M.I.A

The End of the Beginning

The knife clatters to the floor. The sound slightly dulled by the still warm flesh strewn all over the black tiles. Her hazel eyes are dark green with emotions. Tears run over her cheeks while she inspects her hands and her bottom lip trembles. 

"You've tested me one too many times, Mother," she spits the last word out with a shudder through her entire body before she turns to walk out of the door. 

Miabelle stops in the large garden. Her favourite smell fills the air as a breeze carries the scent of roses toward her. She makes no attempt to wipe her hand, and she does not close the door behind her either. Taking a slow, leisurely stroll through the family garden, she recounts events leading up to this very moment. 

Born as the eldest of five children, the only female, she was considered a blemish on her family's name for merely having been born. Everyone knows a good, influential family births SONS first. Strong, demi-gods with golden spoons taking pity on the female of the specie. She wasn't that; they hid her away until her brother was born. Miabelle grew up with her grandma for the first nine years of her life. She didn't know she had a brother, or a mother and father. Hell, she didn't even know she wasn't an orphan. 

Her grandma instilled kindness, morals and values in her. Then Gamma died. Mia's mother decided this is a good time to 'claim' the young girl back as her own and Mia ends up in a community environment rife with political gambling, white collar crime and her immediate family at the top of the ladder spitting down on people below them. 

Repulsed by this, she became quiet and withdrawn. She kept to herself majority of the time and only stood firm by taking care of her younger siblings which her mother neglected to a point of abuse. 

School was difficult for Mia. She did pretty well, always had high grades, but she never did fit. She hardly cared to be a fishbowl baby like the other girls. She never made big eyes and giggled at stupid things. She didn't follow fashion and she couldn't give a shit about the mind-games. School was a place of education, nothing more. 

Finishing high school, Mia went straight on to college, did what needed doing and eventually gained entry into University.  Trouble is?

Her mother and father had this 'wonderful' plan to marry her off to one of the most crooked political minds of their home-town. They finally found a 'use' for her. When Mia objected against this, and refused, they made her life hell. Pushing her from one psych evaluation to another - one 'treatment' facility for 'depression' to another, she eventually broke down married J.R. 

The man was a beast. His father was the devil. Mia spend a lot of time in and out of hospital wards with broken bones, undergoing reconstructive surgery to her face and inevitably, she formed a unhealthy addiction to morphine. 

"I can always claim the drugs made me do it," she chuckles to herself, leaning over to smell the flower in the cups of her hands. 

It wasn't though. She's been clean for months. She's finally managed to sort her shit out and when she arrived at her family estate, the very first person she sought to confront, was her Mother. The woman who sold her piece by piece to the highest bidder. 

Flashback ...

"Oh Miabelle, my dear child, you look so ... so ... washed out! What will your husband say?" Mrs. Storm sneered. 

"He'll say nothing, mother, because his tongue is stayed," Mia holds up a jar filled with liquid, shaking it. Her mother visibly pales. 

"W-what have you done child?!" 

"Oh, nothing serious momma," Mia laughs, her voice escalates to a pitch, "Nothing I shouldn't have done a long time ago." She places the jar on the shiny table by the front door, looking around the foyer as if seeing it for the first time.