Beautifully Broken

Chapter 32.

Gasping awake, I drag in lungfuls of air. Sweat droplets cascade down my skin, while the telltale ache in my throat tells me I've been screaming. It takes me a second to remember I'm in my room and not the blood intoxicating warehouse. These nightmares have always plagued my mind for years. Well, they're not nightmares so much as memories. My childhood was one long nightmare, so I have plenty of material.

This hasn't been the first time my nightmares have been plagued by, Luciano. I can feel the unshed tears threatening to fall out for the boy who died too young, my twin, my other half. Snippets of our memories start passing through my mind, no matter how hard I try to keep my memories under lock and key they seem to hit me harder than before.

A loud snore breaks me out of my thoughts looking towards the other half of my bed I see the big beast I call, Ace. My pulse is still pounding, and my skin feels sticky with the sweat, so I get up and silently move to the bathroom. Looking back towards my bed I see Ace has started to spread himself out on the bed making his head hanging off the bed.

You'd swear if it wasn't for the fur I would mistake him for a human sleeping.

Without turning the lights on, I start the shower and strip before stripping under the hot water. Letting the darkness and water wrap around me, soothing the tension in my body. I should I hate the dark, but I love it. The dark allows us to just be, to hide all the flawed, unsightly parts of ourselves. With the light comes the truth, the reality of our shitty existence. When I'm done, I step out onto the mat and start dressing.

Starting at myself through the mirror, water droplets cascade down my skin, dark circles are prominently seen under my eyes representing the lack of sleep I've been missing. Starting longly into the mirror my current reflection morphs into my eight-year-old self, the eight-year-old girl who was stripped of her childhood, the girl who lost her twin, whose hands were stained by the blood of her enemies, or the girl who was brutally raped.

Closing my eyes, I feel myself returning to that day. The day I watched my whole life crumble. The screams, the ripping, the sounds of guns going off, every little thing starts to replay. Especially seeing my twin brother's life getting drained out of him, staring at our matching grey orbs, so full of pain and longing. He was my sanctuary, my safe harbor. Luciano was the good in the world full of evil, the beautiful light in the ugly darkness. His death killed any remaining good in me.

At that moment I lost it, the heartbreak and loss converted into anger which triggered an attack. I killed every person I could get my hands on ruthlessly. I couldn't control it or even remember what I did. My mind was no longer my own, it was like I was programmed. I was eight when I stared at the back of my hands and saw them covered in blood and splatters of blood-covered my body in a fine mist.

It was horrifying knowing my body was capable of taking a human life but more worrying, there was a strange thrill in taking my enemy's life. The monster within me craves for the blood, it was a reason I was feared within the mafia.