? Wingless And Beautiful
? PROLOGUE ?~
“Please stop!” I screamed. I felt the trickle of liquid along the side of my face. Once I got over the shock, I felt the unbearable pain as it ripped through my skin, forever
damaging it.
“You son of a bch! Stop! Oh God, let her go!” I heard
my mother scream. “Let her go! Please, I beg you! Stop it!”
“No! She’s a spawn of the Devil! Can you not see it?” he
asked in a hoarse voice.
“Maybe you can’t! Her beautiful,
angelic face conceals all the darkness within her! I will show you! Once her beauty is gone… you will see her for what
she really is!”
He pulled my hair so I could face him. I willed myself to
be brave as I stared at the man who once meant the whole
world to me.
He was staring back at me with bloodshot eyes rimmed with dark circles. They were blazing with anger, like he truly believed I was a demon he needed to kill.
He lifted the glass bottle over my face once again. I
closed my eyes, accepting my fate.
“No!” I heard my mother scream as she launched at him. He fell back, released me and I fell to the floor.
I can feel the liquid eating through my skin, making its
way to my flesh. My whole body felt numb and I couldn’t
move even if I wanted to.
“You cannot stop me!” he roared as his hand landed on my mother’s face and she, too, fell to the floor.
I was exhausted but I willed myself to get up, not just to
save myself, but to help my mother.
I struggled to look up
and saw the familiar man with big brown eyes come after
me again.
I knew that face. It used to be a face of comfort for me.
I remembered the first time I met him. I was barely five years old then. He was the only father I ever knew… the
only father I ever loved.
He took care of me like I was his own flesh and blood.
Now… I could barely recognize his face. Substance abuse changed not only his physical attributes, but also the
way he saw things.
In his eyes, I was probably a little monster that he had to kill. The hallucinations were
completely taking over him, making it difficult to separate
fiction from fact… nightmares from reality.
I couldn’t give a fight when I saw him swing the bat. I
could only close my eyes.
“Monster!” he growled as he
prepared to hit me in the face.
I braced myself for the unbearable pain that would
probably be the death of me.
I was praying for a miracle,
hoping to God that it was not yet my time… wishing I had a
guardian angel who would magically appear on my side to
shield me, save me and fight for me.
I took a deep breath, which could well be my last… and
then I heard a gunshot.
One.
Two.
The sound was deafening, almost impairing my sense of
hearing. But the silence that followed was even worse.
The mixed scent of gunpowder, burning skin and blood
filled the room.
I could only hear the wild beating of my heart, the silent whimpers that I didn’t know belonged to me and the fast intakes of last breaths that belonged to the man I once called Dad.
I stared into space, not really looking at anything in
particular as I tried to distract myself from the harsh reality that I knew would slap me in the face and probably cripple me for life.
It was over… months of torture and physical abuse, days of struggling to heal from the wounds.
Now… I could only feel my heart breaking, because for the last ten years of my life, I truly loved him. And I know, he truly loved us.
He had always been there to take care of me and my
mother. He used to chase my nightmares away. And now…
I’m sure most of my nightmares will be of him, chasing me,
pouring acid over my face.
Then finally, I heard the sirens, telling me that help was here. They would come to make it all right, wouldn’t they?
They would take me away to a place far enough… where
nobody could hurt me again. They would fix my wounds…
make sure I could function again… I could live normally
again.
Everything was going to be okay. But I know… no matter what happens… nothing can
erase the scars he left in my heart… and most importantly,
my soul.
No matter what they do, they couldn’t take away
the pain and they couldn’t chase the nightmares that are to haunt my sleepless nights.
*****************
Wingless And Beautiful
?EPISODE_ONE?
“Come on, wake up, sleepyhead!” I heard my aunt’s
voice as she snatched the headphones away from my head.
I struggled to open my eyes. I looked at my wristwatch.
It was one in the afternoon. I slept in again and I knew
Meredith hated that. But sometimes, I couldn’t help it.
It was hard for me to sleep at nights. In the dark, the nightmares got worse. I couldn’t sleep with the lights out now.
But even with the lights on, I still found myself waking up in the middle of the night, screaming as the memories of the pain I had experienced during that night come back to me, making me retreat, and curl up in fear and misery.
Meredith stared at the dark circles under my eyes and
smiled apologetically. “I told you… some counseling can
help you, sweetheart. Really. I can afford a few sessions.”
I shook my head. Meredith is my mother’s younger
sister.
She just graduated from college when she got the call
that changed her life forever. She found out that instead of
looking for a job and exploring the world like she originally
planned, she had to move to a strange town to take care of
me.
I felt guilty for what happened to her, too. She was just
a kid out of school, and now she had to grow up faster than
she first intended to so she could make ends meet and take
care of a troubled teenager like me.
“That’s not necessary, Meredith,” I said. She didn’t want to be called aunt. She said it would make her feel old.
“We’re already struggling to get by each day.
I don’t want you to waste your hard-earned money to pay somebody who will only eat donuts and drink coffee while I lie on the couch and talk about things I would rather forget.”
She came to sit beside me. “At least… that person can
prescribe pills that can help you… fall asleep.”
“I already have something for that,” I said, with a wide
smile on my face. “Your manuscripts!”
She glared at me. “How dare you go through my
things?” She hit me with a pillow.
“I’m kidding!” I said, laughing.
Meredith was an aspiring writer.
One day, when I had
nothing to do in the house, I went to her room and decided
to be useful for once and cleaned up.
I found some of her
manuscripts and read them. She was actually pretty good
but I thought none of the stuff she wrote was PG-15.
“I’m going out,” she said. “I have to be in CRC in an
hour’s time.”
“Alright. I’ll just be here,” I said to her. As always, I
added in my head.
She looked at me apologetically. She stared at my face for a while.
Two guesses which part of my face she was staring at.
It was my scar. The one on the right side of my face,
between my cheekbone and my ear, and ran down all the
way to my jaw.
I immediately felt self-conscious. The skin
was damaged and the scar was horrendous. I was told that I
was lucky my stepdad only let the chemical trickle on the
side of my cheek, and it didn’t go further on the other parts
of my face. I was luckier it didn’t hit my eye.
Even before that tragic night, we didn’t really live a
charmed life, so there was no way I could afford plastic
surgery.
I combed my hair to the side to hide the scar from
Meredith’s view. That way, nobody would know how
damaged I really was.
Meredith sighed and asked, “Why don’t you come with
me?”
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