The Emperor

06

ADELINE

Mare's mom once told me to never lose my heart.

I didn't understand that back then, I was only ten and not much made sense. But now I get it.

The world we live in is a sea of monsters, if you swim fast and far enough they won't catch you, if you dare to drown they will catch your ankle and drag you all the way to the deep ends. One caught me and she never allowed me to swim back to the surface.

She ties me to the wall with those heavy chains in the basements.

She prays to the Lord to save my soul.

She screams in my ears until I feel like my head might explode.

Worst of all, she makes me bleed.

She thinks well though. She wants me safe. She wants me saved, and that by any means.

She still loves me. Otherwise she wouldn't make sure my cuts don't get infected, she wouldn't wipe my tears away, she wouldn't kiss my cheeks and make me laugh, she wouldn't cook me dinner, she wouldn't teach me things. But she doesn't love me enough.

He loved me enough. Until he didn't.
He left me.
I hate him.

And now, now, I have to suffer over and over again with no hope for salvation.

It's a bad day, the chains are marking my wrists and my arms feel sore. It's a bad day so I scream. I scream and I cry and I beg.

The monster won't let me go.

"Please!" I scream through the tears. I scream but nobody hears me. I scream but nobody saves me. I scream but I'm all alone at the monster's mercy.

She's not facing me, I can see her white long dress. She never wears anything that isn't white. She stopped dressing me when I'm in the basement, blood is never easy to wash away. Her long hair, terrifyingly similar to mine, falls all the way down to her lower back and she whispers to herself.

She whispers her prayers while she prepares to turn into my worst nightmare. And then, she turns around.

"No. No. No! No!" She steps towards me, still muttering her scary words. "Please! Please! Don't! Please! God, please! No!" More often than not I become that. Hysterical. The fear does that to me. It wrecks my inside upside down, it steals all my oxygen, it confuses my brain, all of that without stopping my heart and Lord knows that is what I want the most.

It's too late.
The monster woke up.

"Adie!" Small and slim hands stroke my hair. No. "Adie! Wake up!" Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. " It's just a bad dream, come on..." A bad dream. A bad dream or a horrific memory? A bad dream or a sad truth? A bad dream or a very real past?

"You're safe." Safe. The word sounds like a whisper, so, so, far away from me and the reality. A reality in which safety doesn't exist, in which safety will never exist. But my eyes snap open. Terrified of the monster who might be looking at me from the corner of the room. I'm quite disoriented.