Masquerade Vehemence

CHAPTER 12: CORRODED CHAINS OF CRIMSON

***(DISCLAIMER: PLEASE DON'T START THE SONG NOW. I'LL TELL YOU WHEN TO.)***

"It's too harsh to ask, sorry. You can tell me about Ava, maybe?" Sarah said.

The fire whipped and it felt as if the twenty-six bones in her feet would melt anytime. More than the pain it was the weakness and the dizziness. 

"You deserve to know my history." Nathan glared at her as though he wanted his eyes to do the talking part. He wished it were possible. Because then, life could be a lot more easier with lesser heartbreaks and complications.

He started, "It all began when my mother was a juvenile and gave birth to my elder twin brothers—Joseph and Mark. Their father was the youngest of a Terminal family, which meant Joseph and Mark had to be converted into a Terminal when attained the right age. But that man left Mother soon after the birth for he wasn't up for the responsibility of raising one child let alone a twin. After few years, Mother had me with a human. She intended to leave him after my birth but she couldn't manage three sons at that age. Thus she waited for some years to pass, till my sister, Arabella was born. She then left him."

His eyes could no longer look into hers. He kept moving them from one place to another while Sarah followed them everywhere they went and peeped into the history they'd witnessed. It was gruesome and funny how people could veil darkness behind their smiles.

"Ergo, I wasn't destined to become a Terminal and nor was Arabella however, on the wishes of my dearest mother, who desired all her children to be together, I was converted before my own will. Months later she got annihilated by my"—his voice broke—"my brothers. For their survival, Mother wanted them to take lives of the ones for whom dying was a bless, but they wanted a bigger shot at once, and thus they were adamant on killing children and foetuses."

"That is so, so..." Sarah couldn't find the most congruous word.

"Abhorrent and heartless, it is." His eyes met hers and for the fist time in a minute, she didn't have to follow them; they were right there. She could still feel her burning pain but now when she heard about Nathan's past, a person who was helpless in his own way but always concealed it beneath his light blue eyes, she felt her ache as extremely less. The pain dimmed itself in front of the burning volcano of Nathan's past.

"Being the only daughter, Arabella was closest to Mother," he continued, making Sarah snap out of her reveries and once again breaking the eye contact. "After she deceased, she couldn't face the fact that her own brothers annihilated the person she loved the most. Ergo she threatened the twins. But little did she know what the consequences would be. She was converted into a Terminal days before her sixteenth birthday, whereas the proper age of conversion is between seventeen and nineteen. It was initially a wonder how her body could undergo the transition but her mind just could not. Later I got to know that the only reason she was able to survive was because she was a Franstire. Mark and Joseph left us for they had only changed her but didn't want to wait to teach Sister how to be a Terminal. If you don't belong to a Terminal family, after the transitioning period, you're not supposed to be in your senses and that was what was happening with her and made me think it was all normal, until she started to imagine things—she thought I was endeavouring to be a tyrant of hers and trying to kill her. She'd become such a prodigy of arts, piano, literature, economics and war and strategies. Ah, how she could manipulate. She altered her name 'Arabella' because I'd given her name. I think they address her as 'Florence.' Her insanity made us do unspeakable and perturbing things to each other."

He shook his head in sorrow and thoughtfulness, reset his lower jaw and said, "But she didn't deserve any of this. Her fragileness was compelled to transform into profound brutality and utter malice."