Arabella D'Angelo is just a shell of a girl, a mere presence floating through the halls of her Los Angeles home. Her once bright grey eyes and sunshine-like spirit was crushed by the weight of her abusive parents.
Living in a constant state of fear...
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Blood.
With my heart thundering in my chest like a war drum, I shot up from the bed with a strangled gasp. My hair stuck to my damp face with some strands clinging to my cheeks, tangled from what I assumed was restless tossing.
I looked around in overwhelming panic, breath hitching as the walls of my room seemed to press in around me. The air grew thick, suffocating and I clawed at my throat like it would help me breathe better. My vision swam, blurred by the tears that were about to fall.
There was blood.
Everywhere.
It was smeared on the pale walls, pooled over the marble floor and splattered all across the sheets. My hands trembled violently as I held them in front of me. Blood coated my palms, sticky and dark with a familiarity that sickened me.
My entire body turned to ice and my heart dropped to my stomach. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. The reality around me cracked like shattered glass and I struggled to draw in oxygen inside my lungs.
His screams echoed in my ears; raw, broken and inhuman in a way that frightened me to the core.
"Please! Please, stop!"
His voice was still stuck in my skull like a knife I couldn't pull out. I could hear his desperate pleadings. The way he cried out for mercy that was never coming. I could still hear the sound of the sharp knife slicing through his fingers again and again.
And the person who did it terrified me the most now.
My body curled in on itself, my arms wrapping around my shaking frame. I rocked myself back and forth slightly, desperately trying to remember where I was, trying to convince myself that it was just a haunting ephialtes.
But it wasn't.
The soft white curtains were drawn close, swallowing the room in black shadows despite the daylight outside. Yet, I still saw him. His bruised face, wide fearful eyes, blood-soaked smile and the agonisingly pained scream.
He stood there lifelessly in the corner of my room, watching me as blood poured out from wounds in his body. His eyes, dead and pale, stared at me with an intensity that made my breath hitch and tears spill down my cheeks.
"No, no, no-" I whispered, my voice cracking like fragile glass under pressure. I backed up, away from the image, away from the memory, only to yelp when my back hit the hard wood of the headboard. I flinched, body jerking on instinct as though someone had hit me. "Get a-away from me.."
