Lost in a Reverie 18+ Only (Book 1 of Lastor Series) ['23/'24 EDIT]

Chapter 10

I found myself standing in the middle of a meadow, the sound of laughter luring me like a siren's call. The laughter grew livelier and I followed it, suddenly appearing in a playground. A little girl sat on a swing, her bright grey eyes filled with laughter as she kicked at the dirt to push the swing to go further.

Higher and higher she went, her long auburn hair whipping about her and sweeping at the ground as she threw her head back at each kick before suddenly leaping into the air, only to fall to the ground in a heap. I rushed towards her but when she looked at me, her bright grey eyes were suddenly a dark void. Everything young about her gone.

She shoved me to the ground and stood over me. "You fucking bastard!" she yelled, kicking me repeatedly as she chanted those words over and over again.

I pushed myself up and started running, tears running down my cheeks. A seemingly endless hall appeared around me, leading to a singular open door at the other end. When I reached it, a woman was sat on a bed in the middle of the empty room. She had her arms held out towards me, tears of blood filling her silver eyes and streaming down her cheeks.

"Vivien," the woman called softly. "Vivien, my baby."

I turned back and started running again. When I looked beyond me, I see my father. When I blinked, he was in front of me, looking down at me, his eyes as dark and void as the little girl's had been. I backed away but he was on me in an instant, his hand crush my throat in his grip.

"You're just like her," he snarled before throwing me against the wall and proceeding to beat me.

It was unlike the beatings he often delivered. He was breaking me. Tearing me apart. Making a mess of the pretty face he was always so careful not to touch.

The woman and the girl watched the spectacle of my ruin, holding each other as they cried silently. Whether their tears were for me or themselves, I didn't know. I didn't care. I was hurting too much to care.

I wished I could die at every bone he broke. I wished so badly to be rid of all the pain at every merciless hit he laid on my body. I waited but the peace never came. I was still alive, and all I could do was beg and beg for him to stop.

I woke up with a start, panting and cold sweat covering my body. I looked to my bedside for my clock, finding that it was barely dawn. I screwed my eyes shut, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes as I started to remember that day.

I was just ten and I was at the school playground, waiting for Jude to finish with football practice when Father came to pick me up. He'd said he missed me and had wanted to go on an adventure with me. He was being so kind and I was so stupid, I allowed my childish delusion to overcome my reason and I willingly went with him.

Father told the driver something that I couldn't remember and we drove in silence. I tried asking him where we were going but he wouldn't say anything. When the car finally stopped, I saw the jet sitting in the hangar. At that moment, I knew I had to go back to Jude. I trashed, kicked, screamed, and ran but then Father did another thing he'd never done before that day. He hit me.

"You fucking bastard," he kept saying as he continued to hit me until I lost consciousness.

I remembered feeling so scared then, that I must have done something wrong again. I'd tried to wrack my brain but I just couldn't figure out what it was.

When I woke up, we were in the air and I only knew where he'd taken me when we were driving through the streets, and I saw the road signs written in German.

He took me to the palace where my great-grandfather had lived in after retiring up until his death a few months before. Father dragged me inside, stopping outside a room at the end of a long hallway. When we entered, there was a woman laying on a bed with contraptions around her.