HIM & HER

By Kathryn Chinn

A woman by the name of Rose finds herself entangled in other individuals' dark pasts after suffering her own graphic abuse. Rose helps with the rehabilitation and recovery of these souls that are not lost just yet. These men and women have a story to tell and find themselves tangled in memory as they sit with her and listen to wise words of someone that has been through what they have been through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885050531

Book preview

Contents

Chapter 1: Wow

Chapter 2: Rose

Chapter 3: Rose

Chapter 4: Rose

Chapter 5: Mary

Chapter 6: Mary

Chapter 7: Mary

Chapter 8: Rose

Chapter 9: Rose

Chapter 10: Jenny

Chapter 11: Derrin

Chapter 12: Rose

Chapter 13: Brad

Chapter 14: Renee

Chapter 15: Adam

Chapter 16: Carrie

Chapter 17: Mary

Chapter 18: Bri-Anne

Chapter 19: Rose

Chapter 20: Alex

Chapter 21: Alex

Chapter 22: Alex

Chapter 23: Mary

Chapter 24: Bri-Anne

Chapter 25: Eric

Chapter 26: Rose

Chapter 27: Derrin

Chapter 28: Dmetri

Chapter 29: Brad

Chapter 30: Rose

Chapter 31: Eric

Chapter 32: Rose

Chapter 33: Dmetri

Chapter 34: Renee

Chapter 35: Brad

Chapter 36: Derrin

Chapter 37: Rose

Chapter 38: Brad

Chapter 39: Rose

Chapter 1

Wow

My face burned and felt like ice while Chris’s strikes came and came again. I could tell that I was swollen, and I knew that I would be bloody and look like a raccoon afterward. There weren’t any makeup products out there that would cover that mess up completely, none that I could use anyway. Everything felt like painful pressure, and I knew once he stopped, I would hurt like hell.

Fuck it.

Holy shit! I yelled inside my mind.

Shortly after that, I gave up completely. Unfortunately, at that point, I went to sleep. I thought that was what my body wanted too because I blacked out into a world where there was absolutely nothing. There were no dreams. Instead, there were pleas—pleas to get out of the situation I was in and run like hell away from that man. My body wanted for that whole ordeal to be over with. It was hot. Ice cold, burning, and hot.

My thoughts were still kind of there, and I thought about how my face wanted Chris to stop.

"God damn it, Chris, stop!"

Then everything stopped. I slept there for God knows how long. When I woke up, I had no recollection of what happened until I felt my face, and everything flooded back to me like magic. How could I forget the terror that I just experienced?

At that point, Chris was hovering over me, clenching his teeth in anger, trying with all his strength to control himself from beating me even more. His breath was deep and fierce. His face was red and showed almost no sign of mercy. The look in his eyes was as if he was about to ball. I felt as though he should have been sorry for what he did, yet at the same time, I wished he would get the hell off me so I could run away and never look back at his ass.

I felt my face. I was devastated at that point because my face was swollen and sticky. I assumed that what I was feeling was blood, seeing that this was not the first time he had done this to me. I could barely open my eyes, and what I saw shocked me. Chris was still on top of me with fierce tears in his eyes. I did not want to do anything to agitate him even more, so I did nothing but lie there and look at him.

I tried to look into the distance of the room to avoid contacting this creature of a boyfriend, yet my eyes were blurry and filled with a number of my own tears, which I wanted to start flowing. My nose was so stuffed and filled with blood that it almost seemed like it could project itself across the room if I were to try to breathe out of it.

Holy crap.

Holy crap was right. Chris started to jerk himself forward, so I closed my eyes tight as his blows started to come yet again. I tried to scream, but nothing came to me. That time I was awake for his blows, and they hurt way more than the first time (at least for a bit) while he hammered down on my face. I started to have flashbacks of my life and what I have done. I felt as though this would be the end of me.

This man is going to kill me! I screamed at myself.

At that moment, all I did was think about this man killing me and about how I was going to get out of the mess I was in. I struggled to come to terms with this man’s rage for years.

Everything stopped. Chris dismounted from on top of me, and I found that everything was as peaceful as having never met this man. I found myself thinking of ways to get away. I wanted to leave him so badly, but I knew the love that I shared with him and believed in my heart that he could change. My chance to do exactly what my mind was telling me to do arrived.

Chris watched me stumble to my feet, and I could partially see that he was racing toward me as fast as the first blows to my face came. I was tackled to the ground, and I knew from that, that this was not where it would end. That scared me so badly. I knew that I was losing that battle and fast.

I had no idea of the pain level that someone was supposed to feel while being strangled by another person’s hands, but I felt nothing except the struggle I was having to breathe. I could not breathe but just a tiny bit. I gargled and tried to cough, but I was getting nowhere.

Then I spoke through gritted teeth and gasps for breath, Baby, stop. C’mon, Chris.

I gasped for air, trying my hardest to get him to stop strangling me with his hands. I felt even more pressure on my eyes, and I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream, but nothing came to me except for gargling words that were not very audible.

C’mon…

I tapped his arms and his hands as he continued to suffocate me. Spit and foam came out of my mouth as I fought for the chance to breathe again. Until that very moment, I had no idea of how painful it was to die.

Baby… I gargled

I put my hand on his chest and started to rub him in an attempt to calm him down. As the life started to drain out of me and my eyes turned red, he released his grip from around my neck.

This was the abuse that I had gone through for longer than I could remember. That was all that it was. There was no more love between the both of us. Chris had gone so far into the state that he was in that I did not recall there ever being a time when we were happy. His possessive ways had demolished any hope for us in the future. I felt sympathy for this man that was before me, and it was pathetic.

Chris rolled onto his side on the floor, and I took up position next to him, still sticky and bloodied from the attack on my life. I looked up through swollen eyes at his face and reached my hand out to caress him. I wanted nothing in this world more than for him to change his ways. I felt as though we could have worked things out if he just stayed as calm as he was right now, just lying on that floor. As I pet his face, I saw that he was starting to fall asleep, so I started to think, What just happened? Why did he go off like that? What did I do wrong?

My thoughts became repetitive, and I felt as though I must do something to correct my own behavior to please him. So I got up off the floor and entered the kitchen. I looked around for a bit and found food to make. I turned to the sink and found that the first thing that I must do was get that sticky blood off my face. I did not want to see myself in the mirror right then and there, so the kitchen sink seemed efficient enough to rid my skin of this abuse.

I looked to the living room floor and saw that there was splattered blood around the area that I was attacked in. I felt that my nose did most of that damage. Thankfully enough, I had not touched my nose because I knew right then was the worst time to even try to breathe out of it. I mean, seeing that this was not the first time that he had done this to me, I learned not to mess with my nose. The first time I did touch my nose, it caused it to bleed way more than it needed to.

I was as quiet as a mouse as I started to cook dinner and found that the smell of the food had Chris stirring, and he got up. The look on his face was of death. He had a look in his eyes that I had never quite seen before. He was truly giving up on us.

"God damn it! he screamed. What the fuck are you doing?"

Chris, I… Calm down, I whined.

Get out, bitch! he screamed.

Okay, wow…I was just trying to make you happy, I said.

"No, you weren’t! You were trying to fucking poison me! Get out!" Chris screamed at me.

I went toward the room that Chris and I shared, but that didn’t work out. Chris grabbed me and pushed me into the bathroom. I tried to get out of the bathroom when I heard a moment of silence, yet the door was blocked off. I could not get out at all.

"God damn it, woman! I’m calling the cops! Get off me. Get off me, woman! Help! Help!" he yelled.

I heard Chris smashing things around in the house as he yelled things that made absolutely no sense at all. I needed to get out of that bathroom. I tried the window, and it was unlocked. For some reason, a part of me wanted to stay back and work things out with him. That was not what happened, though.

"Get away from me!" I heard him scream.

Bam!

*****

This was my life. My name is Rose, and that guy used to be Chris. What I meant by used to be was that he killed himself that night when he almost killed me. He must have thought it was better to kill himself than to live with the regret of living with what he was. After all the yelling and screaming was over, I heard a shot and blacked out. I jumped out of that bathroom window, ran like hell down the road, and called the cops at my friend Bella’s house. That’s how scared I was. I didn’t look back as I ran, and I didn’t want to either. I thought that I was going to lose my life that day, and thank God I didn’t because I know where I am in life today.

I started to think about the situation I was in that night and pondered what may have gone on in his head. I thought about the things that I could have done differently and dwelled on what may have been the cause of the aggressiveness that this man had before he killed himself. I thought back to what could have happened with us if he had not been aggressive and what could have prospered.

There was a point in time when I wanted children with this man. I wanted the whole beautiful home and a white picket fence thing and thought that could have been us. We could have been so much more than the pathetic aggressor and victim. I always thought that I was the one doing stuff wrong, and I never—not once—told on him for the things that he was doing. To this day, I believe that Chris took advantage of that. I never called the cops on him because I believed that he was changing. I truly wanted a life with him.

Chapter 2

Rose

December 12, 2010, was our anniversary date, Chris and I, I mean. His full name was Christopher Redwig, and my full name is Rose Marie Chadwick. I thought a lot about my last name being the same as his, but I don’t think he ever wanted to go that far with me.

Fantasies.

I lived in a fantasy land back in 2010, basically obsessing over Chris, whom I had a major crush on at the time. My heart pounded every time I was around the man. Sometimes I found myself in lust with him and daydreaming about what I wanted to do to him.

Chris was tall. He was maybe around six feet and three inches or better when I met him, yet that could have been my imagination because of how small I was. Me? I was five feet and three inches to his lanky body. I knew I had to find a way to win him over, yet all I liked to wear back then was pants and a T-shirt to match. My hair was long. But I didn’t think that he would like the color, so I dyed my hair brown. I was a blond, but as I said, I did not think that he liked it and was trying my hardest to get his attention. At the time, I didn’t wear makeup, so I started wearing makeup to get him to look at me.

So eventually, I approached him one day and said hi to him. I was trying to start a conversation with him, but I was a little awkward with it. He liked it, though, and from that day forward, we hung out and bonded. We began socializing with our friends, and they approved of our