m about ready to let out the sob caught in my throat.

  “What is it, Millie?” Mom asks with a smile in her voice, a smile that drops faster than a lead weight when she finally sees what I’m staring at. “Oh,” she says, clearly lost for words from the shock of seeing two uniformed police officers on our doorstep on a Sunday evening. “Is something wrong?”

  Yes, mother, I think something is epically wrong!

  “I’m afraid we’re here for your son, Grant Thomas,” the male officer now steps in with an intimidating, angry grimace upon his face, “can you call him to the door please?”

  “Why? What’s going on? What’s he done?” Mom now sounds barely comprehendible with her rapid succession of questions. Not that she bothers to wait for a response before she shouts anxiously for my father, with my brother’s name following quickly after.

  “What the hell is going on?!” Dad barks, arriving at the scene first, with a mixture of both confusion and irritation marring his usually calm and cool exterior. I guess it doesn’t look good for the Head of Surgery to have the law flashing on his doorstep.

  Shifting back, I make way for Grant, who appears moments later wearing his sweatpants and some old sport’s t-shirt from school. He’s also sporting the same look of confusion we all have written across our faces.

  “What’s going on?” he asks no one in particular, then pulls away his headphones, leaving the sound of U2 to blast through them as we all bear witness to the nightmare currently playing out on our front steps. Before anyone can answer, the male officer pulls my brother’s wrist through the door and twists it up behind his broad, quarterback body, where he proceeds to cuff him.

  “Grant Thomas, I’m arresting you for the rape of Samantha Phillips,” he finally announces, causing all four of us to drop our mouths to the floor in complete shock over this revelation. “You do not have to say anything but anything you do say will be taken in evidence and may be used in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney…”

  The words muffle into white noise as I watch the terrified eyes of my brother dart around so quickly, they don’t look real. My mother cries with greedy intakes of air, just as my father tries to argue with the officers now escorting Grant over to the flashing police car.

  “Samantha Phillips is Grant’s girlfriend; they’ve been an item for over two years! This is preposterous!” he shouts angrily.

  The officers pay him no attention, acting blind to his purple complexion, and continuing to robotically move into the car themselves. I turn away from my father’s obvious frustration with the two cops and look back to Grant’s face now sliding nervously into his hands, which I notice are trembling with shock.

  “I suggest you arrange for your son to have legal representation, and for them to meet us down at the station,” the female officer says through a fake smile and a wide set of eyes. Eyes that cannot hide the obvious disgust she feels towards the crime at hand.

  The car pulls away, still flashing its taunting lights a long time after the vehicle has disappeared from view. My father remains glued to the spot for just as long, before slowly turning to reveal a broken expression. One of hurt, anger, and complete disbelief.

  My brother was sentenced to eight years in prison.

  My brother is a convicted rapist.

  Chapter 1

  Amelia 17

  “Hi Millie,” the delivery boy greets me with the same pitiful smile he always gifts me. “I’m afraid it’s me with the usual bunch of lilies. I’m sorry. You sure you don’t want me to just throw them away? This must suck for you!”

  I smile blandly as I sign for the weekly bunch of lilies, which Bowie sends as an eerie reminder of what he plans on doing to my brother when he’s eventually released. Mike, the delivery guy who religiously delivers my symbolic flowers of death each and every Friday, is now on first-name terms with me and can even tell you the date of my birthday.

  Mom and Dad, if you can still call them that, have thrown themselves even more heavily into their work since publicly disowning their son. They pretty much mentally did the same to me in the process. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re engaging in a bit of extra-marital activities, seeing as they were having problems long before that fateful evening. They’ve been like passing ships in the night for as long as I can remember. The house, my once childhood home, is now dead space, still in mourning after the loss o
f its son, while it closes in tightly around its only daughter.

  “It’s ok,” I reassure Mike with a shrug, “it keeps me sane having our weekly visits.” I offer a giggle, but then blush and look away when he smiles in such a way that suggests he thinks I’m hitting on him. “I mean, I don’t have many visitors, that’s all.”

  “Ok, cool,” he replies, turning away and looking hurt by my obvious dismissal. “I guess I’ll see you next Friday then.”

  “I guess,” I sigh more deeply than I intended to, before watching him escape the awkwardness of the situation by retreating back to his van. Eventually, I look down at the lilies and inhale their sweet fragrance at the same time as closing the door. The flowers are placed on top of the kitchen counter where they’ll sit until I can face treating them to a vase full of water.

  Before I allow the deafening silence to hit me, I sit cross-legged on the sofa and switch on South Park, losing myself in the comforting profanity which begins to blast out through the surround sound system. It momentarily halts the full force of my depression, something that frequently threatens to hit me at any given point of the day.

  My heart suddenly leaps in shock over an unfamiliar sound buzzing at my side; my phone is ringing. It can only be one of four people: Mom, Dad, Mercy, or Matt. Sadly, it’s Dad, a near enough perfect stranger now, but decide to answer it anyway.

  “Hi,” I answer flatly, still staring at the animated figures filling up the TV screen. To be honest, I’m likely to completely switch off after a few minutes of listening to his monotone voice. He’s only calling to tell me he won’t be back tonight and to use the credit card to get whatever I want in for dinner.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” cue my eyes to roll back like the cliché teen I should be. It’s a pity I feel like anything but. “Listen, I’m not gonna make it home tonight and I know your mother is swamped at work, so use the credit card to get whatever you want.”

  “Sure,” I reply, sounding purposefully devoid of all emotion.

  “I love you, sweetheart,” he says before hanging up. His little attempt at affection will keep the guilt at bay for another day or so. It’s certainly not for my benefit.

  Checking the clock and grimacing over the fact it’s time to get my ass up and ready for school, I contemplate the day ahead of me. At least it’s Friday and I can escape the place for two whole days. Escape to where though? My mausoleum of a house? My thoughts hit me full force as I hover by Grant’s locked room next to the front door. Without any conscious thought process, I find my hand slipping over the simple, metal handle, applying pressure to the point where I hear a click, and then…

  The doorbell chimes with a shrill sound ringing through my ears. It must be Mercy; Matt never rides with me to school anymore. I made him stop when everything turned to shit. At school, he is Bowie’s friend, and I am not…at all. We can only be friends in our own territories. A clear boundary of ownership over my best friend was silently agreed upon between Bowie and me. We’re two enemies who happen to have one special person in common. Besides, I refused to taint Matt’s relationships and his reputation, which, after some initial protests, he eventually came to accept.

  Grant is in prison, my parents are practically non-existent, which leaves me. Call me a scapegoat but there is no denying that as far as everyone in this town is concerned, I am infected with the same evil as my brother.

  I pull the door closed with a click again and let go of it like it suddenly burns. It seems today is another day I won’t be able to face the place where death lay its ugly head to rest for a while.

  The week before it happened

  Amelia, 15

  “Ewww, you guys are gross!” I could have easily predicted to have come home from school to find my brother sucking face with his girlfriend, Sam Phillips. In fact, I should have already had my face screwed up, ready and waiting, even before walking through the door. This, ladies and gentlemen, has recently become my very own live-action soap opera, except there are no twists, turns, or cliff-hangers, just saliva and plenty of tongue.

  Chucking my bag on top of Grant, who doesn’t attempt to move after I’ve walked in on their make-out fest, he emits a growling noise akin to a Silverback defending his pad. He then swiftly grips hold of the strap of said bag and hauls it across the living room, where it lands in a sad slump. Sam giggles over our theatrics but continues to cup my brother’s face while she sucks tongue with him.

  “Can’t you go and grope one another at her place? I wanna watch TV!” I pout and proceed to pick up the remote to put it on anyway, a long-established tradition since I was old enough to operate it without supervision. Just because Grant discovered hormones and the fact that his dick does more than just pee, does not give him ownership rights over the communal living area. After all, this is a place where normal people like to congregate without physically attaching themselves to another person and should be treated as such.

  “TV rots your brain,” Grant mumbles in between kissing his girlfriend, who I actually really like. “Plus, Bowie is there, sucking face with his latest squeeze.”

  Ah yes! Bowie Phillips, apparently named after his Mom’s favorite pop star. A man who was inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, the legendary Goblin King, David Bowie. Who knew such a star would have his name blasphemed by Sam’s asshole little brother, who is nothing more than a walking, talking, cliché ‘it’ crowd jock, who loves himself as well as anything in a skirt!

  Of course, being just a fraction over sixteen years old, he’s only discovered the latter in the last few years, but did he discover them with a bang! The boy is constantly surrounded by a harem of girls who have just discovered their own hormones and as such, are constantly preening and parading themselves in front of him. They remind me of a muster of peacocks in reverse, spreading their plumage for their potential mate to ogle at without apology. Thank God my hormones have decided to remain dormant for a little while longer. The thought of shoving one’s tongue inside of another person’s mouth is no more appealing than the idea of doing it with a dog, which likes to lick his own butt and consume other animal’s crap just for kicks.

  Thankfully, I don’t even enter on Bowie’s radar, which is more than fine with me. Grant, on the other hand, is acceptable to like, according to the little horn dog. It’s only because, he too, is known for being another self-loving jock who has had his fair share of girlfriends. But I have to give it to my brother, since Sam, there has been no one else that has made him even look up from his current position with her. In fact, it’s pretty much how you’ll find them ninety-nine-point nine percent of the time. He is all about making her happy, and woah betide any other male that takes an interest in her because, in true Neanderthal style, he’s likely to begin dancing around like the aforementioned Silverback at the same time as beating his chest and baring his teeth.

  “Well, why don’t you go over there, where you can all suck face in one, confined space, far, far away from decent people?” I smirk and throw myself onto the end of the same sofa as them with as much of a bounce as I can, just to be that extra bit annoying. I proceed to scan through my favorites and decide on a classic; an old episode of Ren and Stimpy.

  “Do you mind?! Just because you don’t have a boyfriend!” He nudges his big smelly foot against my thigh, though sadly for him it only encourages me to turn the volume up even louder.

  “Would you really want me to? Would you want to come in and see me orally attached to some dumbass boy from school?” I raise my brow, watching his facial expressions change, obviously contemplating this rather unpleasant thought.

  “Actually, no, never get a boyfriend!” he replies, pulling Sam up to sit against him. “I’d have to beat the living shit out of him!”

  “Not a problem!” I tell him without moving my eyes away from the TV screen where the two famous characters are currently living inside the carcass of a whale. The gory, animated scene still seems a lot more appealing than dating.

  “Best n
ot to Millie, they smell and take up way too much time!” Sam giggles, prompting Grant to glare at her like she has truly insulted him. Knowing better, I prepare myself for the ensuing mating ritual that’s bound to come with this sort of glare, one which is most likely going to end in something that doesn’t involve clothing.

  “Oh really? Care to join me in my smelly pit where you can really give me some of your time?” he propositions her with a wicked grin before pulling her up to her feet. They’ve recently discovered sex and when my parents aren’t home, which is also ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, they are more than vocal about it. Sam laughs as he chases her around the room before eventually hauling her over his shoulder and carrying her back to his ‘pit’ of a room, looking every bit the caveman he apparently is.

  “Remember to wrap it! You don’t want him reproducing!” I shout and turn the volume up to its maximum setting, in the hopes that I can drown out all the grunting and moaning. I do not need to listen to that kind of horror going on.