RAGE

Chapter 8. Masochist Scarlett

Timothy Francis

There is nothing more heartbreaking than watching a young person's hopes and dreams shatter into devastated desperation. It is the only time of your life when time moves so slowly that you start to wonder when will it finally end, when will it finally stop hurting and when will peace be attained. You are hanging by a thread and grieving at all the rubble of your hopes and dreams under you. Nothing more than a masterpiece of a young broken heart...

Crack.
Crack.

A shrilling scream.

Crack.
Crack.

More Screams.

The ugly sound of leather cutting into skin had my own skin crawling in horror.

"Count" He bellowed.
"Seven." She screamed.
Crack.
"Eight." She screamed, her voice cracking.

Fifteen whips later there was a deafening silence in the mansion.

I have always wondered what pain felt like for someone who has endured it for so long. Does it start to feel better at some point? Do you get used to it? Or do you just get better at hiding the pain?

I have always asked myself these questions when I looked at my twin sister, even when she was smiling.

When the door to my bedroom opens, I scramble from behind my bed, knowing he knows that's where I like to hide when he is beating and abusing my twin.

Before I could reach the door, he had my collar in his grasp as he threw me into the wall.
"Next time you get any new fun ideas, remember what those screams sounded like." He sneers and pushes me down on the floor.

When he leaves, I gather my wit and do the one thing I have been consistently doing since I was eleven.
I sneaked into the dungeons at midnight, knowing well he was asleep by then, probably in a drunken stupor.
I untied her from where her arms are tied to the ceiling in the cold and dark cellar.
I am not ashamed of seeing my sister's naked body like I used to be back when I was eleven. I have been so used to it now that every time I come down to free her from bindings, my gaze stays on her face and her bleeding back.

Those scars will forever be there, a reminder of the pain, no matter how best she tries to hide behind that smile of hers.

She never made a sound. Even if it did hurt her, she would mask it. She never let me know when she was in pain. I used to be glad she did, I didn't know how else to live with myself.
I can hardly sleep at night after hearing her screams.

His cruelty broke everything within her from a very young age. To a point, I don't think anything else could make her new, heal her in ways that she never remembers the past.

It was that night when things went too far. The only time, the first time, Scarlett showed me the pain she has been enduring and the rage she has been suppressing for the past five years.

So Imagine my surprise - three years later, when I opened Scarlett's bedroom door, having come home early in the morning after a football match, I found her cuddled next to a man. Not just any man... the man who was the sole reason why I chose for us to build a new life in this country halfway across the world. The one they call "Rage".

A smile slowly crept up my face. I guess if there was a man out there in this shitty world, who could steal Scarlett's heart, it would be someone just like her.