Broken Marionette

Chapter 20

WARNINGS:  Sensitive Content. Read with Caution.

"Owen Rainer"

My entire body freezes, arms falling my sides. A look of what I assume horror washes over my face. My eyes wide as the horrible memories from a year ago floods back. The abuse. The labour. The harassment. The place where I had lost everything, my own self and the only two people who'd cared about me. The hellhole, I've been trying to bury deep in my past.

Why is he here? Did they find me? Is he here to take me back? No, there's no way. Right?

"This our Daughter Mallory" says Dad, his hand out in front of me as introduction.  His voice snapped my mind out of the spiral it was falling in to. Snapping my head up, I see Rainer looking at me. And I try my best in supressing the panic rising with in me. The bile threating to crawl up from throat, as I try my best in mustering up a smile. A cold sweat rolling down the side of my face, as I close my eyes and give a curt nod. Silently praying that if I were to open my eyes I'd find it all to be a hallucination. But I open my eyes again and still see him standing there.

A cool expression on his face, eyes holding no void of emotions. On the outside he seems to be a man of little emotions, fazed by nothing. But I noticed the slight tension in his jaw, the light strain on the side of his neck as his blue eyes scan me up and down. Pausing a little at my hair and eyes, before down casting his gaze and returning the nod with one of his own. The moment of hesitation in him didn't sit right with me.

Everything else that happened next is a blur. I believe that they were all heading to dad's office to have some tea and get to know the new Captain of the Helion Knights. I came with an excuse of being tired, and headed straight to my room. Llaria was currently off to visit her family and would be coming back tomorrow. So there no run in with anybody else, which I was immensely grateful. I didn't want anyone to witness the panic, the anxiety, the fear all about to crash down at any second.

Swinging to door of my room open, I step in and close it right behind me. Before I'm able to take another step, my shaking knees give in. I collapse onto the ground. My right palm flat against the marble floors of my bedroom. My other gripping onto the fabric over my heart. Nails digging in to my skin through the material. Small pieces of hair sticking my forehead as large beads of sweat roll down my face and neck. The beats of my heart increasing each second. My body becoming weak and limp, Shaking as though I was a leaf trapped in high winds.  My breathing becoming laboured, the air getting trapped at the base of my throat.

Loud gasps sounded out of my mouth, small coughs from chocking on the trapped air. I felt my neck get tight, a hard pressure crushing down on my wind pipe. My eyes darted down, and I saw black hands wrapped around the front of my throat. The pads of it's thumb pressing hard against the underside of my jaw. Heels of it's palm crushing inwards on my throat. Leaving for only strangled noises and gurgles to leave my lips but even that was scarce.

My mind went into a frenzy, nothing was no longer coherent. Everything was mush, and I couldn't think straight. But despite this, I could still understand the familiarity of the hands. The way they strangled me to the point black began to creep up on my vision. They were Dhanesh's.  the oxygen in my body was depleting by the second, and I starting o get more ad more impossibly lightheaded. But even then, all I could think of was the past. More specifically the times that he used to do this to me. When I used to kick, fight and scream as a defence, not wanting for him to hurt me again. To violate me in the most gruesome of ways. He'd get pissed off with my lack of compliance and strangled me as a way to get me to stop.

When came the time that I had lost all my fight, he'd choke me during his violation. Saying something about how he liked how lifeless I seemed. Said I was his Broken Marionette, one that he could abuse and use to his own pleasure.