A price to pay

blue flame

You couldn't remember the last time you had a merry Christmas. The last time there were presents being unwrapped. The last time you and your family were happy together. It all went to shit years ago, when your dad got addicted to gambling. None of you noticed in the beginning. Small amounts of money would disappear, juwelry 'lost' into nothingness. This went on for a long while, but since there was food on the table and the bills were getting paid, nobody noticed.
Your mom was a simple woman, with a heart full of love and good intentions, but a head full of sawdust. She never questioned a thing her husband, your father, did.
And your one sibling, Aiden, your twin even, had a heart made of ice, it seemed. She was a mirrored image of yourself, but only on the outside. You both had long, messy, black hair. Eyes as blue as the sky, and pale, delicate skin. On the inside however, she was a pit of tar, everything that was given to her, sunk to the bottom of that gruesome darkness inside her soul.
She wasn't always like this, she'd been a ray of sunshine when she was little, but that light had been stomped out by their dad, who dealt with losing at the tables by coming home and beating his two children. It turned your sister dark inside, but you had refused to let him and his fists break you. You kept that blue flame of hope alive in your heart.
He never laid a finger on your mom, another reason things went the way they went. Mom had no idea... Alltho you suspected your mother to shake that sawdust in her head up from time to time, so every bit of knowing was neatly covered up again.
Year after year the Christmas presents got smaller, the food got lesser and the beatings got worse.
Untill, one Christmas, not even a tree was there and hunger was the only feeling you got to share with your mother and sister.
Not with your dad tho, you hadn't seen him in two days. Not since he found out about the little box of jewelry you had hidden under your bed. The one thing that was yours.
You fought him with everything you had, but eventually he grabbed your hair, threw you against the wall knocking you out and took the box in his greedy little hands and left. The blue flame that burned in your heart flickered weakly, almost snuffed out. But you wouldn't let it go out, you held on to that little light, refusing to let the darkness come in and consume you.