Runaway

No More

The sharp crack of Sister Abigail's ruler across Jess's knuckles reverberated through the stifling dormitory. She gasped and instinctively cradled her stinging hand as tears sprang to her eyes.

"Did I give you permission to stop your recitations?" the severe nun intoned, her voice laced with cruel disdain.

Throat tight, Jess stammered, "N-no, Sister...I'm s-sorry, I only lost my place for a moment..."

She desperately fought to keep her composure beneath Sister Abigail's withering glare. The rest of the girls knelt in neat rows, robotically mumbling their scriptural verses in creepy unison without pause. They didn't even flinch at the minor disciplinary outburst, so institutionalized were they to these harsh methods.

"Excuses are blasphemies in the face of true devotion," the nun snapped, raising her ruler in a silent threat. "Do not allow your mind to become corrupted by stray thoughts and temptations. We must purge such willful lapses immediately through righteous contrition."

Jess's breath hitched, bracing herself for another stinging lash of the ruler, or worse. She clasped her hands tightly and bowed her head, striving to keep her voice from quavering as she haltingly rejoined the ritualistic chanting.

A vague, distant part of her recoiled at the abject horror of this moment - publicly berated, threatened with violence, forced to mindlessly recite hollow scriptures like an unthinking automaton. All in the name of spiritual "rehabilitation." But Jess knew better than to give voice to such reservations. Those seeds of willful defiance would only breed further recriminations from the unstinting disciplinarians running St. Cloud's.

So she pressed on with the rote droning, studiously ignoring the fiery sting still radiating across her hand. Resistance and self-preservation warred within her - resist the crushing of her spirit and invoke harsher retribution...or surrender fully to this nightmare in order to endure. For her own fragile sanity and safety, surrender always won out.

As the droning prayers finally concluded hours later, Jess dared to sneak a sidelong glance at Sister Abigail where the vile woman stood in silent, reproachful judgment. The sight of her gaunt, skeletal features and those merciless eyes sent a tremor of dread through Jess's core.

This wasn't the path to spiritual renewal and healing that Father Gregory had promised. It was institutionalized torture, exacted upon the meekest of society's outcasts.

Suddenly, despite her ingrained fear of punishment, Jess felt a white-hot kernel of outrage and rebellion flare within her breast. How dare these twisted fanatics perpetuate their sadistic cruelties upon her and her fellow novices, all in the name of piousness?

After all the trials and deprivations she had endured up until this point - fleeing her broken home, the horrors of life on the streets, the indignities of this waking oppression at St. Cloud's - some imperceptible line had been crossed. Enough was enough. She could not, would not allow these hateful zealots to strip away her identity, her very soul any longer with their abusive regimens.

As the other girls rose stiffly from their places and began shuffling out in grim lockstep, something inside Jess finally snapped. Before she could think better of it, her hand lashed out and caught Sister Abigail by the shoulder, spinning the vile woman around to face her with an expression of pure rebellious fury.

"I've had enough of this..." Jess growled through gritted teeth, trembling with a ferocious amalgam of anguish, rage and long-suppressed defiance. "This is NOT the path to healing, it's just cruelty and oppression in the name of your warped religious persecution!"

Sister Abigail's eyebrows shot up in scandalized shock, a look of pure lividness twisting her severe features. "How dare you..." she seethed, raising her ruler in a white-knuckle grip. "This insolence and willful refusal of our curative disciplines shall not be tolerated, you wretched child!"

She reared back to strike an undoubtedly vicious blow, but Jess stood her ground despite her galloping heart. In that split second, she saw not just the hateful embodiment of St. Cloud's torments, but every hardship and horror that had battered her into such spiritual disrepair - her parents' failures, the predatory violence of the streets, Father Gregory's disastrous misjudgment in allowing this environment of abuse to perpetuate.

"No more..." Jess murmured, squaring her stance as she stared down her would-be tormenter. "I won't let you break me, not again. Not ever again!"

With that vehement declaration of self-preservation, she launched herself bodily at the vile Sister Abigail, bowling the nun over amidst a tangle of habits and flailing limbs. Their startled cries mingled with a percussive clatter as the ruler went skittering across the hard floor.

Shoving herself off the nun, Jess sprang up and raced through the knot of dumbstruck onlookers like a gazelle, her one guiding thought propelling her forward with frenzied momentum - escape, escape at all costs!

She didn't look back as stunned shouts and pounding footfalls pursued her down the cloister's drafty hallways. All care for forethought or consequences had fled - the only thing that mattered was putting as much distance between herself and these brutish malefactors as humanly possible.

At last, after what seemed an endless, panicked flight through shadowy corridors, Jess found herself bursting through an unguarded servants' entrance at the rear of the building. She spilled out into a chilly evening downpour, gulping in deep, ragged breaths of fresh air like a drowning woman.

The sounds of her pursuers faded as she sprinted recklessly across the outer courtyard. Without breaking stride, Jess flung herself towards the tall, wrought-iron perimeter fence, scrambling up the slick rungs with wild desperation until she crested the top and was able to hurl herself towards freedom, scraping and bruising herself on impact with the muddy ground outside St. Cloud's.

But the biting pain of her injuries failed to even register, so delirious was Jess with her narrow escape. She rolled onto her back, heedless of the cold rain soaking her tattered clothes, and simply stared up at the brooding twilit sky in a daze.

After an endless gauntlet of physical and spiritual anguish, utterly shattering abuse at the cruel hands of those meant to foster her healing...she was finally free. Free from the madness of her parents' home. Free from the waking nightmare of the streets. And now, blessedly free from the tyrannical shackles of St. Cloud's barbarous cult.

A ragged, half-mad laugh of relief escaped her lips, dissolving into a broken whimper as Jess curled into a fetal ball in the muddy grass. Her short taste of defiance and liberation had exacted both physical and mental tolls, leaving her drained and painfully adrift in the aftermath.

But none of it mattered anymore. She was out, finally and gloriously out from those harrowing captivities.

A million uncertainties and perils still awaited, borne from her perpetual status as a homeless adolescent runaway. But for the first time in what felt like an eternity, Jess's spirit began to feel its first faint stirrings of renewal and hope.

After tonight's final severing of her bonds, after staring down the yawning void of hopelessness and still claiming the tattered remains of her identity...she knew she possessed the unbreakable resilience to survive, to forge a new path still ahead.