Celeste

14 | deafening

     THE BURNING sensation that had settled upon my entire mouth only intensified with every passing second. Its flames were an easy target, the punches my face had been receiving over the past minutes being the bullet fired whenever the trigger got pulled. And the bitter, metallic taste of my own blood being the impact of the firm fist's multiple collisions with my cheek. The ones that acted like a powerful bullet and painfully grazed my skin.

As for the person that had pulled the trigger, it was the man standing right before my gaze. The one whose darkened hazel eyes held no sympathy as he continued to aim his punches and kicks at me. One after the other. Over and over again. He aimed them at every single part of my weakening body and sickeningly smirked upon seeing that I had stopped fighting back a long time ago—that I was no more capable of shielding my body any further even though it had desperately begged me to do so.

No one seemed to hear the pleas I made for the pain to stop. And no one seemed to hear the ones I made for the man I knew nothing about to provide me with a short break—to stop pouring all his anger and frustration at me as though I were his personal punching bag.

Not the men who watched everything and roared loudly, enjoying the scene unfolding right before their greedy gazes. Not the unfamiliar man who had taken Dante's place to fight against me. And not even my own inner voice that had pushed me into joining those underground fights.

No one heard my pleas other than my exhausted mind. And just like I had expected, it did nothing to help. It didn't order my limbs to move away or to fight back, and it didn't even comfort me by saying that I was capable of handling a little more of pain.

Instead, it told me that I deserved all of it. The punches. The kicks. The pain. Everything. It reminded me of how none of it was anything in comparison to the pain I had put my little sister through. Of how the excruciating pain was nothing but an extremely tiny fragment of the hurt I had seen within Celeste's eyes whenever I treated her badly—whenever I ignored her or pushed her away.

I did all of it to keep her safe, I argued back. I only wanted to keep her safe. To protect her from ending up like Meredith and I, and from the ruthless people I had gotten involved with.

I argued and argued, my miserable argument growing weaker with every passing second. I screamed internally at my mind when the pain continued to slash my skin—when the bullets aimed at my face shifted to my abdomen and pierced it, the daggers accompanying it digging deeply into my skin, seemingly penetrating my organs and swiftly creeping away from my abdomen and into my chest, tearing both my lungs and my heart apart.

I didn't fight back at all, but that didn't stop the man who had followed Celeste and I a few hours earlier from fighting. I failed in protecting myself. But then again, when had I ever succeeded in anything?

I had hurt my sister when my only intention was to protect her.

The dimmed lights surrounding me brightened, rapidly latching onto my eyes and burning their irises, blurring my vision further along with the tears that had brimmed in the corners of my eyes and danced across its edges. I spat my blood out and disregarded the bitterness of its metallic taste that had settled upon my tongue and refused to leave. My neck painfully craned and my vision searched the crowd, looking for Dante.