I am the bogeyman. I don’t exist.
As a twenty three years old, Freya Flynn should of been living the carefree life of any other young woman, but instead found herself locked inside a cage, banging her head against the wall as she tried to save herself. Living proof of a horrific childhood in foster care, she was carelessly passed from abuser to abuser, never truly being safe no matter the families or caregivers she received. When she was only thirteen, she was raped for the first time and became the victim of the system. At eighteen, she was raped a second time and kidnapped, becoming a casualty of random chances. Snatched off the street on her stumble home from a night club while a freshman in college, she found herself eye to eye with a man with no true human heart within his chest. Dale Bentley was her abductor, and had been wrong in his adventures for past years. Chaining her to the floor in his basement, he subjected her to horrors, raping and defiling her, but never truly breaking the resilient spirit cast within. Two weeks into her month long potential capture, police arrived on scene and executed the man and setting her free. Now as she finds herself isolated and wary of human touches and intricate emotions, she found herself finally letting people in.
“.... But you have to remember, we are so much more than a product of our childhood. We can’t let the past define who we are now.”
Opening herself up to strangers never came easily for the young woman, yet she feels her icy resolve melting as her coworkers began u leashing something she never understood. Horrified to find herself wanting to make friends following her regal composure to remain isolated, she felt a companionship towards Lucy. As the nights waned closer, she turned towards being a saving grace to other woman by brutally attacking their soon to be rapists, before fleeing into the shadows again. With the introduction of Jim, a delivery man to the company she works for, she sees a future blooming with him, before the letters started appearing. Baiting her, taunting her, forcing her hand to save her friends she’s making. With a drunken encounter that lead it Lucy kissing her, Lucy vanished without a trace that night and as she tried to figure out what was going wrong she found herself slipping into love.
“... We all have darkness within us, Freya.”
After taking up the offer of the frail, cancer surging older woman, Jean, from work, she agreed to dinner with the lonely widow against a all her better judgement. Seeing it as a promising movement towards her future, dinner seemed to be an exciting turn. As the two ladies toasted a bottle of wine, Freya found her head swimming before falling unconscious. Waking up horrified and confused, she saw Lucy’s amputated ankle served at the dinner table, with both Lucy and Jim tethered to chairs as well. Fighting against Jean, she sees it belongs to a man, the facade a lie the entire time. Shocked to see it as Shane Bentley, the father of her abductor, she sees her life crumbling. Watching him slit Jim’s throat, she sees herself cracking into something bulletproof. Stabbing him repeatedly, she scoops up the money beneath his mattress and takes off to become one with the shadows all over again.
I am the bogeyman. I don’t exist.