Henrietta made a dash for the kitchen door again, but he was far too quick. He gripped her neck and flung her across the table so quickly that the small, frail girl skidded across the wood like a stone along water’s surface. She hit the opposite brick wall so harshly that I could hear her bones crack. Though she was out of my limited range of visibility, I knew that she would be dead. The strength of these monsters was not found in mercy.
That was enough to force me out of my hiding place.
‘No, stop!’ I shouted as I burst out of the cabinet and looked around. I saw no man where he should have been, only an empty kitchen and a limp girl lying on the floor near the oven. I saw a fan of blood along the wall and the floor, splattered from her ruptured form when that inhuman strength threw her across the room. Now her lifeless face rested motionlessly on the stone floor, her battered and broken body bleeding out from her open wounds.
I couldn’t stifle my tears, and I cried over the innocent child’s death. I sobbed out loud. Though I covered my mouth with my hands, my cries could be heard throughout the large kitchen.
Soon there was laughter above my sobs. I looked around, anxiously trying to see where the murderer was, but I couldn’t see anyone in the room with me.
His pale face, like a beautiful porcelain mask hiding the monstrous fiend beneath, appeared out of the shadows as he slowly emerged from his hiding place and entered the light.
‘Luckily I got to you before one of the others could,’ he grinned that wicked smile again. ‘Otherwise I might not have been able to bring you back to Rosa in one piece. You do look appealing.’
‘You monster!’ I picked up a knife from the counter and charged in a blind rage, blade in fist and ready to strike. The creature didn’t flinch at my attack, he stood his ground and watched me with some morbid intrigue. I thrust the blade and pierced the delicate fabric of his dark shirt, pushing deep into his stomach. But when I retracted the blade, it hadn’t even stabbed through him. Instead, it was bent and curved.
He snatched my wrist so fast that I dropped the knife, and he held the back of my neck in his sturdy grip.
‘Rosa might decide to keep you after all. You are definitely a fighter: she needs those.’ His cold, chilling breath snaked into my ear and down my spine. ‘Or she may simply make you desert. You certainly smell sweet enough.’
He laughed as he took a deep sniff of my hair. I fought him as he began dragging me off into the corridor, but his strength was too much for me to resist.
I was on my knees in the garden of the dark mansion, bathed in moonlight next to the rest of the inhabitants of the governess’ home. The slaves, and even Rhoda, we were all equal in the eyes of the menacing madmen and shadows surrounding us.
A large pile of pale white limbs, hollow inside like a statue, was being built by the second as the white demons gathered up the pieces of their foes. I wondered if the governess was somewhere in that pile.
One by one we were dragged off of our knees and taken to the ashy brown mistress of blood that I'd known over the last few years as Rosa, one of the governess’ regular guests. It turned out Rosa was responsible for the attack on the mansion and had her own agenda in mind with the governess and her coven.
Her wild-looking lackeys brought the slaves up to her to examine. That is, the few slaves who made it to her before the untamed hyenas ripped them to shreds and fed on their blood, or stopped to fight among themselves. She would make a quick nod, and that would seal their fate. A nod to her left meant that they were to be changed into one of them, another soldier to build her army of darkness. A nod to her right meant that they were to become supper.
I saw that strange man from earlier staring at me, the one with dark hair and that curious expression on his brow as he cocked his head to the side to study me. Charles, he said his name was. But he wasn’t my Charles, who I was still searching for in the crowd.
I was gripped by my hair and pulled up to my feet by one of the many soulless drones under Rosa’s spell, and forced to stand before her.
‘You.’ Interest sparked behind her calculating garnet eyes. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Weren’t you supposed to be sold to Charles and turned?’
‘Tonight was the night that he was going to change me,’ I said flatly, rage beginning to boil once more. ‘You interrupted that.’
‘Oh well,’ Rosa said, looking me from the ground up. I waited to see if I was to become one of the damned, or another body to add to the feat for later.
‘Where is Charles?’ I asked her.
‘The one that was going to change you?’ She asked, and I confirmed. She tossed a glance over to the gruesome pile of hands, arms, legs, torsos and heads drenched in dark demon blood behind her. My stomach sunk and tears stung my eyes so quickly that they fell almost instantaneously.
‘There was a deep bond between you two, I can see that. That is a shame, because I was going to keep you. But now that I know how much he meant to you, and how much hatred you must feel toward me for killing him, I’m afraid that you are too great a risk.’
With one solid nod to her right, I was dragged off and thrown into the crowd of slaves that were just as frightened as I was, next to the pile of demon pieces. Rosa’s watch dogs circled us like legged vultures, ensuring that none of us escaped. I chose to fall to my knees and crawl to the pile.
I began digging and tossing aside body parts, and they crackled and rolled like chalky boulders. Charles couldn't really be here, he just couldn’t be. I found pieces of most of the familiar faces I knew from the governess’ gatherings. I even choked back bile as I found Yvette’s head in the pile, eyes wide open with the shock of her death.
I dug, and dug, and my hopes were rising as I found no trace of Charles.
Until I did. I saw beautiful, tousled, dirty blonde hair beneath a twitching arm, and I pulled with all of my strength. But still, my strength just wasn’t enough to pull him from out of the rubble.
I pulled and pulled, but he, along with the bodies piled on top of his, were too heavy to be moved by my weak hands. By then, I had gathered an audience of observers as the slaves stared at me, confused.
‘Please, somebody help me,’ I begged.
They stood right where they were, silent. Their faces, both snow pale and dark chocolate alike, were blank and empty of anything but fear as I pulled to remove Charles from this pile. He didn’t belong here with the others, it wasn’t how a man of his infinitely kind stature should die.
‘Please,’ I sobbed again.
Finally, a young man knelt down beside me and took a hold of Charles’ exposed arm, pulling at his wrist as I pulled at his elbow. Then another man pulled, and even a young woman wrapped her fingers around his jaw and pulled.
When Charles was free, they all let go and backed away as fast as they could. I clutched his coat and held his cold stiff body to my own as I sat there. I was horrified when I opened my eyes.
All that was left of Charles was his chest, an arm, and his head wrapped in his coat. But still I would not let go.
Charles was dead.
There was commotion among that group of slaves around me; we, who were chosen to die. They were done sorting out who was going to live and who was to be eaten, and apparently Rosa believed in wasting no time when it came to satiating the thirst of her loyal soldiers. There were twenty at least, including Rosa, who were closing in on us from all sides.
I refused to let go of Charles. If I was going to die, I was going to do it with him in my arms. That was how I was going to die, and that was final. If Charles was not with me in the end, then I wasn’t dead, simple as that.
I wrapped my arms tighter around his fragment of a body, burrowing them beneath his coat until I felt something. It was soft and smooth, and cool against my fingers as it partially hung out of his inside pocket. I fished the mystery item from its home and clutched it in my petrified fingers.
It was my red ribbon. He’d kept it after all of these years, and now, as I saw the brig
ht red eyes in the darkness around us close in, he was with me after all.
The first scream was followed by many, and my ribbon wasn’t as bright as it was once blood smothered the faces around me.
8. Fire
Turmoil was the very air I breathed. Disorder and confusion were night and day, and the moon watched over the governess’ unholy garden with nothing but apathy. Concrete claws sent bits and pieces of flesh and blood soaring through the darkness, glimmering with lunar brilliance like thousands of ruby stars around my head.
People screamed as they were ripped to pieces. More screams were heard beyond the veil of cries as Rosa's chosen few writhed in pain on the opposite side of the pile of bodies, changing into something cold and inhuman.
Something thin and razor sharp pierced the skin between my neck and shoulder, slicing into my soft flesh like a knife, and soon I was the one who was screaming. The agonizing pain jolted through my body like lightning.
Those sharp and fiery teeth were yanked out of my shoulder as the monsters around me began fighting over what was left of the survivors.
A strong hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me to my feet as two furiously growling titans of rock and ash collided behind me. I stumbled along the blood soaked grass, slipping and sliding as this mysterious stranger and I made a feeble attempt to escape this hellish night. It would do no good, I knew this much.
The slave led me out of the garden and into the cover of the lush green trees. I heard both of us panting and heaving, gasping and swallowing loudly with bits of our voices staggering out of our throats like whimpering dogs. I knew that we had to be completely silent if we wanted to stay alive; the problem was stopping myself, silencing these small yelps as we ran, because it felt like my body wasn’t mine, and these gasps belonged to someone else. I just happened to be along for the terrifying ride.
The slave fell to the ground and began screaming, loudly - so loudly. My frightened mind and wandering body were reunited when I realized the danger his outburst posed.
‘Shh! They’ll hear us!’ I hissed, but it was no use. He gripped his chest and screamed as loud as his lungs could bellow.
‘It’s burning,’ he shouted, ‘burning like fire!’
I saw the round crescent shapes on his leg in the shadows, three demon bite marks. He kept screaming, no matter how many times I told him he was going to get us caught. He was gone, lost. So I ran as far away from him as I could. I ran past tree after tree, jumping over any fallen trunk or obstacle in my way.
My lungs burned and my heart was straining itself to pump blood through my veins. Very little seeped out of the wound in my shoulder, which stung like an acidic balm had been rubbed into the wound, but I ignored that for the sake of survival. My legs heated up with the burn of adrenaline, and my lungs were ever warmer.
Actually, my lungs felt like they were on fire; they were literally hot. It was incredibly difficult to breath, but the focus on my lungs was torn away as the heat in my legs became so scorching that it was hard to believe that it was just the exercise.
Suddenly I was in a world of pain as well, just like my previous partner in escape, whose screams had gone abruptly silent just moments ago. I stopped running and grabbed onto a nearby tree to keep from toppling over. My feet, my thighs, my arms, my chest, my head, my heart, they all burned. It wasn’t fire, like the man said, it was hellfire.
Scorching hot sand scratched and scraped its way through my veins, and ten thousand blisteringly hot needles slowly pressed themselves into my skin, harder and harder until the pressure of them all broke the skin and set my nerves ablaze.
My mind surged with a powerhouse of shock. I felt like I should have been on fire, my body as bright as the sun in the night, but I was still in the dark forest beneath the shade of canopy.
I clenched my teeth tightly; I wasn’t going to scream and give away my position to the deadly stalkers in the woods. I fell back onto the ground, gripping and clawing at the cool soil, but my palms were still holding invisible fireballs and molten iron smothered my body. I wished that the liquefied metal would sweep me away and dissolve my flesh as instantly as I knew it should, but the iron wasn’t really there.
I pounded the dirt, covered my mouth with my hands and bit into the grit, breaking the skin and drawing blood - anything to stay quiet as this horrid perdition engulfed me like a tar pit.
The blood I drew only burned my throat as it seeped into my mouth. Like my very blood boiled and each drop sizzled. It was. I couldn’t stand it anymore, this was too bewildering to withstand.
I picked up a rock with sharp edges, anything sturdy would do, and grasped at the images of my dearest to me, pushing him through the flames and pain and into my mind. Behind my eyes, I saw Charles. Not as he was in the pile, dead and still, but as we were that morning, together. When his body was smooth and just as exposed as mine, and his skin was like a white night sky, faceted with burning stars of sweat on a milky way trail down his navel and to the deepest part of him. It wasn’t like his skin was burning with hellfire, but rather his very soul was trying to break through as we were one.
I struck. And I struck again. And again, until I could escape this pain. I heard a crack as the right side of my skull caved in, and my brain had been shocked into blackness from the final blow. At that point I remember becoming disoriented, but I can’t remember much of those moments other than random thoughts and images.
But even that desperate attempt at suicide wasn’t enough. By the next morning I had complete control of my thoughts again. I felt every inch of my hot, burning body to make sure that the flames weren’t real. I felt my head; it was as though the rock had never touched my temple, healed anew new.
Demons, those rogue and devilish fiends of the night that drank and bathed in the blood of my friends and fellow human beings, were all that flashed in my mind as I rolled around the bed of leaves and twigs, screaming, chewing at the dirt and clawing at my skin. I wasn’t sure when I’d started screaming, but there I was in beautiful morning glory, my world completely pain, shouting and begging for death.
The rogue urchins, remnants of a fallen king, the bloodshed of everyone in the manor, these unexplainable flames, they were all part of the tragedy, the truth, that haunted me; I had gone insane.
I must have been crazy, out of my head, to have seen, to have endured what I was going through. These fires, incapable of being doused, must have been my punishment from god for begging a demonchild of the devil to thrust deep into me, loving every minute of it. I was soiled, dirty, and this was my eternal punishment; the freedom to leave the governess’ mansion of horrors only to be licked by the unearthly tongues of little imps as they seared and scarred my skin.
If so, then was I dead? How did it happen?
Did that bite to the shoulder kill me? Or did Charles lose control when his instincts took over, and I was to succumb to his lust for flesh and blood at the same time? Or, maybe, just maybe, I was still lying in the mud of the garden shed, thirteen years old and a victim of my own stubbornness, starved and dehydrated, breathing my last breaths while undergoing the desperate delusions of a child who yearned to live a life of fantasy, a life where she grew up to be beautiful, where she did see Charles and he confessed that he was madly in love with her. Delusions of her guilt and sorrows manifesting themselves as bloodthirsty monsters while Mr. Abberdean became an angel.
After nightfall, I lied still on the forest bed and stared at the sky in a helpless heap. I hadn't drawn a breath of air in hours, let alone screamed. There was no point in screaming, that was a response to pain one felt in the real world. But I had transcended to an entirely new plane of pain and suffering.
What good was a cry for help when I was already dead?
This pain was above and beyond screams, it was unlike anything I’d felt, and I understood why. It wasn’t burning my body away, oh no; it was burning away at my soul. It was eating up my spirit, everything that was me, like a fuel, like a star, exhausting on this most pre
cious resource until there was nothing left.
But what then?
What happened when my soul was dried up and inexistent? What happened when I was left hollow inside, alone in the darkness of the woods? Would that mean that my hell, this purgatory, would be done and finished with me? Would I go to heaven, or hell for being a consort to darkness, for loving Charles?
Would I simply cease to exist altogether?
The thought of being nothing, not even a memory, was as unbearable as this indescribable agony. And yet, as my heart raced and pumped this thick, fiery punishment throughout my body, it sounded like a dream come true.
Time held no essence here. There was a strangely beautiful purple haze flowing along the night sky, like a wispy river, one long and never ending cloud. The moon simply crawled along the sky while the sun followed suit, like two lovers chasing one another, even though neither of them could ever reach the other save once in a while, eclipsed and whole, until they were lost to each other again. Meanwhile, I was shackled to the earth in defeat as snakes of razorblades and glass shredded my skin and twisted inside of my belly in gyrating torrents.
I was certain, after all of the clawing, burning, and slicing, that I must have looked like a creature from the darkest depths of a child's nightmares. A monster. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right.
It was injustice.
For all their killing and slaughtering, for all their selfish, vicious, gory, cruel, bloodthirsty ways, those who’d done this to me remained beautiful. But I would be a monster until my punishment was served, disfigured and hideous for crimes that were not my own. Like I was the virgin priestess Medusa, raped in Athena’s temple, and the goddess took her wrath out on me, accusing me of the defiling her sacred grounds.
The morning sun rose again, and I knew wouldn’t feel it above the fires of penance, just like every other day before. But there was something different this time, something I felt only slightly, but the difference was enough to notice above the ceaseless inferno that had consumed me for what must have been months, maybe even years.
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