Without Me

Yao Xi woke up when muffled voices reached her through sleep.

At first she thought that these voices were also the product of her exuberant imagination, but when her mind woke up, she began to see the differences between dream and reality.

It took a few minutes for Yao Xi to fully wake up. Rubbing her sleepy eyelids, she began to focus her senses to understand the sounds coming from outside, and it did not take long before she recognized her grandfather's nervous voice.

She could not distinguish the words, but she was sure that he was furious at hearing his raised tone of voice.

She wondered who or what could lead Grandpa to such a state. Yao Xi was afraid that something might happen. Until recently, she remembered the gentle and worried face of Grandfather Li when he hugged her to his arms a few hours earlier, whispering comforting words.

"Something has happened," she murmured, trying to get out of bed.

She wanted to see what had happened and make sure that Grandpa was all right, but as soon as she lifted her torso to a sitting position, her aching abdominal pain made her fall back onto the pillow, without strength.

She tried again, this time with more caution, tightening her lower lip with the effort, but the effect was the same. Yao Xi's body did not listen to her at all and for the hundredth time she cursed herself for being so weak.

With no other choice, Yao Xi decided to wait, but she made a mental note to work on her physical condition as soon as her injuries were healed.

She was hopeless and she hated it!

Impatient with idle waiting, she was about to try to get up again, promising herself that she would get up even if, as a consequence, she would once again break the surgical sutures, but at the same moment the door to her room opened.

Yao Xi sharply turned her head, ignoring the dull pain that pierced in her temples with this sudden movement, and she immediately regretted it.

She found herself eye to eye with her biggest nightmare.

Here he was in front of her. Demon who visited her in dreams each night, not letting her return to reality.

He imprisoned Yao Xi's senses and crushed her soul again and again, taking p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e in her tearful screams that in her dreams were almost inaudible whispers, so that no one could hear her and save her from that hell.

Yao Xi's heart accelerated rapidly, galloping like mad and pumping blood with uncontrolled speed. It seemed to her that her veins could explode at any moment from the rush pumped by the terrified heart of blood, whose flow she heard clearly in her ears.

Ever since she was reborn, she did her best not to look into the eyes of this monster, knowing that if she would only let her guard down and plunge into them, she would lost at touch.

She did everything she could to avoid eye contact with Li Ye Han and she was happy that she had succeeded so far.

And now she was there. Completely unprepared, defenseless and exposed like a n.a.k.e.d newborn child.

Absorbed by the oceanic depth of monstrous eyes that slowly s.u.c.k.e.d her soul - mercilessly and forever. Yao Xi felt like her soul slip out of her body and rush straight to the man, surrendering to him, like on a tray, that he could do anything he wanted with her.

Yao Xi had the impression that she was tied up with hellish chains, and King Yama himself descended to enslave and devour her sinful soul.

She lost her mental clarity, she could not create even an ounce of self-denial. She wanted to break free of the claws in which this demon had trapped her, but she could not. Completely, as if the cable connecting the mind to the body of Yao Xi was suddenly broken. She had no power over the smallest nerve of her body.

She was terrified. She wanted to escape, to be forgotten, to disappear for good, to become invisible... Everything, just to get away from this damn look, that had long ago stigmatized her heart and senses. She was completely paralyzed. Just absolutely and completely paralyzed. To the extent that she couldn't catch her breath and almost suffocated herself. She was afraid to move when images from the darkest night in her two lifetimes flooded Yao Xi's mind with an uninterrupted wave- like a cascade of crushing waterfall - impossible to stop.

Yao Xi remembered when her body was lashing again and almost shivering in convulsions, when the memory of the pain tearing her skin to the bone emerged from the innermost recesses of her mind, where she threw in everything, trying to forget at all costs.

Now everything came back with redoubled strength. Every smallest scratch, every crack on her delicate skin flooded with dense brown blood, revived in the memory of Yao Xi, making her once again experience the most terrible of the previous nightmares.

As in the movie "Groundhog Day", in which the main character experiences the same day over and over again, indefinitely.

But unlike her dreams, haunting her every night, Yao Xi could not wake up now. She was awake, face to face with the beast of the darkest horror. No way to escape, despite her sincere intentions.

And just like in horror movies, the devil himself was heading towards her, emanating inhuman bestiality.

Yao Xi was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Time after time she let this man take over completely. She didn't even manage to defend herself when she was attacked by these deadly eyes.