Chapter 114
Elena’s Point Of View
Beside him, the other two men dragged Heather and Dave across the uneven ground, their heels scraping furrows into the dirt. Through the haze of my slipping consciousness, I could hear Heather’s screams fading into desperate, hopeless sobs, each one weaker than the last, as if her spirit were being wrung out of her drop by drop.
I could hear Dave’s muffled cries calling my name over and over again, his small voice cracking under the weight of terror no child should ever know, a terror that no six-year-old should have the vocabulary to even name.
“Elena! Elena, please! Wake up p>
I couldn’t lift my arms. I couldn’t scream back. I could only weep, my tears soaking uselessly into the back of the man’s shirt, my body limp and betraying me at the moment I needed it most, as though every muscle I owned had already surrendered to the night.
When they reached the center of the yard, under the buzzing, yellow glow of the streetlamp, the man didn’t gently set me down. He unceremoniously dumped me onto the sharp, wet gravel, as though I weighed nothing at all, as though I were already garbage to be discarded, a thing to be rid of rather than a girl who had once been someone’s daughter.
THUD.
My body hit the unyielding ground hard. I collapsed onto my side, coughing violently, every single muscle in my abdomen screaming in agony, the pain radiating outward until it swallowed every other sensation, until there was no part of me left untouched by it.
“Elena!” Heather shrieked as the men dropped her and Dave right beside me. She scrambled over on her hands and knees, reaching for me with trembling hands, her small fingers slick with dirt and desperation. “Elena, please p>
I managed to push myself up on one shaky elbow, my body quaking, my vision swimming in violent crimson. My stomach heaved violently, and with a terrible, wet gasp, I vomited blood straight onto the dirt at my mother’s feet. Hot, dark crimson splattered across her polished plastic shoes, the sound of it obscene in the stillness of the yard, a sound I would hear in my nightmares for years afterward.
My mother didn’t step back. She didn’t flinch. Not even a flicker of disgust crossed her face, as though the sight of her own child’s blood were nothing more than rainwater on pavement, an inconvenience to be dismissed rather than a horror to be reckoned with.
Instead, she threw her head back and laughed.
It wasn’t a normal laugh. It was a terrifying, high-pitched, maniacal cackle that echoed off the damp brick walls, ricocheting through the dead night like the screech of a dying scavenger.
The sound crawled beneath my skin, colder than the gravel beneath my palms, and I felt something inside me shrink away from it, some last small piece of hope curling in on itself to hide.
“Look at you!” she shrieked with sick, twisted delight, pointing a heavy finger at my bleeding, shivering frame. “Look at the great protector! The big sister! Look at you choking on your own blood in the mud p>
She stepped forward and drove the hard toe of her shoe directly into my shoulder, shoving me flat onto my back. The impact stole what little breath I had left, and for a moment the world went white at the edges.
“You think you can escape me?!” she roared, her voice dropping into a guttural, demonic pitch as she leaned right over me, close enough that I could smell the stale liquor beneath her perfume. “You think you can just pack up my property and walk out my door?! I gave you life, Elena! I OWN YOU! Every breath you take in this world belongs to ME p>
Heather threw herself over my chest, sobbing uncontrollably, her small body shaking so hard I could feel her heartbeat hammering against my ribs, frantic and fast as a bird’s. “Stop it! Mama, please stop! Don’t kill her p>
My mother didn’t even look down at Heather. She reached down, grabbed a handful of Heather’s hair, and yanked my ten-year-old sister off me, tossing her sideways into the dirt like a ragdoll, her small body skidding across the stones.
Dave screamed, scrambling to hug Heather’s crying form, his tiny arms barely able to wrap around her, as if his embrace alone could shield her from what came next.
“You useless, ungrateful little leeches!” my mother spat, stepping back over my pool of blood, her nostrils flaring, her eyes wild and bloodshot, as though something monstrous had finally broken free from beneath her skin. “I fed you! I gave you a roof! And this is how you pay me back?! By trying to run away with my money? By making me look like a fool in front of these men p>
I lay there, chest heaving, the metallic taste of rust and rot coating my teeth. Slowly, painfully, driving my bleeding elbows into the gravel, I forced my upper body upward. I dragged myself into a sitting position, my chin dripping with dark crimson, my eyes burning with an iron, unholy hatred that superseded every drop of physical pain in my body.
Somewhere beneath the pain, a cold clarity took hold, sharper than anything I had ever felt before, as though all my fear had finally burned away and left only resolve in its ashes.
I looked at the woman who birthed me. Really looked at her, searching for some trace of the mother she might have once been, and finding nothing but rot, nothing but a hollow shell wearing a familiar face.
“You are no mother to us,” I rasped, my voice shredded, hollow, vibrating with a lethal, quiet fury that cut straight through her manic laughter.
My mother’s laughter instantly died. Her eyes narrowed into slits. “What did you say to me, you little whore p>
“I said you are no mother to us!” I roared, the blood spilling down my chin as I pushed myself higher, standing on my shaky, blood-soaked knees. “Look at us! Look at what you’ve done to your own flesh and blood! There is no difference between us and orphans! In fact, orphans are better off than we are, because at least they aren’t tortured by the person who brought them into this world p>
The men in the yard shifted uncomfortably, the low mutters dying out as my voice filled the night, each word landing like a stone against their conscience, and for the first time I sensed that some of them were ashamed, even if only for a moment.
“Elena Heather whimpered from the ground, terrified, her eyes darting between me and our mother.
“No, Heather! Let her hear it!” I screamed, tears cutting clean, pale lines through the blood and dirt on my cheeks. My eyes locked onto my mother’s cold, lifeless face, refusing to let go.
“If I had a choice… if I could rewrite history I took a shuddering, agonized breath, my voice cracking into a raw, desperate sob before hardening into iron. “It would have been a million times better if YOU were the one who died that night, and not father p>
My mother’s face went deadly pale, her jaw clenching so hard the muscles jumped in her cheeks, a flicker of something almost human crossing her features before vanishing again, buried as quickly as it surfaced.
“He loved us!” I screamed, stepping forward, ignoring the way my bruised ribs screamed in protest. “He held us when we cried! He worked until his hands bled just to see us smile! And what do you do?! You starve us! You beat us! You sell us like cattle to old men! If I had to choose between you and death… I WOULD CHOOSE DEATH p>
I spat a bloody mouthful right onto the gravel between us, a final, defiant punctuation to my words.
“If death came knocking at that front door right now for you, Cynthia,” I hissed, using her bare name for the first time in my life, my voice shaking with pure venom, “I wouldn’t hide you. I wouldn’t shield you. I will open that door wide, step aside, and watch death take you with a smile on my face p>
My mother took a step toward me, her hand raising to strike, but I didn’t flinch. I took a step right into her face, my chest breathing heavily, my eyes wild, daring her to follow through.
“Hit me!” I screamed. “Hit me again! It doesn’t change the truth! You can never compare to our father! He was a good man! He was a human being! And he was a damn fool… a blind, tragic fool to have ever married a psychopath like you p>
“Shut up!” she shrieked, her voice suddenly high, thin, cracking with unhinged rage, the mask of composure finally slipping entirely.
“You don’t deserve to be called a mother!” I screamed right into her face, tears pouring wildly down my cheeks as my entire body shook. “You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as us! YOU DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE! DIE, CYNTHIA! GO DIE p>
“SHUT UP p>
She charged at me like a mad dog, her hands clawing for my neck, but the main man… the boss, who was wiping dark blood from his temple where I had struck him earlier, stepped in and grabbed my mother’s shoulder, shoving her back with practiced ease.
“Enough!” the boss growled, his voice deep, gravelly, and thoroughly irritated. “I didn’t come here to watch a family drama. We have a deal, Cynthia, or do we not p>