Tortured Dreams

Prologue

Prologue

People love a good horror story, especially when it is real. I have a Ph.D. in History. I wrote my thesis on the evolution of torture as a crime deterrent in the Middle Ages. I didn't set out to write that as my thesis, but like everything else, a thesis evolves. It went over well and I am currently turning it into a book for the layman. My name is Aislinn Cain and my life is a horror story.

Currently, I live in Washington State. I attended the University of Washington for grad school and haven't returned to my roots yet. Those are firmly planted in the Mid-West. Missouri, to be exact, and to be more exact, Columbia, Missouri, home of the Tigers, Shakespeare's Pizza and Sub Shop.

I do intend to return. My studio apartment is too small and there are way too many people in Seattle for my taste. I don't go out much, but then I never really have. I don't like crowds. I don't like being forced to meet new people.

Physically speaking, I'm healthy as a horse. I am 5 foot, 3 inches tall, I weigh 130 pounds, I have a kickboxing rig set up in the studio apartment as well as a Tread-Climber. I work out for an hour every day.

Mentally, I'm slightly broken. I suffer from a severe anxiety disorder that almost kept me from getting any degrees, let alone my Ph.D. Then, there is the pesky personality disorder that lies somewhere in my fractured psyche. They call it A-Typical Sociopathic Tendencies. I lack the ability to feel empathy or sympathy. I am hard to get angry, but once there, it is an almost uncontrollable rage. I ignore most of what society considers "reasonable," replacing it instead with a set of morals and values that I can understand. I do this because if I don't, I have no morals or values.

But my mental condition is something to be understood later, when everything has been explained. To try to understand it now is to try to do a jigsaw puzzle without half the pieces.

My skin is too dark to be considered fair, somewhere in my Scottish ancestry there must have been an Italian or someone else of Mediterranean descent. My hair is brown, unless dyed burgundy. My eyes are brown, like the color of good coffee. I chew my fingernails and I smoke too much. I like caffeine and I drink a ton of soda, hence the exercise routine. You never know when you'll need to run a mile, so to work off the soda and cigarettes, I exercise every day.

Currently, I have a black eye, a chipped tooth and am recovering from my shoulder being out of socket. This explains why there are three other people in my normally vacant apartment. My best friend, Nyleena Clachan, who doubles as my cousin, is fretting in the kitchen, cleaning it like the Queen of England might drop by for a visit. The other two are men.

If Adonis was built like a body builder, this guy would have been the model. The man could probably wrestle a dragon to the ground bare handed. He is at least 6 foot, 5 inches tall, with tanned skin, close cut blonde hair that is so blonde it looks white. His shoulders are probably the same width as I am tall. His legs could crush a cinder block. He has blue eyes that seem kind and belie the overly accentuated body. The bones on his face seem hard and sculpted. I knew women that would kill for cheekbones like his.

The other is his exact opposite. He might be 6 foot. He has dark hair, almost black, but not quite. He has eyes darker than mine. Skin a shade or two lighter and about two days worth of stubble growth. He is wearing a T-Shirt announcing some brand name beer. He is in faded blue jeans with spots that are getting thin enough they will be holes the next time he washes them. His tennis shoes look as old as me. He is thin; there is muscle, but not as large or as defined as his companion. To be honest, he looks like he has just cleaned up after a six week bender. His shirt is even wrinkled.

I had been introduced to them both three days earlier, while I lay in a hospital bed. I had been recovering from a violent attack after someone had broken into my apartment. They had explained to me then that his fingerprints had matched those involved with a number of rapes in the area. I was willing to bet money, that it was all going to be past tense.

I am not a good victim. I look like I should be. Quiet, petite, alone, but looks can be deceiving. My would-be rapist had figured that out pretty quickly. A cleaning company had been through the house and removed all the blood. I was sleeping on the couch since my bed hadn't been replaced yet. Most people would not be able to stay in the place where they were attacked, but I had no emotional qualms about it.

However, we'll come back to all of this. This is not where my story begins. It begins eighteen years earlier, when I am eight years old.