S.C.A.T. College Bk. 01 Ch. 13-14

"I... I'm sorry," Anna whimpered pathetically, falling backwards onto her ass in the wet puddle of puke.

She then scrambled back, spitting shit out of her mouth as rapidly as she could, gagging a few times, until her back hit the wall rather hard. She flailed her legs, digging her heels at the floor, where they slipped and gained no purchase against the puke and wet shit under them. It didn't seem to matter, as she kept trying to push through the wall as she screamed in pained, desperate frustration.

She hugged her knees to her chest a moment later, planting her face into them and bursting out sobbing. "I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry!"

She wailed into her knees, the tears coming fast and free, before she felt two lithe arms surround her. A wet shoulder then pressed gently to her forehead, and a shushing, comforting sound tickled her ear.

"I'm sorrrryyy!!!!!" Anna wailed, wanting to curl up and die.

"It's fine," Sam's voice was quiet and reassuring.

"No it's not!" Anna sobbed, lifting her head enough for her eyes to look at Sam through her tears, her stutter evidencing how upset she was. "I... I wanted t-t-to do this, I wanted t-to experience it, I t-t-t-told you to do it... and I lost c-c-con-con-con-control an-an-an-and hit you in an-an-anger. I-I-I-I-I am so fuh-fuh-fuck-fucking sorry!"

She plunged her head back down into her knees, the sobs wracking her entire body. Sam pulled her into a tighter embrace, doing her best to not push her hands against Anna's skin as they were still wet and smeared with shit, and she didn't want to trigger any worsening of her girlfriend's anguish. With a glance over her shoulder at the dyke, she raised her eyebrows and flicked her eyes to the door, asking for privacy so she could try to defuse everything, try to console her girlfriend who had given her an almighty slap that was still stinging.

Nodding in understanding, Laura stood from where she had been quietly remaining, letting the pile of Sam's shit in her hand and what remained of Anna's shit on her chest plop wetly on the floor. She pulled a towel off the rack and gently shuffled around the pair as the punk rocked the wailing brunette gently in her arms. The sound of the kitchen tap running a few moments later explained what she was doing.

Noticing another towel on the rack above them, Sam reached up and grabbed it. Working quickly, she wiped the shit off her hands, then scrubbed them again on the clean side, trying to get as much off of her skin, before she put her hand on the back of Anna's head and pulled her gently but tightly against her shoulder.

The brunette was shaking so violently by now that Sam's face creased with concern, before she felt the shakes get even worse. Anna made a few pathetic sounds in her chest, then before she could stop it, puked again lightly. The bile dripped out of her mouth, tinged brown by the shit that was still in there, splattering Sam's knees and thighs. The girl in her arms wailed anew at puking again on the punk, mumbling in rapid words, "I'msorryIdidn'tmeanto!".

"I'm fine, a little vomit never hurt anyone," she said reassuringly, gently. "I also understand that you reacted without thinking, and the slap surprised me, is all. If you need to hear it, I forgive you. Completely and totally, I forgive you."

Anna looked up at her with completely bloodshot eyes, her pupils wide, those eyes brimming over with tears, then seemed to just crumble at that statement of forgiveness. She surged forward, not caring that she was getting smeared in the shit and puke on Sam's chest, and howled into her girlfriend's neck, crying the hardest that the purple haired woman had ever seen or heard anyone cry.

Inside, Anna could feel herself withdrawing, her body and mind overwhelmed by its own betrayal and the shattering of the barriers she had spent years building. The thoughts, the feelings, the millions of little things bouncing around in her mind were now all screaming in sheer panic, chaotically trying their best to get as far away from the stinging rawness in her throat... the horrific scent in her nose... the disgustingly vile taste on her tongue... the dark clouds that were roiling in from the edges of her mind as her walls no longer existed.

Each sense slowly faded, until she could no longer taste the shit in her mouth, could no longer smell the acridly sour smell of puke and the Earthy nastiness of the shit that was coating both her face and Sam's body. As each sense faded, it also took with it part of the deeper walls she had built up to contain her emotions, her darkest memories, her tormented soul... All the surface walls had been shattered into pieces by the surge of fury through her mind, obliterated in one moment that was irreversible..

It was so violently unstable inside that Anna could almost hear the darkness that was flooding forth cackling with evil glee. It had finally been released from its prison that she had built around it, and she could feel its claws starting to dig into every surface of her mind. It absolutely terrified her, and she started slamming closed all the doors she could to all the darkest parts of her conscious thoughts, but it was futile, as the doors were erased moments later by the laughing, maniacal darkness.

"I love you," Sam whispered, a tiny, fleeting beacon of light in the overwhelming dark of her mind. "It's okay, I'm fine, really."

"I.... luh.. luh-luh... luh-vuh...!" Anna managed between sobs, before her stutter took over completely. Her mouth froze, half open but not moving, with her sobs the only sound coming out.

"It's okay, babe," Sam kissed her forehead, before wiping away the shit off her lip a moment later. "I've been hit harder, by people actually wanting to hurt me. I understand that your body reacted despite you wanting to get through the nastiest part of discovering what scat is all about, and I could see it in your eyes right after that you were as surprised as I was. It was my fault. I pushed you to go first, and when you asked me to show you the nastiest bits, I went too hard, too far, too fast, and I should have warned you what I was about to do. All of that means you didn't mean to hit me, there was no intent, you just acted subconsciously."

Anna, still sobbing, nodded, her mouth not working, her mind darkening so quickly she was powerless to stop it.

"You could never hurt me," Sam said, taking Anna's face in her hands, the squish of the still wet shit not even really registering. "You could beat me black and blue, and you still could never hurt me. You're a gentle, if quite kinky, soul. This is also a very extreme fetish, and it takes a lot of getting used to, as we are all wired to think of shit as waste to be disposed of, not something to take into our mouths and smear on our skin."

Anna was listening, but her body just did not want to respond her to desperate attempts to let Sam know she was. She was already at the final fortress in the center of her mind, desperately fighting against the darkness. It had almost completely overwhelmed her, only a few last defences fighting to hold back the oncoming horde of pain and suffering she knew the darkness bore with it. She did not want to go through all of those thoughts and emotions again. She had worked so hard to suppre-

Suddenly, she felt herself jerk violently as her mind just split open, the fortress crumbling. The very last barrier, her last bastion holding the darkness back... her love for Sam... was overwhelmed and buried. The dark clouds she had managed to hold at bay for almost five terrible, painful, hellish years erupted, crashing into her viciously, ripping her to shreds as it did so, her wail of pain the only sound she could make as it happened.

Somewhere deep in her mind, a small, dark, evil voice laughed at her. She realized a moment later that it was her own voice. Her voice, dripping with evil glee, dark and demonic. Her voice if she had acted on the anger and fury she had fought back so many times. Her voice... if she had snapped like she had wanted to all those times in her past...

Now she'll know. No more need to imagine!

Everything, all of the pain, suffering, and shame of the past, all of the feelings of being ignored or forgotten or tortured because of her issues smashed into her. The feeling of being lost in the middle of her siblings by her own family, of having to "grow up" faster despite finding out she was neuro... even though she knew that they had done for her as best they could, she really did love them... all of that bottled up emotion was slipping out. Her surface mind had been so totally obliterated that the nastiest and most vile memories were escaping from even the deepest, darkest dungeons.

The momentary snap of fury, amplified to by her autism and ADHD to complete madness and total rage, had unlocked everything she had ever suppressed or kept in or avoided. It had released onto the mental battlefield everything that she had been afraid to process in the moment and had pushed aside. She had locked it away in the vault that was the past five years and simply never visited it again, until now.

It hit her like hitting a brick wall at a thousand miles an hour, and all at once. Five full, terrible, horrible years of sheer and utter torture... She screamed in agony again, as loud as she could, as she went through the most severe mental assault she had ever experienced.

She shook so violently as she relived some of the worst moments of her life that she didn't even feel Sam trying to hold her steady, didn't feel the woman brace a hand against the wall to stop them falling over. The outside world had simply disappeared, as she spun down into the hellish depths of her mind...

Of when she had finally been diagnosed as autistic at 13 on top of her ADHD, of how people at school had learned that about her and the endless torment she had been through. The bullying and the taunting, the intentional loud sounds right beside her ears, the calls of "stupid girl," "retard," and the like ringing loudly in her mind...

Of crying endless nights in bed, muffling her sobs with her pillows so her parents wouldn't hear, desperately praying to anyone that would listen to just be left alone, to not be tormented. God had not answered and the torment only seemed to increase every day, making her lose her religion overnight. That moment had exposed to her just how misled she had been into thinking there was a God by those closest to her, who had told her God listened to and answered all prayers, and the betrayal she had felt had deepened the the darkness, swallowing her whole...

Of spiralling down so far into that darkness that the blade slicing across her left forearm, the blood that ran down her arm to drip off her fingers, the pain the only thing that had kept her sane. She could almost taste the copper taste of blood, she could smell the heat of it dripping down her arm, taking her pain with it, all those years ago. She felt the blade itself in the light scars on her arms, as fresh and excruciatingly painful as the three months she had spent bleeding herself almost every day to just get through to the next day...

Of wishing she was dead... wanting to die... looking at the knife that she used to feel the calming pain on her arms and holding it over her wrist again and again, day after day. Her life had become an endless hell circling around the deepest, darkest drain, the Devil himself laughing at her suffering. She remembered touching the blade to her wrist, but not cutting it, simply dying inside her mind each time metal touched skin. Of dying little deaths each day, unsure of if she ever would finally press the blade down and move it across her skin...

Of somehow making it through, of sitting endless days in her bedroom and methodically locking everything away inside of her, cutting herself off from having to feel, process, even think about the sheer torture she had went through. It had been then that she had reinforced all her internal walls walls, building her fortress, the barriers that had finally, after four years of slow, painful progress, pushed the darkness out of her conscious mind...

Of finding out she had only succeeded in getting a scholarship to two places, despite applying for several hundred across the country and even internationally. Even then, the ones she had been awarded were specifically for neurodivergents and those with learning disabilities, charity scholarships that institutions used to appear inclusive and get government grants to fund them...

Of picking S.C.A.T. because it meant she could get the fuck out of Idaho as far as possible...

A new pain ripped through her, the darkness intensifying, as she had told Sam only a half truth about why she was here.

She had chosen to come to the East of the nation because it was the farthest away from home she could get. She also hadn't told her the full truth of her scholarship and her tortured past, of bleeding herself and wanting to die, and the guilt of all those omissions, in the state of utter agony she was in, made her heart sink to her ankles and stay there.

That shift of internal emotional weight tipped her over the edge. Her mind started to join her heart, feeling like it was sliding down her neck and body to the ground floor: Absolute, complete, utter rock bottom.

She slumped against the punk, feeling the will to be in control of her body fading as her mind simply left on its express elevator to hell... she just wanted to shut down and never wake up.

The pain was too overwhelming. It was a fire that was burning her from the inside out. It set alight anything it touched. Thoughts. Emotions. Memories. All were feeding it fuel. It raged higher... and higher...

The last tiny candle flicker of light... being in love more than she ever had been in her life before this week... being the only thing that kept her from just wanting it all to end with her own death... by her own hand. Right here. Right now. She could almost see the knife she had buried in the garden before she moved to Georgia. It was in her hand again.

Pressing down on her wrist.

Sliding sideways.

As the blood pulsed up around the cold steel, finally releasing her from her twisted, burning, tormented hell...

She felt her mind finally stop blasting her with every dark memory she had. She had gone through them all in the past minute as Sam had cradled and rocked her. The sudden stop rocked her, before she realized they were all still there, just watching her, snickering sadistically, waiting to watch her mind break.

A moment later, it did.

Her whole body felt like it weighed 400 pounds as she opened her eyes, but her her vision was blurred and she couldn't bring things into focus.

Suddenly, Anna felt herself floating above the pair of them, as if looking down at the purple haired punk cradling and rocking the shell of her, but nothing was inside anymore. Her heart and mind had hit rock bottom, and she had no will, no power, no... need anymore... to climb up the painful, difficult, challenging cliff face to recovery and to feel Sam's love again...

Anna was just... empty of everything, so horribly in pain and tortured that she was dissociating from herself and the world just to escape. She wanted to scream, she wanted to violently lash out, to feel anything...

The world slid towards darkness as she watched herself and Sam just... fade out... like she wished her life would... with the cool comforting touch of sharp steel...

"I do-don-don't feel guh-guh-guuuuuh-dah," Anna slurred out finally before her jaw went slack, slumping against Sam as her sobs slowed down, and then she just breathed heavily, almost gurgling.

"You okay, babe?" Sam asked, picking up the towel and using the cleaner side to wipe at the shit on Anna's face, cradling her there in the puddle of shit and puke around the two of them. The brunette didn't respond, didn't even meet her eyes, just more and more of her body weight leaning into the punk, who's face was furrowed with worry. "Anna? Babe?"

Laura, mostly cleaned off, peered around the door jamb as the brunette's sobs had stopped. At Sam's nod and upwards raised palm motion, she entered the washroom, gently lifting the brunette at the same time as Sam stood, her arms never leaving her.

Anna didn't seem able to get her feet under her, and didn't even seem to be trying. She was completely dead weight, no effort or even conscious muscle movements.

The dyke's face fell into worry as she saw the glassy eyed look on Anna's face, the emeralds dulled, looking at nothing but still open, her mouth open, shit and spit drooling out... the only movement was her breathing, but there was simply no one home anymore in her mind.

"Let's get you cleaned up," Sam whispered, kissing Anna's cheek, not caring that it was still partially covered in shit. To her dismay, the brunette didn't even seem to recognize that her girlfriend was even there, and the punk felt her heart tear in half as tears sprung from her eyes.

She gently shook her shoulders as Laura took Anna's weight, then shook them harder, but the green eyes were just... blank... unfeeling... there was no longer any sparkle there... those bottomless emeralds of emotion were suddenly capped off, just...dull... holding nothing...

"Anna? Babe?! Anna?!?! ANNA!?!?!?!?"

Chapter 14 (TW)

Sam frowned, rubbing her fingers through her hair once again. She was still getting little chunks of Anna's lunch out of the deepest bits near her scalp despite the long, hot shower that all three women had taken together.

Thinking about her, she looked over at the couch, where Anna lay, wrapped in a big fluffy bathrobe that Laura had provided as well as a light camping blanket, her head on the armrest. Her mouth was just slightly open, with quiet little snores coming out. That fact brought a twitch of a smile to her mouth before it was wiped out by worry.

Anna hadn't been able to stand in the shower, needing one of the two women to hold her up as she was rinsed off. Her eyes had been distant, eyelids drooped, her mouth slack even as they methodically scraped all the shit they could out of it before carefully rinsing it out.

She had been entirely catatonic the whole time.

The dyke and Sam had alternated holding her up as they had towelled her down after they had sat her on the edge of the tub after making sure she was clean. Both of them hadn't fully cleaned off, too worried about the brunette. They had both started to become even more concerned as the thousand-yard stare showed how far gone inside her own mind she was.

Sam had almost jumped for joy when Anna had started moving a little, but she was running a hand slowly across her left forearm once or twice, and only every 30 or so seconds. The movement was often accompanied by a small jerk of her body as if she had been hit with electricity, sometimes even making a gurgling sound that sounded pained as her fingers touched certain parts of her forearm.

The punk had seen something under the brunette's fingers, and after Laura had taken Anna's weight, she had leaned down to look closer...

That was when Sam had finally seen the series of 12 cut scars, extremely faint but there. They were tightly spaced just after the inner elbow, but each was distinct and separate. The punk had let out a very violent curse in shock seeing them.

The will to stand left her a moment later, falling to her knees, face in her hands, sobbing hysterically. Sam's mind recoiled in total devastation as she lost all control of her emotions, the weight of the the mental torture and pain her love had to have suffered to find solace in cutting herself tearing her apart.

Right then, Anna had made a last gurgling sound, then promptly passed out.