Roxana De La Cruz

22. The Batibat and the Pawn

The storm was not forgiving. Bird nests flew across the treeline, smashing any eggs they held, and the remaining birds sought cover in cracks of stones and whatever else they could find. The river's depth had grown and sat up to Anna's hips and Rafael's knees. 

Their hair was wet and messy. Her tears mixed with the rain and stuck onto her rosy cheeks while Rafael guided them through the torrential river. 

Miraculously, they had reached the shore of the other side of the river, and with her hand still in his grip, she collapsed to the hard pebbles and gasped for air. Her knees were already cut and bleeding on the ground. 

"Please...I'm begging you. Let's go home." 

"Which home?"

She felt her throat dry, unable to search for an answer. 

"I'm not fucking crossing that river again. Not until it goes down, anyway. It's just me, you, and the demon out here in the open."

"You...you're such a child!" She managed to yell out breathlessly but was only met with laughter. 

"No...there's just no men like me." He replied. 

~

The hill Rafael was talking about had rocks stuck beneath its earth and tall grass now wet. 

"There is supposed to be a tree stump on top of that hill..." He panted, "The Batibat mingles around where their home once stood and will attack anyone who comes close." 

When the lightning and thunder struck once again, Anna cursed when she found herself hanging onto Rafael for dear life, but he used this opportunity to hug her closer in one arm and with the knife in his other hand, he dragged both of them to hike upon the hill. 

~

Her legs and feet were sore, bleeding, and was out of breath. 

She hated him. She hated his words because they were all true. She hated her Grandaunt, Delores, her Father, Mother, Brother, and almost everyone else in her life. 

Just when she thought she was going to enter a life entirely of opportunity and out of poverty and the resentment from her family, she was thrown into the hands of a spiteful and ambitious woman, doing things she did not want to do, meeting people who she gave two shits about.

Why was I doing all of this this entire time...?

She did not know which hell was worse or if another was darker than the one she was living in now. 

A toy. A pawn to be moved about across the board by the Masters as they pleased. Easy to be discarded and overlooked when it came to the games they played. 

Mother, Father, Brother, Delores, Ophelia, Rafael, the De La Cruz family, and the rest of the worms, from top to bottom of the horrible ladder the world is built on, I just want to destroy them all and go home. Home. 

Nothing had given me so much pain as being the pawn to the adults' idiotic games. 

Suddenly, a woman's scream shattered through Anna's consciousness and with Rafael, they both looked up on top of the hill, but nothing was there. The screaming was coming from the other side of the hill. 

The rain and river had long made his skin cold and almost freezing, but the scream alone made his skin crawl and his stomach tumble. His grip on the knife hardened. 

"They say the demon is a woman and haunts those who step on her home in their sleep. How stupid, isn't it? A land full of felled trees and such a desolute land is still considered 'home' to her. I swear to God, I will never understand women." He snapped.