Past-Four years ago
He set her on fire, but it was me he watched burn.
Within seconds, her body was drowning in an inferno. The blaze glowed red, bathing the night sky in blood. A sheet of flames danced across her naked skin, shrinking and splitting open flesh, leaving body fluid to expel. They reached for her dark strands of hair and singed them to the scalp.
Her mouth had been sewn shut after she was forced to repent for her sins, silencing her shrills of agony and fear. The familiar aroma of charred flesh permeated the air, filling my aching lungs with every ragged breath I took.
The Order stood by, watching with bored expressions on their faces as the faux nuns held hands and whispered their synthetic prayers.
I wished it were a dream, but I was wide-awake. I wished nothing more than to take her place. I wished someone would have saved us from the hate, but not one person stepped forward.
I had tried so hard to warn her away.I’d begged her not to come back for me. Why didn’t she listen?
My body shook with silent sobs, constricting my heart in my chest. I couldn’t move. It hurt to breathe. I felt like I were burning with her.
I was forced to watch on as the life vacated her body, leaving her limbs dangling limply above the flames. The bones that had been exposed were slick with the greasy residue of melted flesh.
As two men moved forward to begin extinguishing the fire, still no one said a word.
I tried not to picture what would happen to what remained of her blackened body, knowing she was to be discarded for crows and wild animals to feast on.
“It’s unfortunate it had to come to this,” my father sighed, removing his heavy foot from my spine. “You let me down, Calista.”
He stepped over my body and knelt down, lifting my battered face from the dirt. His skewed logic made him believe that if my pain wasn’t visible, then I wasn’t hurting—when he was the one who’d taught me to handle abuse.
I looked into his cold, grey eyes and hoped he saw the hatred I no longer bothered to mask. If I had the strength, I would have torn out his jugular with my teeth.
I had done everything he’d asked of me, even when I didn’t want to, when the aftermath always killed me a little more each time.
I suppressed parts of me to appease him, but no matter how hard I tried, it was never good enough.
Once upon a time, all I wanted was for him to remember I was his baby girl. Now, I wanted him dead. I wanted to feel his blood between my fingers and keep his head as a trophy.
“Feel better…now?” I wheezed out, choking on phlegm.
“You’ve learned nothing from any of this; you are truly hopeless.” He squeezed my cheeks and then shoved my face back in the dirt, a look of disgust twisting his features. “Your sins will eat you alive.” With one last shake of his head, he chuckled and regarded me with unfeeling eyes before standing up and strolling away.
“Take her past the border and leave her,” he demanded over his shoulder to my brothers, who had been standing by watching the events unfold.
“If you don’t kill me…I will kill you,” I called out to him.
He continued walking away, not bothering to give me so much as a backward glance. My hope that he would turn around and end it all was gone just as quickly as it had arrived.
My brothers rushed to obey his command. They each grabbed an upper arm and began dragging me face down across the ground. I gritted my teeth as my hands were secured behind my back with strips of twine.
“Let’s get this over with; I haven’t eaten supper yet,” my eldest brother grumbled, lifting me up and tossing me in the bed of his truck with an irritated sigh. I let out a soft grunt as my side impacted with the plastic floor.
A second later, the engine revved, and I was flying forward as the truck sped off into the night.
Much quicker than I expected, signs warning that we were about to leave a safe zone began to appear on the trees.
I remained on my stomach, trying to come up with a quick plan of action. I knew once we reached our destination that the inevitable would be moments away from happening.
And I was right.
Seconds after the truck came to a full stop, one of my brothers dropped the tailgate and grabbed hold of my habit to pull me out.
“We could fuck her now,” my younger brother, Noah, whispered, pressing his elbow into my back to keep me pinned down.
“No, Judy is enough for me. Besides, look at her, she’s filthy.”
At their words, my stomach twisted into a knot, acidic bile rising in my throat. Judy was our thirteen-year-old cousin.
How did I not know this was going on? When did my brothers start feeding on the bullshit our father spewed like every other brainwashed acolyte? This shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did.
The entire Order was made up of one, giant incestuous family exchanging body fluids.
“Suit yourself; I don’t care what she looks like. I only want what’s between her legs.” Noah laughed. He gripped the dark fabric around my waist and started sliding it up.
“Make it quick; I’ll wait in the truck.”
The sound of retreating footsteps had one of my worst fears quickly becoming a reality. I was really being left alone to be violated, which was normal under usual circumstances, but never by my brothers.
“Don’t,” I choked out, struggling to move away.
“Shhh,” he blew in my ear, pressing the side of my face into the bed of the truck.
Grabbing my cloth underwear with one hand, he easily tore it away. His heavy cross amulet pressed into my back as he crushed me with his weight.
I heard the telltale sound of his belt being undone and my stomach turned to stone.
“Stop,” I pleaded a little louder, my voice chock-full of emotion.
He cleared his throat and spat into the palm of his hand, rubbing the DNA we shared between my ass cheeks. I swallowed repeatedly to hold down vomit but when his disgusting, hard cock pressed against my sensitive hole, it erupted from my mouth and dribbled down my chin, leaving an acidic taste on my tongue.
I thrashed from side to side, trying my damndest to dislodge him, failing miserably. My haggard body protested at the movement, radiating with pain. Louis Armstrong began to croon out the words to What A Wonderful World from the truck’s cassette player, overshadowing my pleas and sobs.
“Hold still,” Noah growled, flipping me over so I was on my back, forcing my head to lie in my own vomit.
My shoulders screamed in their sockets, and twine cut into my wrists.
“Please don’t do this,” I begged as he settled between my legs. He covered my mouth with his hand and managed to shove half his length inside me.
Vigorously shaking my head back and forth, I freed my mouth and sucked in a breath, releasing it on a broken scream as he pulled out and pushed back in. Friction coupled with dryness tore the delicate tissue, making me bleed. My mind blanked, unable to believe that this was happening, that my sweet little brother wasn’t moving inside me, moaning his pleasure in my ear.
Nausea tossed my stomach. I couldn’t get out from beneath him and I was wasting all my energy trying, but I had to do something. No one was going to save me.
Adrenaline had my pulse racing at a hazardous speed. I could hear my heartbeat thundering in my ears. With a single-minded focus, I lurched up and brought us nearly mouth to mouth, catching him by surprise.
I snagged his lower lip between my teeth and bit down as hard as I could.
“Ah, fuck!” he garbled, immediately pulling out of me.
His fist and pain simultaneously hit the right side of my face. The impact forced me to let go, but not without tearing a soft piece of flesh from the inside of his mouth. I spat it out, along with the blood I tasted on my tongue.
He jumped up and swiped his face with the back of his arm. With nothing to balance me, I fell off the gate of the truck. Before I could get my bearings, his boot kicked me square in the stomach.
Gasping, I managed to roll onto my side, receiving another kick to my back. I bent my spine, pulled my shoulders in, and tucked my chin to my chest to form a protective ball.
“Fucking bitch, you’re not even worth it.” A glob of spit landed on my cheek, and his hand came down and attempted to tear the necklace from around my neck.
When he failed to remove it, he kicked me one last time in the back of my head. Pain exploded in my skull, and I saw stars.
A door slammed, and then they were gone. As the taillights faded, darkness eagerly swallowed me up.