~~Young~~

Chapter Fourteen

   Dreams are powerful things.

   Sera couldn’t remember how many books Chels had picked up for her in their teens  on defining dreams, decoding dreams, anything to help Sera understand the dark world she faced when she closed her eyes. It was never good news which is why Chels always insisted on buying more. Guess she figured eventually she’d get the answer she wanted versus what the truth was.

   Sera was just a dark person.

   Doomed to a life of depression and manic behavior she had come to terms with it years ago, knowing the only choice she had was to succumb or fight. The fighting might be hard but look at where succumbing gets you. Seeking out the vilest of men just so she could have a shred of self respect after all was said that and done that they deserved what they got. But did anyone deserve that, to be sliced open like a pig at the slaughterhouse?

   Too bad to find them, to lure them into her web, she had to think like them. Put herself in their shoes, in their minds. Make herself feel their undeniable urges to hurt and maim in their sick pursuits of pleasure. By the time they realized she wasn’t the prey, but them, it wasn’t hard for her to feel like they deserved everything they got.

   It wasn’t always this way though. She couldn’t remember the darkness having any sway over her as a child, an inkling maybe in her teens…but she had always chalked that up to the forever fluctuating hormones. No it wasn’t until that accident, when three people lay dead because of her, did it finally make itself a presence in her mind.

   Then and forever on…

   Bloodshed didn’t used to be the only thing that satisfied the darkness inside her either. It was about vindication at first, causing suffering of those who imparted it on others. Maybe as atonement for what she had done, her own self punishment for thinking she got off too easy, she was never really sure. But it didn’t change the fact that those people, that that family, was dead because of her. And really she knew nothing ever would, but she had to try…

   It could be done by exposing the skeletons in one’s closet. Humiliation on a grand scale could be so much more powerful than any knife wound. Public figures were her favorite, how many headlines about someone “falling from grace” had there been before it was no longer enough for her darkness. It wanted more, needed more before it would let her be.

   Somewhere along the way it became stronger then her, then her will, and the suffering became more important than the justice Sera sought. Every time she fed into it, it grew. The mental pain she inflicted quickly changed from shame to a traumatizing fear. Scaring those she targeted into changing their lives. Then from fear to physical pain, minor at first, broken fingers, arms, her darkness fed on that agony. She used to tell herself it was okay, that she was just proving she would follow through with her threats should they ever return to their loathsome ways.

   But then the threats stopped, there was no ultimatum for the pain she exacted anymore. Just pain. Then blood…so much blood…

   How long till she became numb to that as well? How long till she didn’t care who she hurt in order to feed her darkness? How long until that was all that was left of her?

   Not much longer…

   Without trying to rationalize away that the men she had potentially killed deserved it she thought back to those last few minutes in the alley. She was not in control she knew that, took that one moment of peace and reveled in it, knowing she had gotten herself in the most ideal place she could before letting her darker nature take control.

   But, as always, it didn’t take long for that high to wear off when she realized how much the violence had continued to escalate. It had moved beyond cuts and gouges to mutilation and carnage. Would that one man ever be able to speak again? Had she truly severed off the manhood of the leader of the pack as she knew her darkness had intended? It bothered her that she felt any pity for them knowing that they planned to gang rape her in that alley. But at the same time she knew if she lost that sense of remorse then she would be no different than the darkness. And that bothered her more.