It all started when my father softly told me, "Do you want to hear a story, my child?"
The wondrous girl in me nodded before I took the liberty to sit on the stool he prepared. In front of me lies a mirror, where I can see the reflection of how my father smiled and started combing my hair. Softly, gently, unlike how ponderous his hands were when he hit me, his careful hands as he combed me now brought nothing but tranquility.
That's odd. Since when did my father become so careful with me? Doesn't he used to grab my hair? Cut it? Burn it? Why is he combing it now?
"I want to tell you a story about my parents," he suddenly whispered, to which I responded with a curled lip.
He then proceeded to tell the tale of how, after all the promises and troth, withered words, and odious oaths, two lost souls after the holy berth swore for heaven to be torn asunder.
Yet, after the knots' tied every day, poison is scattered through each one. The seven deadly sins bewitched the swain, leaving the maiden to venge and be even, and let their fruit watch every sequel of his root's very sin.
The poor lad witnessed what was forbidden. From how the swain quenched what's not his; or how the maiden coveted a non licet; and how the oaths from their tied knots slowly swindled through every misdeed.
And what even brought about such a mishap? Is it worth the innocence of their sprat? Do they value the sin so much that the smitten young'un who thrived for glory has no choice but to ask...
"Mama, Papa. How about me?"
At the query of their child, the swain stiffened. His eyes averted to his wife—the maiden. And through each other's irises, their vices dilated. Within each other's peers, they saw the fornication.
That's when the epiphany paved lanes, the sensations passed around, and every aurora was filled with the bane of guile and qualm. Through the changes, the root started to rot, and the fruit bore the aftermath of the ruined home he lived in.
"You shouldn't have touched a woman! Lest it's your consort!" The mother yelled.
"And you shouldn't have let another man bed you for comfort!" The father retorted.
What followed then were blames, cries, and is that Achilles' heel on the brink? Since what shadowed after was a tectonic sink. Sullen, rage-filled, and sorrow-filled, like a trail of ponderous rain clouds with zero kaleidoscopicity, the home was ruined, and the lights did zero flickering.
With the truth after them, everything was perturbed; the child was neglected; and the clock ticking countless thunders was covered by the numerous drops of enraged phrases brought by nothing but birse. Even the wails of the child were never heard; his voice drowned with the wage.
"Mama! Papa! Don't fight! Don't leave me!" The poor child cried. It was the last of all pleas, he says. As he tries to stop his family's feud, he was diminished. And when years went by, the memory never dissipated, even if his mind relapsed. Even when he made his own family, barely thrived with them, and lived through it, in the memory of a madman such as him, he is nothing but an asset. And to me, his daughter, he's just the same as them.
"What a misfortune, isn't it?" he whispered to me as he continued combing my hair while telling me his tale. Or more like, the reason why he's acting like this, particularly at me.
I didn't answer him. I just stared at our reflection. At how defiled my body is through the broken shards of its glass. At how our bulb illuminated every scar I have. And even when he can see it himself, he still tells me his story as if I don't have these grazes caused by no one but him or the bluish, purplish, and red concussions hidden beneath my skin.
He talked to me like he never caused me a fortune to live in or used me in every sinful thing. Just how cruel can he be to tell me a tale of his ruined family, which he followed as well?
"Indeed, it is unfortunate, Papa." I replied soon, like it was my obligation to understand him.
But it is indeed unfortunate that with those memories within him, he lived through every generation, fathering misfortune, making wrong decisions, and harboring the fruit of the similar offender he promised he'd never lead. And with a scrutinized life, he became a degraded fruit—a harbor of sin, a product of de trop, and a berry with the same caliber as venom.
He proved to many and to me that amidst a field of blossom, a tree will bore spoiled fruits once mothered on rotten loam; a craptastic root by the garth will not have various fruits and flowers; and a poor soil will forever rot unless it chooses to breathed.
And I became a victim as well. Like a languishing seed who prospered in the waters of disgrace. A child whose eyes flickered blood at how she was raised. A girl whose heart she'll never break, yet she shriveled from within. And a woman whose oaths revolved around being diffident; alas, it was for them.
They are all the same, I suppose. When watered from sun up to dawn, that seed will have the same crop, grow from the same root, and perpetually prosper through every generation to birth such sinful fruit. Lest I stop it. "And I don't want to have that family like yours." Through the mirror, I smiled at my father—the very byproduct of a generational abuse in which I'll never water. Not again, not tomorrow, and not even forever.
