Nightmare

Past Resurfacing

So I tell him. Everything that I know about myself.

Except the universe I'm from.

"When I was supposedly a newborn, two people found a box with a baby inside on their doorstep. With a single note attached: my birthday and my name. I don't know why. Probably, my real parents didn't want me but had enough 'sympathy' to make sure I knew when I was born or some bullshit," I begin.

"Anyway, those parents decided to keep me for some reason--I wish they hadn't--but they were abusive. If I misbehaved in the tiniest bit, or if they were in a bad mood, which was all the time, they would take me to a dark, almost-pitch black room in the basement for days and beat me. And then they would keep for long periods of time without food or water. I almost never got to see the sunlight then. Never.

"Sometimes, when they were really  mad, they would tie me down and put a towel on face, and," I blink away tears, "pour water on it. It made me feel like drowning. I've been scared of the dark and water being dumped on me for years now. And it always makes me feel so weak--" 

I break away to control the incoming sobs that will rack my body, but it doesn't work. and suddenly I'm crying out loud. I'm pathetic. I'm sorry.

"You're not weak," Rowan says as he strokes my hair, holding as my tears soak his neck and shirt. "You are the strongest person I've ever met. And I am proud to have met you."

I sniffle, not letting go of him as I calm down and keep going.

"I used to have to go into the city--Well, was it a city or just a large version of the slums?--to buy things. So one day I walk walking home, and his guy... he tackled me and dragged me into an alley. Then he..." I gulp. "After that, I ran. To get away. I couldn't take it anymore. But they had a tracker on me, and when I tried to run, they caught me, and my 'father,'" I shudder, "was drunk. He shoved me into the house, screaming with a bottle in his hand. And my 'mom,' she just stood there and watched."

Rowan's face is blank--No, calm with a lethal rage.

"She didn't care when he tripped over the furniture and shattered the bottle, when I tried to run and he snapped my ankle. And then when I couldn't move because of the pain in my ankle that day, he grabbed a shard of that broken bottle," I feel tears coming back, "he tried to carve my eye out."

Rowan makes a startled and angry noise, but lets me continue.

"So I put an arm in front of my eye as he brought the knife down, and now there's an ugly scar on my arm. Then he brought the knife down again, pinning my arm back, right where my eye would have been if I hadn't moved my face sideways. That's what my scar is. But then something broke inside me. And I didn't know what happened then, and I still don't know.

"I don't know what I am. Because suddenly there was fire coming from inside me and swallowing him up. And then I don't know why, but I almost laughed. Because I'm a monster."

I start laughing while  crying now, insane and a madwoman.

I don't let him interrupt, because I know I'll start crying harder if I let him say anything.

"Then, when I had to leave my broken ankle without medical attention for so long that it was impossible to heal properly again, I learned I could teleport. Perfect timing, I guess," I say sarcastically, bitter.