12. Isabella's Torture

BPOV

It was a picture of Jim and a very young me sitting on a porch swing together. Jim was my mom’s old boyfriend when I was little…five years old to be exact. The man who tortured and severely abused me when my mother wasn’t around. He had made my life hell for two years and now there was a picture of him on my bedroom floor staring up at me.


My eyes immediately welled up with tears and I was breathing shaky breaths. I could hear Edward’s voice in my ear, but couldn’t make out what he was saying and I couldn’t rip my gaze away from that damn picture no matter how hard I tried. That man’s face sent chills down my spine and made my skin crawl.


No… I heard a small voice whimper.


It confused me for a second before realization hit me. Isabella. That was her fucking voice!

Oh my God…


Edward must have finally realized what my eyes were trained on, and he picked up that picture off the floor, taking it away from my frightened eyes. Reality crashed back into me at full force, with Edward’s frantic calls of my name. I turned my head slowly, trying my best to avoid letting my line of sight land on that fucking abomination again.


Tears were streaming down my face and I was trying my best to breath. Instead of hyperventilating, I seemed to be forgetting to breath back in once I had breathed out.

“Bella,” Edward’s voice was loud and firm as he took my face into his hands.

I looked into his concerned, but reassuring gaze, trying to ground myself.


“Bella, what’s wrong?! What happened?” he practically yelled. Then his eyes flicked down to my chest before they met my eyes again. “Your heart is going into overdrive….fuck,” he said desperately with beautifully furrowed eyebrows.


“Get…*gasp* rid of…*gasp* that picture.*gasp* Fuck…*gasp* I can’t…*gasp* breathe…gasp* Edward, help…” I whispered my frantic plea to him.


His eyes widened, and he quickly ripped the picture to shreds with his weird, sharp nails that apparently, appear only when he wants them to…like a cat’s claws. A second later, he scooped me up into his lap and held me tightly to him.

Once I was in his comforting embrace, he kept murmuring into my ear, repeatedly chanting, “Calm down, baby. You’re okay,” while I tried to breathe through my panic attack.


No, no, no… that small voice whispered in my head again.


I clenched my eyes shut, trying to tell myself that I was imagining her voice. Isabella was my first problem with split personality disorder when I was five years old. She stuck by me through all the abuse and was my best friend until I had to start going to a doctor for it when I was ten. A year later, her voice just disappeared. Now, with the visual reminder of that sick fuck, Jim, her voice is resurfacing.


What does that mean?


A whole ten minutes later, my breathing had calmed, and my limp body was rested against Edward’s chest while he rocked us. I didn’t want him to go out of his mind with worry anymore, so I lifted my head to look into his face.

What I saw there broke my heart. It was like he was tortured with his worry. I suddenly hated myself for causing him so much pain. I cupped his face into my small hands and kissed his lips softly in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture. When we broke apart, I could see that his features had relaxed a bit.


“Bella?” he questioned my name and left it at that. He was expecting me to explain what had just happened.


“Um...I’m sorry Edward. I didn’t know that was going to happen,” I said softly in apology.


We sat on the floor, me in his lap, and him with his back against the side of my bed. He gently kissed my forehead, then my nose, both of my tear-stained cheeks, then my chin and eventually, placed a kiss right over my heart. After he sighed a couple times, his gold gaze met mine again.

“Why? Why did that happen? Your heart’s pace was going crazy. I was so worried,” he choked out the last sentence, unable to finish.


I kissed his cool lips again, before I spoke. I kept my voice soft and soothing for his benefit, now that I was calmed down. It was clear that he was in need of some calming now. I lightly ran my fingers through his bronze locks and started to speak.

“I don’t know why that picture was in my old photo album. It wasn’t supposed to be. Um, before I go on, will you promise to look through it before we pack it? Make sure that any pictures of that particular man are not in there. If they are, destroy them, okay? Promise?” I pressed.


He nodded solemnly and reached into the box. He grabbed the photo album in question, and placed it down on the floor beside him, making sure to keep it closed. I eyed it warily before continuing on.


“Edward, let me start with explaining why I didn’t get any psychological help when I first noticed that Marie was around,” I suggested while shifting my position in his lap to get more comfortable. “I didn’t go get help, because I already knew what she was and what was going on. I am very educated on split personality disorder because I have had this problem before,” I revealed.

He gasped a bit at this information, but I continued on, fully intent on explaining everything.


“When I was five years old I was severely abused by that man. The man in the picture.” He instinctually growled, but I didn’t stop talking. “For two years, I was tortured by him. He was my mother’s boyfriend at the time, and she was so blinded by love that she didn’t see the signs I was displaying that clearly screamed ‘abused child’. It took her two and a half years to finally realize something was going on. She dumped him, and charges were filed on him. He was prosecuted and I was ordered by the court system to see a psychiatrist because of my behavioral problems. And the fact that I had this very vivid, very real ‘imaginary friend’ that I always ‘pretended’ to be,” I explained, using air quotes.

Our eyes were locked and I knew that I had his utter and complete attention.


I took a calming breath and said, “Edward, it wasn’t an imaginary friend. I had split personality when I was five years old. Her name, ironically enough, was Isabella. At my young age, some things happened differently though. Different from how they happen now with Marie. I would actually see her…like, another little girl standing right beside me. Her name was my full first name, and I started going by Bella to be able to tell us apart. We always looked the same…my mind’s mirrored image of myself, like looking in the mirror. As weird as it sounds, she was my best friend. She stuck by my side through all of the abuse, and…she knew about my shame…my embarrassment…the marks on my body, and she didn’t judge me or think that I was a ‘bad girl’, like Jim said people would think if they knew about the marks he always left on me. The marks were always discreet and easily hidden by my clothing. He said that if people saw the marks, then they would see the ‘evil’ that was inside of me. That people would hate me because of it,” I explained.


His face looked horrified at this. “I know, I know…it’s fucked up. He is a sick individual. You know, during the trial, he was found to be criminally insane and delusional. So that would explain all of his messed up views.”


“What messed up views, baby?” he whispered and tucked some of my hair behind my ear and placed a cool kiss to my cheek.


“Okay, that’s another long story in itself,” I notified him.

He nodded, silently telling me to continue.

“Okay, did you know that I’m half-Jewish?” I began.

He shook his head.

“Well, I am. And that fact sealed my doom from the beginning. It’s the reason for all of it. All of the torture and his cruel intentions towards me…a harmless five year old little girl. Not only was he not right in his head, but he was a very prejudice, racist man. He was a member of one of those radical groups…you know, like the KKK or the skinheads, or something? I was never really clear on which of those particular evil cults he associated himself with, I just knew that he was a very hateful, intolerant, arrogant man.”


Edward started lightly running his cool fingers up and down my back while keeping his gaze fixed on my face.

I sighed, and began my story. “One day, in the beginning of my mom’s relationship with him, he casually suggested that we go to church together. You know, like a family outing and I remember him saying that I would enjoy Sunday School a lot because there were other kids there that I could play with. But my mother refused, telling him about my birth father. My dad, Charlie, is Jewish. He doesn’t practice the religion by any means, but when I went to live with my mom, he made it very clear that he didn’t want me attending any of those ‘Sunday-keeping Christian churches’ and that if I was going to practice any religion at all as a child, than it would be through the Hebrew faith. My mom wasn’t religious at all, so she easily agreed with this. So, when my mom explained to Jim, that we weren’t religious and that if I wanted to learn about religion, then I would be going to a temple learn about my Hebrew heritage and practice my faith as a Jew,” I explained.

He nodded again, clearly absorbing all of this information with no problem, so I continued on.


“Well, he was not happy with that revelation at all. I could see it in his eyes...the way they instantly turned on me and went cold and hard. I was playing with my dolls in the living room when that conversation took place, and I remember feeling his eyes on me. I turned to face him after my mom went into the kitchen, and the way he just stared at me…with so much fucking hatred and anger, it really scared me. I remember running to my mom and starting to cry. She didn’t know what was wrong, but I wasn’t going to tell her that it was just because he had looked at me in a strange way. I was a big girl…five whole years old and I didn’t want her to think I was being a baby, you know?” I said sadly.


He nodded.

“She picked me up, confused about why I was suddenly so upset, but comforted me anyway before telling me to put my toys away and get cleaned up for dinner. The next day, my mom was talking to me excitedly about how nice Jim was and that hopefully he would be my ‘new daddy‘. The way her face lit up when she spoke of him made me smile. I could tell that he made her happy, and I put my initial fears of him aside, telling myself that I had imagined the whole thing. I told myself that he hadn’t really just stared at me as if I were a devil-child and he wanted to kill me to rid the world of my evil nature…” I realized some tears had started to fall when Edward wiped them away with his thumb.


I quickly composed myself and kept talking, trying to get through my horrible story.

“So that morning, Mom had to work, and she said that she was going to take me over to his house so he could babysit me. She told me that he had said that he wanted to get to know me better…you know, take me to the park, bond, or whatever.” I sniffled. “So, we get over to his house and it’s really creepy on the inside. I remember going to check out his backyard, because backyards were fun. You could play outside in them and there were usually toys back there. At least, that’s how all the backyards were that I had been to.” I paused, then sighed, “There weren’t any toys back there,” I informed him sadly.


“By the time, I came back into the house from the barren, small, and boring backyard, my mom was gone. She had left to go to work, without kissing me goodbye. The fact that I didn’t get my kiss, made me really sad. I don’t know why, but it did. He watched as I ran over to the windows at the front of the house, and stood on my tippy-toes to look out for my mom‘s car. I thought that maybe if she hadn’t left yet, then I could just run out there real quick and get my goodbye kiss, and then I wouldn’t feel so sad anymore. I missed my mom a lot when she would be gone for long days at her job, and I always tried to get affection from her whenever she was around. She had never left without kissing me goodbye before, and I didn’t understand. Had I done something wrong? Was I in trouble? How could she just forget…?” I repeated the questions that ran through my head at the time to Edward in a sad, soft voice.


He looked sad and softly pecked my lips, as if he was trying to make up for my missing goodbye kiss. I gave him a small, watery smile in appreciation and continued on.

“Anyway, so I’m at the huge windows at the front of his creepy house and he’s watching me. I can feel those cold eyes on me again. When I peek my head out and see that my mom’s car had already left, my tears started falling. I was just so devastated. I let go of the window sill and turned around to face Jim. I started to cry, saying ‘I want my mommy’ and that’s when it happened.”


I breathed in and sighed, then said, “He hit me. Smacked me right across my face. You can already guess that I started screaming from the pain. I had never felt that kind of pain before, and he had hit me really hard. That’s when he started his ranting and raving about how I was an evil child and how he was going to ‘purify me’ of the devil. He said that my Jewish heritage was ugly and evil and how ‘God doesn’t like ugly’ and how God hates me. How my father and I are going to burn in the eternal fires of damnation in hell.” I shook my head a bit. “And I mean, it’s needless to say that his long speech that he spat at me, scared the shit out of me. Telling me, a five year old, that I’m going to burn alive with my daddy and that God hates me? I was terrified. And as if that wasn’t enough, he drags me down into his basement that he says he has ‘prepared’ for me, and when we get down there, I see that it’s filled with all kinds of ugly, scary things. Weird looking tools. I know now that they were torture devices,” I finished and went silent.


A minute later, I offered as an after thought, “Um...that’s why I trip a lot,” I admitted, looking down into my lap. “One of my many injuries he gave me, was a brain concussion. It caused some swelling, and the doctors said that my balance might be affected indefinitely because of it.”

When I was finished, I looked back into Edward’s gaze. I needed to see his beautiful gold eyes for reassurance.


Edward had a haunted look on his face, in which I’m sure reflected the look on my own. He reached his hand up to my face and ran his fingertips down my cheeks, then along the sides of my neck ever so gently, as if he was afraid I would break any minute now.

After I cleared the lump in my throat, I whispered, “And that’s all I have to say about that.”


He kept his sad eyes on mine and leaned forward to press a very gentle kiss to my forehead, then enveloped me tightly in his arms. He started rocking us slowly, and whispered softly in my ear, “My Bella…I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to save you,” he apologized and continued his gentle ministrations.


I just ran my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, trying to provide him some comfort. I didn’t understand his need to always take the blame upon himself.

I whispered back in his ear, “It’s not your fault, Edward,” and sealed my promise with a kiss to his neck.


After a while he loosened his hold on me and I figured it was time to explain a little more about Isabella.


“Um, Edward?”


“Yes, Bella?” he asked, keeping eye contact with me.


“I, umm…I -”


“What is it, baby?” he asked, then started running his hands up and down my sides.


“When I saw Jim’s picture unexpectedly, and I started freaking out?”


“Mmm-hmm…” he hummed, clearly remembering my panic attack not ten minutes ago.


“Well, when I was ten years old, and I went to that court ordered counseling, they found out what was wrong with me. I was treated for split-personality disorder and was even hospitalized for three months. Shortly after that, Isabella stopped coming around. And her voice just sort of, um…disappeared from my head.”


He nodded, “Okay…”


I hesitated, but then just decided to blurt it out. “Well, when I saw his picture just now, I heard her voice again. In my head. And I’m freaking out because I don’t know what that means,” I explained in a rushed voice.


His hands on my sides stopped and after a second, he whispered, “What?”


“I heard her,” I explained further. “I mean, it was just a whisper of her voice, but I would know her voice anywhere. She still sounds exactly the same, and I am freaking out right now,” I said, my voice starting to get a little frantic.


“Okay, calm down Bella, You’re gonna get yourself worked up again.” His hands started working on my sides again. I started taking slow, calming breaths and he muttered, “We need to get you something for anxiety, sweetheart.”

I nodded. That sounded like a good idea.


“Okay, it’s going to be alright, Bella. So if this Isabella is still in your complex mind, then that’s okay. Okay? We’ll still be here and Carlisle is still going to help you with this, baby. Nothing is going to change, alright? It’s gonna be okay…” he said softly with a reassuring gaze.


“Even if her personality is still strongly prominent in my mind, and she eventually decides to come out and say ‘hi’? What about when I start acting like a five-year old, Edward?” I asked him, trying to make him see the complications of this.


He nodded. “I thought of that, Bella. And it’s still going to be okay,” he said.


I started to shake my head and he sighed, exasperated. “I love you, alright? Bella, I love you. All of you. Any other personality of yours that is stuck inside your head, I will love too. They are all apart of you. Don’t you see that, baby? These personalities…however many there are, are all broken pieces of you. And when you put them all together, they make up what matters most to me in the whole world. You. It’s all you. And it’s going to be okay,” he said firmly. “Even if I get to meet this Isabella, and it causes you to act like a timid five year old little girl, I will still be here and I will take care of you. Do you understand?” he said with conviction.


I just shut up and nodded. I wish I could stop doubting him. I know that he really does love me.


“Okay, how about you go downstairs and watch some TV while I finish up in here. I’ll go through this album,” he said while pointing to the white book at his side, “and then we can be on our way. The family misses you, and it’s time for your dinner, baby,” he said.


I looked at the clock, noticing that it was close to 7pm. I nodded and he helped me up off his lap. I walked out of my room and went downstairs without looking back.