Adore

5

Sundays have a certain suffocating nature to them. The idea of God looking down at all people and judging them became more apparent. The idea of church was sickening to Anais, who didn't trust in God much anymore. Her whole life she was told God only punished the bad and if she was a good little girl nothing unfair would ever happen to her. Anais couldn't believe in something that had been proven to not be true. She didn't see herself as a person worth punishing, she wasn't an evil person. Yet, in the eyes of God it seemed she needed to be punished.

This Sunday was even more suffocating than normal. Sundays had many upspoken rules. the first being to always look presentable. Anais stared down into her own eyes, refusing to look at herself. Her body was a masterpiece of violent purples and blues, looking down would destroy her bliss of the day before.

Yesterday was the reason Anais stayed clinging to Oliver's nature. Oliver wasn't just some monster, he was hers and she could tame him if she only acted right. As she grew up Anais replaced God with Oliver, in many ways he was her creator. He was all she ever knew and without Oliver she was nothing.

Anais's eyes fell down to her body, the mess that reveled the truth. She hated herself for clinging on to the idea that she knew the real Oliver. It felt like every time she came to the concussion her Oliver was dead, he gave Anais a small piece of him back. Like bait, it lured her back in to stay long enough for Oliver to take a bite and steal a larger piece of her away.
His plot of moving her away from everything and everyone was evidence of it. Anais felt sorrow, she was going to ruin the purity of Sundays. She didn't have much longer to till her parents and she didn't want them to find out right as she disappeared across the world.

Anais traced over all the bruises on her bodies, starting from her arms to her legs the oldest to the newest. Anais's relationship with the marks were much like her relationship with their giver, complicated. Sometimes Anais loved the pretty colors of the marks, how the swirled and aged. The bad ones would start of yellow before turned the darkest shade of plum. Other times however, Anais could only feel disgust over her body. She had too many marks on her body to count, from burns, scars, and bruises. Anais wished her body was pure, unmarked, no proof of any harm, yet every one of them have a story worst than the one before. Her upper thighs were covered in old scars and one large burn on her outer right thigh that went up to her side. Anais's arms got the best of it, rarely did they get inured as those were the hardest to hide and Oliver wasn't an idiot. He knew where he could get away with leaving marks and her arms were not one of those places. Almost any other place that had bruises could be easily covered up with clothing or different forms of makeup.
Lucky for Anais, her stomach got the worst of it and almost all her clothes could hide the violent reminders.

A long teal dress with a boatneck, her mothers favorite dress in the world, Anais hoped her mother would see it as a treaty of peace. That just maybe it would softly the blow of her only baby leaving and never getting to see her again.