Blissful Pain

The Grimm

The child lay there in a pools of old and new blood. He couldn't move and didn't want to move. He just lay there hoping to drown in his sorrows and pain. He didn't know when or how long until the Grim came in to tend to his wounds. He never knew how long it was. Time seems like a foreign outsider when you're stuck inside the same shack never able to ponder outside. When the only thing you have to talk to are the things your mind conjures up. So the child didn't move or object as the Grim turned him over on his stomach and cut open his shirt to heal yet another set of slashes. The childe didn't scream or wince at the pain as he was turned upside down. Instead he just curled up on the floor closing his electric blue eyes letting the aches and pains lull him into the hands of the dark faceless silhouettes that he has learned to call family.

♚ ♚ ♚

As I approached the boys body I actually thought he was dead. That after ten years of a prison sentence this penance has finally killed him. But as I approached his broken body I saw the slow and steady rise and fall of his chest and all I could feel was pity. I came to stand over him and found his startling empty blue eyes staring at me. When I looked into back at them I saw nothing. Just a vacant depthless gaze staring back at me that could of belonged to a corpse. I guess that was what the boy was now. A shadow of the person he used to be. I quickly shook away my gaze and turned him over to heal his wounds. He doesn't object to it or even make a sound. He just lay there staring at the floor motionless and soundless. The body might have been breathing and able to open the eyes but that's all it is now. An empty hollow vessel. A puppet who just lay there waiting for its master to pick up the strings and condemn it to its next task.

I sigh and get back to my work. I close my eyes and put my hand over the blood soaked shirt and focus on knitting the skin back together. I feel warmth emanating from my hand and soon I feel the skin starting to stitch back together. When I finish I open my eyes and to check if there are no more wounds, I rip open the blood spattered fabric of his clothing and all I do is just stare at his gnarled skin. His back is not even a back anymore. There is not a sliver of skin that is not defaced or disfigured. There are thousands of different long narrow marks running across his rear. Some stretch from one side all the way to the other. Each one looking far worse from the next. I put my hand over it and it like reading a story. Each scar a different page of tragedy and torment. I cannot feel myself breathing because as I continue scanning the scars all I see are the new pages I added to this suffering souls story.

♚ ♚ ♚ I arose to a squeaking sound. I tried to raise my head and was granted with a splitting pain in the back of my skull. I got up again ignoring the pain and looked around for the squeaking sound. I looked until to my right I spotted the source, a small gray mouse scavenging for food. It currently attacking my drabby dinner of stale bread, moldy cheese, and slimy porridge. I got up and swayed more than walked toward the mouse. My legs felt like lead but I just took the pain and reached the mouse and my food and fed it the cheese and bread. When it was done the mouse turned its small brown head toward me and started to squeak at me. Like it was thanking me for feeding it my dinner. I smiled and tried to get it to eat my porridge but it smelled the noxious food and ran before I could get it to eat it.

I groaned as I grabbed the spoon and ate it myself. I could feel it go down my throat into my stomach. My body rejected it and I felt it coming back up but I closed my mouth and swallowed it. Again I was gifted with the vile feeling and taste of it going back down again. The next spoon was worse and so was the next one and the one after that. When I was done I knew more than felt the hatred my stomach held for me. It was nothing new as I was forced to eat this same thing for three times a day for the past ten years. I should be used to it by now but no matter of time could get you used to that disgusting substance that passes as food.