The Girl Who Lived

Nightmares

March 7th, 1996.
Elena Clairmont.

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"Go ahead, girl!" Joseph Langston shouted to me. "Do your little tricks again, I dare you!" He pulled back his hand and the leather met my flesh, slicing open throbbing skin.

I screamed quietly, trying to bite my lip to stop the cries in my mouth.

If I screamed, it only made it worse.

As if I had asked him to defend my thinking, he brought down the leather belt again. The iron buckle sliced down my back like my back was invisible.

Shooting pain hit my spine- my bones for Gods sakes. I cried again, bowing my head against the pillar I was tied to.

I wanted to use flames, ice, shadow, anything, to free me from the belt he tried onto my legs and hands.

It hadn't been fair.

I hadn't tried to frighten them. My parents.

This afternoon, I had gotten excited and when I looked down to my hands, they were coated in white fire.

Fire had come from my hands and I didn't know how that was happening.

In my rush of adrenaline, I had run down the stairs to the den where my parents were, watching the television.

When I kept bugging them about my hands and the flame, they finally had paid attention but the moment they did- I wish I had stayed silent. My mother had screamed and fainted.

But my father?

He had grabbed me by my braid and dragged me down to the basement, even when I tried to kick away.

My father had grabbed his belt and tied my hands around the pillar, right in the middle of the half finished basement. He used rope on my feet and struck me across the face harshly, promising this would never be the last time I would be tied to this pillar.

I felt the shadows curled around my ear tell me about the belt before I had even seen it.

His belt with an iron buckle.

I didn't know why he had it- but he did. And he planned to use it now, today on his child who had only been alive for twelve years.

The first time he had hit me with the belt, it hadn't hurt so bad. But it was because his hand wasn't ready to move yet.

The twenty lashes that followed made tears come down my face and screams plow through me.

Nothing I said or did could stop him.

His black hair fell onto his face and his knuckle stained with scarlett, brushed it away before he crouched down and took hold of my chin.

There was absolutely nothing but hatred and disgust in his brown eyes.

I could have sworn there once was love within them. Would've sworn it over my life.

But you don't beat the people you love.

"If you ever try to hurt us like that again, I'll punish you worse than twenty lashings." My father spoke through gritted teeth. Drops of my blood speckled his face, already dried down but running with the sweat falling on his face.

I nodded quickly, obeying and demanding my mind to never use those powers again.

My powers sung to me in response, begging to burn or freeze or drown. They craved the touch of destruction- the feeling of the blows to hurt my father. I shook it away, telling them to wait, to wait for a day when I could control them enough to take the hurting blow.