La Principessa

Chapter 2

Resfeber (N: Race-fay-ber) - The restless race of a traveller's heart before the journey begins, when anxiety and anticipation are tangled together.

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ANASTASIA'S POV

I have never been out of the house.

In all my 12 years of life, I have never stepped foot out of my parent's property. I have been out in the garden, yes. I was extremely lucky enough to feel the touch of soft grass beneath my feet and feel droplets of rain hitting my face, but that's about it.

So, as I'm limping to my room which is just the basement, my mind is spinning with endless possibilities on where my decision to leave will go. But I decide that will have to wait. My main focus right now is to leave before they come back and catch me. It's already nearly 10 pm, and a beginning of a screaming match is already taking place with glasses shattering and my mother's shrill screams reflecting through the walls, making me flinch and cover my ears with my still shaky hands.

I quickly walked in through the door and stood there unmoving in the centre as I eyed the place which was the safety of my room. A place I never had to worry about them coming inside since they never came in, they claimed it was dirty and not up to their level.

I stood there as the tears made their way down my sickly cheeks, trickling down my chin. I turned around and looked at my bed, which was just a dirty old blanket I found in the bin and my book that formed a pillow. I stood there, taking in the space I've lived in my whole life. I looked up at the ceiling which was beginning to rot with water dripping onto the cold carpet of the basement, making a puddle of water form, mould present in every nook of the tiny place. The dark carpet is worn away and scratchy, making my bare feet itchy with discomfort, and the towering door barely hangs on the hinges from the number of times he came and kicked it down, but despite all this, it's my room. 

The sounds of water hitting the floor temporarily distracted me from the pain of both the punishment and my overthinking. For the first time in my life, the tears kept on falling and I let them, I welcomed them. I had nothing in me to move, let alone wipe them, but I knew I didn't have long before they came back to hurt me.

They always did after their nightly arguments, with my mother usually coming first and releasing all her pent-up anger and frustration she never could at my father, who then came to me later on in the night. 

Sometimes he even woke me up gently, almost kindly, after my mother's visits before he hurt me, to trick me into thinking he came to help me, and to make the punishment more fun and exciting for his drunk mind when I quickly realised no one was gonna help me, I think. I learned the hard way to stop believing in the insane possibility of ever being helped years ago.  

I swallow hard and walk over to my bed before I take my book and bring it to my chest to hug. If he saw I was reading and that I took it from his library, instead of cooking and cleaning, in his words, like all women were born to do, I would receive a beating I'm sure I would never forget. If not, I'm sure my mother would complete the punishment with a smile.

I couldn't afford to lose the book. It's the only meaningful possession I own. It's the first book I picked up and related to. The young girl, the characters, the unfairness of the world, and the harsh reality of having parents who despise your existence. The main character of the book is not any older than me. Mae, her name is, was already suffering so much. It made me, as bad as it sounds, feel good. I feel like I'm not alone. Like I have someone, even if fictional, to relate to.

I never had friends, never being allowed out or doing anything other than serving them and making sure they were satisfied. So in a sense, the only friends I ever had were these books. I felt the character's happiness, sadness and despair when reading about their beautiful journey's and the small book had brought me the greatest comfort no human could ever wish to give me.