La Bastille (ManxBoy)

Verse Deux - The pulse of love anew, Part 1

Verse Deux – The pulse of love anew, Part 1

I understood what pain was even before I knew how to spell it. I consider pain as my friend, an ally whose sole purpose is to make me feel numb and help me forget. I’d rather live in pain…for now. And when I’m ready to let go I would. I would. Just not right now. Not right now. For I can still remember her.

—Dominic Reinhardt, Academy Patrolling Officer, La Bastille 2089 AP

Dominic lifts a heavy silver-framed photo from behind a stack of high-grade micro projectiles which—during his time as an Academy Militant—was a soldier’s bullet of choice, because the shrapnel only incapacitates reprobates, not killing them.

He tips the photo in his hands. The metal frame feels cold to the touch, and so is the memory of the girl wearing a tutu in the photograph.

Freya…please, forgive me.

Freya, Dom’s little sister.

She’s smiling in the photograph. But in Dominic’s eyes she is crying rivers of blood. Screaming for help.

Dominic can still remember the horrific memory. And it slices through his brain like a doctor’s scalpel whenever he looks at the photograph.

His sister’s death is like a muddy imprint on his soul that no amount of prayer can ever wash away.

Dom can still remember what it felt like to hear Freya’s desperate cry for help. Her shrieks of horror ringing through his humanity during that cold night when there was no moon, no light. It was the look of terror they shared between them that he remembers the most about his little sister, and it became his constant nightmare up to this day.

Freya was backed up against the wall clutching her ragdoll in one hand, tears streaming down her face, her knees trembling as she recoils to the sheer horror and brutality of their father who, yet again, went home drunk, smashing and hitting everything and everyone in sight.

Their mother—a bruised, lifeless body thrown down the steps outside the patio, with her mouth covered in blood and her vacant eyes staring blankly into the heavens of the darkest of nights, as if she was surrendering her soul to a god that didn’t exist at the time of her murder—was the stuff nightmares are made of.

Dominic and his sister rushed past their own mother down the steps, not looking back, wanting desperately to save themselves from their own abusive father.

There was no one who could help them. It was one of those nights during early La Bastille when the moon refused to shine after a day of sunlight clocking for more than twelve hours. A phenomenon that up to this day cannot be explained by modern science.

The two didn’t make it past Central Bridge as their father caught up to them with a broken bottle of whiskey in hand, which he used to knock Dominic out cold, slamming the head of the poor boy into the jagged railing of the bridge until he became half-conscious.

Freya was lifted by the neck, her face turning blue as she kicked with her legs and fought with her hands using all her might to break free from the nightmare that was their father.

She was thrown over the bridge, her screams filled with nothing but Dominic’s name as she plummeted into the darkness.

Dominic couldn’t save her.

He couldn’t have saved her even if he tried.

She fell into her death. And then she was gone.

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