Secrets of Me | s. black

↣ | Secret Twenty-nine

tw - torture & violence

s e c r e t 
t w e n t y - n i n e

I remember the blinding pain in my head and then the darkness enveloping me. Minutes or hours later (I don't know how long it had been) I jerked awake to the feeling of my cheek burning. I had been slapped, perhaps multiple times, and a ring had gashed a cut open somewhere on my head. I felt a trickle of blood run down my face, down my cheek, dripping off my chin and onto my black pants.

I tried to move my arms, but they were tied behind my back. I tried to move my legs, but with no such luck. I took a breath and lifted my eyes to stare up at the girl that had slapped me.

Her dark eyes were manic, curly black hair wild. She was staring at me as if I were a piece of dessert she was dying to devour and my stomach dropped at that expression, at the crazy in her eyes. She laughed as I made eye contact with her, and I remembered that cackle from my first years at Hogwarts.

"Bellatrix," I said, staring up at her from where I was tied tightly to the chair.

She was a few years older than me, cousin to Sirius and Regulus. She certainly had the bone structure and elegance of the Blacks, as well as the dramatic genes they all seemed to possess. I had never met a family so dramatic, and some even went so far as to call them insane. With the way Bellatrix was looking at me now, I was beginning to agree with them.

"Brielle," Bellatrix said, her voice as annoyingly high and exaggerated as I remembered. "I'm so very happy you're awake. I've been aching for some fun around here."

"What, is killing people for an evil psychopath not fun enough for you?" I asked her, the sharpness in my voice pronounced.

"Oooh," she drawled out. "Wittle Bwielle Anderson has gotten feisty."

"Well, wittle Brielle Anderson has been through some shit, so yes, I'm a bit upset."

My head started ringing as she slapped me again, the blinding pain in my cheek indicating that another ring had drawn some blood. Sure enough, as I turned my gaze back on Bellatrix, I felt another warm trail of crimson running down my face.

"Shut up!" Bellatrix shouted at me, so close that her breath was warm on my cheeks. "You only get to talk when I tell you to talk. Now, where's the Order's headquarters?"

I stayed silent.

"Where?" she demanded, gripping my thighs so tightly, I knew there would be bruises.

I lifted my chin defiantly and said, "I thought I could only talk when you told me to."

Bellatrix smiled her manic smile. "I didn't know you were such a bitch," she drawled, curling a piece of my hair around her index finger. "Very well."

She backed up a step and pulled out her wand, leveling it at me. My whole body tensed as I realized what she was going to do, and I closed my eyes shut tight.

You're the strongest person I've ever met.

I relaxed my hands and feet in their ties. I inhaled a breath and then exhaled. Inhale. Exhale. Don't scream, don't scream, don't scream, I thought to myself desperately.

You're the strongest person I've ever met.

And then the pain hit me.

It was like no pain I'd ever felt before. My entire body felt as if it was being dragged across burning knives, over and over and over again. Like someone had skinned me alive or burned me from the inside out. I had told myself I wouldn't scream, but I had had no idea how extremely intense the pain would be.

I cried out and thrashed until my throat felt raw and my body broken into a million pieces. I screamed until the sound never seemed to stop. Until I drifted away somewhere else and was in the locked attic again, hearing the screams of my parents instead of my own. Hearing the sounds that I had not wanted to remember, that I hadn't even been able to write in my first journal entry.

"Please," I heard my mother beg, the sobs breaking her voice. "Don't hurt him. I'm the bloodtraitor."

My father cried out in pain, the sound echoing off the walls, through the wooden floorboards, shaking me where I sat crying in the attic.

"He's done nothing!" my mother yelled, the desperation in her voice so intense that my heart stopped beating in my chest. "Please!"

The sounds of the killing curse being fired exploded through my brain. It tore apart my insides and broke my mothers' pleading into erratic sobs.

Those sobs became screams and then she was dead too.

And then I was back in the present, breathing hard as my body slumped down in the seat. Bellatrix was cackling as she backed out the door, her eyes wild and her smile one of glee.

"We will continue this later," she chirped, and shut the door behind her with another laugh.

I let my head loll to the side and closed my eyes tightly. I wished desperately to fall asleep and never wake up, for the sounds of my parents screaming were still echoing throughout my mind. But sleep yielded no escape either.

I suffered from nightmares of my parents' deaths, of Mr Prewett, of Fabian and Gideon. I heard the screams and saw their faces and I woke each time with gasping breaths and wet cheeks.

I couldn't do it anymore. The pain was too much to bear, and I wanted it to end. I wanted to stop feeling, to stop living, to stop my heart from getting attached only to be ripped apart into a million pieces.

And so I embraced the torture. I embraced the pain. I let it take over my body and my mind, let it distract me from the hurt in my heart. From the brokenness in my life. From the memories that swam frantically through my head.

I let it take over and rip me to pieces, taking every last ounce of my hope away with it.

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❀ Bryla Love ❀