The Hell We Create

Prologue

Three Years Ago

The rumbling of hooves and the scraping of wooden wheels kept the dark thoughts at bay. It was also raining heavily, I might add. Thunder cracked loudly in the distance, then over our heads, making my chest vibrate. It fits the mood. There was a funeral taking place. Not just any funeral--my mother, my brother, and my baby sister. Technically three funerals but the Church thought it were better for the public to see just one sad day. I beg to differ. The country should see three sad days that were my family's dead bodies marched through the Town Square. They should see the bodies too, see how they were bruised and beaten. I can still remember two days ago sitting and identifying my family in the morgue underneath the chapel.

I stood there in the mud and the dead grass at the gravesites already, accompanied by only immediate family—my aunt and two uncles, a few cousins. Garrias was here—well is going to be here. I stood a distance aways, near the brown and grey of the stones zig zagging along the street at the base of the cemetery. I didn't want to be bothered by hearing how sorry people were for me, how it would get better with time. No. I didn't want to hear that. I wanted this town to catch on fire. I wanted the earth to swallow me and everyone in this continent into the abyss. I wanted the sweetest feeling of them all when it comes to this sort of thing. Vengeance. Or retribution. I had tried to always keep a kernel of hope in my head. For my brother, for my sister.

My thoughts cleared as I saw the three carriages cresting the hill to the cemetery, Garrias taking the lead as the main pallbearer. I took a deep breath and forced it out in a huff. I wore a piece of black lace fabric that covered my whole face. It was attached to an atrocious and hideous hat that my brother found in the dump behind a posh tavern a couple miles from our cottage. "Happy birthday sis." I heard his voice clear as a sunny day, bright and full of happiness on the evening of my twenty-fifth summer this year. My throat closed for the hundredth time today.

The aunt on my mother's side had gotten my long wavy black hair braided to one side before we left home. The pants I wore were a tight pair of black leather breeches; the overcoat I wore was buttoned just so there was a flap settling between and against my thighs. I brushed my hands down my black corset, the slightly ruffled undershirt a beige color I absolutely hated scratched at my collarbone. All hand-me-downs, but it wasn't like I gave a shit. But to wear a little bit of white at a funeral meant purity to be brought over into the next life for the deceased.

All bullshit, I thought vehemently.

The sounds of neighing horses brought me out of the jog in my head, having jumped a little as the first of the carriages stopped in front of me on the cobblestone road leading from the Town Square. Garrias gave me a sad smile, giving me a short side-hug. The first one was especially small. Too small. My eyes burned and a pit formed in my stomach. The next two caskets in the next carriages were normal sized.

"Focus, you can do this." I whispered to myself, an obvious quiver in my words. The hell I could. I broke apart when I first saw their bodies.

I began walking to the three open holes in the ground. One of them, again...too small.

My baby sister, Rhodie. Dear Gods... She had five winters behind her. Five. I couldn't describe the words and the rage that engulfed me that day, at the state of absolute gore and horror her tiny body was. The utter violence I had wanted to invoke upon the people who'd done this, plus the whole world, was catching my breath to this very moment. I thought I might not breathe again.

My older brother, Tyrus. His head was caved in on his left side, the one side where his only "good" eye remained, fused with his skull. The violence is taking my breath away.