Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 150546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 753(@200wpm)___ 602(@250wpm)___ 502(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 753(@200wpm)___ 602(@250wpm)___ 502(@300wpm)
I sigh. “Doesn’t matter, because I’ll deny myself the feeling for as long as I need.”
Movement catches my eye in the corner of the room. “Now, this is a scary scene…”
I push myself off the counter and land on my feet. I don’t have it in me to go another round with him. Not right now.
Tillie’s words stop me before I reach the other side. “Dinner party at twelve!” We already know. And I’m definitely not prepared for it.
Before this family dinner party, I need to mentally prepare. Too many Kings in one room can either be a very good thing, or a very bad thing.
Kicking my bedroom door closed, I lean my head against the wood. The week after the ritual has been testing so far, but the weight of my secret is becoming heavy. I always knew it would sink me over time.
Blood strums through my ears rhythmically, releasing the tension in my nerves as the minutes pass. The claws of my consciousness gnaw at the cavity in my chest as I move to my bedside dresser.
I lean over to plug my phone in to charge when the cord falls between the crack of my bed.
“Of course.”
My knees hit the floor as I aimlessly reaching for the cord, when my fingertips graze a hard surface. I slide it out from beneath my bed with a waft of ancient leather.
My finger traces the lines that are engraved over the top. I think back to the night I found it, in the back of the boy’s car from Bayonet Falls. For whatever reason, I wanted to take it.
The backs of my thighs hit my bed as I lower to the edge, tugging at the leather strings that keep it closed. It falls open and the papers give way…
Today was like every other day. I stared back at myself in the mirror for minutes. Or maybe it was hours. It wasn’t a good day, but I’d decided to finally journal. Try to make sense of the days that seem to lose me. Maybe one day, I’d be able to come back here, to pages so familiar that they could almost whisper my deepest memories back to me. Well, I’d hope so anyway.
The scar on my face looked worse today. A brutal reminder of everything I’d been through. Ironic how it started from my temple and curled around the contours of my eye.
My fingertips brushed the swell of it gently, but when the memories crawled over my skin, anger slammed the mirror closed.
I’ve never written before. Watching the ink spread over the page is somewhat therapeutic. The trust implicit. I wasn’t sure if I liked it. This might only end up being one entry.
I hated this place. I wanted the buildings to turn to rubble and to run.
But I could never.
Every day was exactly as the last. The same routine. Tediously repetitive. The sun would set, and the sun would rise. In between that, we would cook, feed, and then clean. None of those were the worst of what we’d do that day. My hands ache so terribly by the end of the day that I’m barely able to continue writing this paragraph.
Today, I sat and watched as the clock in the common room ticked by as we all sat around the common table during lunch. We were always dressed in white, hence washing them seemingly tedious. There were twelve right now. Not including the soldiers, and others that I would see walking around every now and then, but for us cloth wearers, there were twelve.
I knew exactly how many people were here because I counted. I was never sure if there were more, and I never asked. We weren’t to speak unless spoken to.
Heavy footsteps pounded against the wooden floor and my body froze.
“Holy day to thou.” His voice was hard. Rougher than usual, and I was sure this was a warning. He was never in a good mood, but no one wanted him in a bad one either. “Sit. Eat.”
We all lowered ourselves to the wooden bench, awaiting his next command. The material of my robe was extra itchy today, and my skin burned, as if it knew I did not belong here. No one damn well belongs here, yet even when my oldest memories were hazy, others would tell me that I needed to obey.
He was evil.
Pure evil.
At first, they thought I was naturally rebellious. I always felt as though I didn’t belong. Like my legs wanted to run to a place that didn’t exist. A world that didn’t exist. Maybe even a time that didn’t exist yet.
We drew pictures as kids of what the world looked like. The sound of strange flying objects in the air.
The pictures stopped long after that.
Long after, we were told who we were and why we were here. At that time, there were only three of us… there were now twelve.