3. After

Camille wakes up again around four. She can’t sleep with Matthew in her bed. She loved him dearly, but she couldn’t bear to have another person in such vulnerable proximity of her body.

Matthew is fast asleep. He has always been a heavy sleeper. She carefully slides out of bed and shuffles across the hall to the bathroom.

She runs the tap and fills up the tub. She strips out of her clothes and takes a look at herself in the mirror. There were bruises on her breasts and in between her legs. On her neck, there was a long red mark that ran across. She could still feel the pain of a blade against her throat.

Camille turns away from the mirror and sinks into the tub. She closes her eyes and lets her body soak in cold water.

Forty eight hours ago, Camille made three mistakes that cost her the way she would live the rest of her life. The first mistake was accepting a ride from Ian Kohler on her way home from a birthday party. The second was telling him that she loved stargazing. And the third was hesitating to say no.

But those weren’t mistakes. They just things that people did. Everyone at that party drank, everyone accepted rides from strangers or friends they’d made in the course of one night. Everyone laughed and danced and did things they wanted to have fun. Only one person that night went home in tears, bruises and blood.

And the mistake wasn’t hers, but Ian Kohler’s. Ian kohler who had been far more sober than her when he mislead Camille into the forest behind the quarry and purposely carried a hunting knife in his back pocket. Ian Kohler who threatened to slit her throat if she didn’t take her clothes off. Ian Kohler who took advantage of someone that was just trying to live her life and have fun.

Camille was a victim that was taking the blame for an atrocity that was committed against her. The fault wasn’t hers; the actions of a perpetrator are never of the victim’s cause. But she didn’t know that.

They often never do.