FREAK SHOW

Chapter 26: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Chapter 26: A Series of Unfortunate Events

WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER

~"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame." ~Oscar Wilde

The whole world was silent at first. Reality was on mute. Everything felt slow. Time was irrelevant. It took an eternity to cast her eyes across the room. The first person Scarlett looked at was Charlie. He was standing up, his chair abruptly pushed back. The back of the seat distinctly reverberated off the dining room wall as it was thrown against it. She could see his hands locked into fists. Scarlett was torn between standing up and screaming at the top of her lungs or standing up and bolting out the door. Her limbs were shaking, practically begging her to move...to do something.

A voice beckoned her somewhere off in the distance, in the back of her head. "Analise, my sweet Analise." It was sickly sweet, whispering darkness.

Scarlett felt her head pivot in the direction of the man's voice, finding Axel with a wide glinting smile looking at her expectantly. Her stomach rolled at the thought of instinctively responding to him calling her Analise as if it were her actual name. He was creating her into someone else. He devoured her presence. Molding her into Analise with his cruel torment. A new person. A dead girl. Maybe that was his end game.

In the deeper parts of Scarlett's mind, she had the feeling she would be a dead girl soon enough.

She met her tormentor's eyes. The emptiness she knew so well that seemed to fill the expanse of them always forced a chill down her spine. It was black, sometimes red, but always empty. Then there was the ring sitting on the table in a black box. Scarlett was yelling, but no one heard a cry. All of this happened within seconds; within the time it took for everyone to absorb the shock of Axel's marriage proposal to this eighteen-year-old girl.

"So what is your answer?" Axel inquired, a sense of smugness evident. Scarlett had to keep her mouth from gaping open. It was obvious from her face, however, how horrified she was. She was deathly pale. Her body vibrated with fear, taking shallow and quick breaths to cool her clammy skin. What could she answer with that would lead to anything other than her ultimate fate of marrying this monster? If she answered anything else, she would die, or others would die; that knowledge could not lie on her conscious, especially when there was her baby at risk. Scarlett would have liked to say it was their baby but she was unsure of whether it truly was Charlie and her's product; so for now it would be her baby.

"No," was sitting on her tongue, itching to spit at his face with. Scarlett never got to open her mouth other than to scream...

A long and wild screech, an almost animalistic sound, ripped into the air. It wasn't from Scarlett. "You bitch!"

Minerva sprung from her seat, a crazed look on her face. The plates and utensils loudly clanked together as the woman practically crawled on to the table. A candle fell over, a wine glass shattered on the floor, and Minerva stretched her hands out to Scarlett in the shape of claws. She got so far and managed to swipe at Scarlett's face, causing her to cry out as her hands shot up to cover her cheek. Her cheek blossomed in redness, the scratch drawing blood.

Charlie seized Minerva by the scalp and threw her backwards, "Get the fuck off her!" He bent down to examine Scarlett's face, his eyes darting to every corner, making sure it was only the cheek she scratched. Scarlett could care less about the cheek cut because all of her worries were now on Minerva snatching Axel's steak knife.