Silent Shade

Prologue

He beat my mother ruthlessly. Merciless cracks sounded in the air. Screams, loud piercing screams that I wished belonged to another time, another place. All I could do was hide.

"You worthless bitch," his voice was rough, low.

It was wild, beyond any sort of control I could imagine. It scared me - the extent to which he had become a different person scared me more than anything. This voice belonged to my father's.

"You are a failure, an embarrassment to this family!"

Behind the wall I was hiding, my father slammed her head into the wall. The impact made me jump, almost made me relinquish the sword I was gripping. He bashed her again and again, voice coarse, determined, and unbearable. Unbearable. I looked past me, looked at the bloody scene. It was everywhere. Red spots congealed on the tiles, remnants of misdeeds done hours and hours ago. It trickled down her forehead, thick as anything. The wall was stained, splattered full of it, as was her body. My mother was unrecognizable beneath the patchwork of bruises. She was small, weak, and broken. Just how he wanted it.

My hand gripped the sword so hard I could feel my own knuckles crack. I could not cry, I could not cry, I could not cry. Everybody here needed me. Steel yourself.

I glanced around the rest of the room, examining the damage. Then my gaze landed on my father. He was panting, tense, and not at all like himself. His crazed eyes watched for any signs of life from my mother. She didn't give any. To him, to me, she might really have been dead.

This sight seemed to push him off the edge. He roared suddenly, arms swinging down to the floor like a complete and utter beast. His body shook vigorously, like he was having an internal war with himself. A war he might not win.

It only truly hit me when I saw the smoke radiating from him. He screamed and screamed, so hoarse and dry and defeated. Rivulets of tears, sweat and blood creeped down his back as he thrashed about, trying to fight back the uncontrollable force of his physical body.

Then in one moment, I caught his eye. Bloodshot. It lasted a second, but it was enough for him to convey everything. He was in agony, trapped inside something he couldn't seize control of. Trapped inside his soul.

This was the sudden realization that dawned on me, that drove me to run out from behind the wall, unsheathe my sword, and attempt to wrestle him down. My father had sold his soul.

His back to me, I leaped on him, swinging my sword around his throat in one swift motion. It was fluid, practiced - and I couldn't think how I was doing this to my own father, I couldn't think of it, I couldn't think of anything at all.

Trying to throw me off, he thrashed even harder, jumping unnaturally. My head collided with the plaster on the wall several times, but my muscles refused to let go.

He rasped. I steeled myself.

"Ingrid..."

Frozen. My body wouldn't let me get off, my mind wouldn't let me accept the very word whispered out loud, tainted by a bloody breath.

"Kill..." He jerked around, but less than before.

In a final moment of clarity, he pleaded, "Kill me."

I felt the warmth of his blood on my hand before I had a chance to do anything else. My arm had acted of its own accord, had grasped him tightly and slit his throat. I hopped off his back lightly, and without anything else to hold him up, he collapsed onto the floor.

He was well and dead. His eyes had reverted back to their warm shade of brown. The smoke had disappeared. He was paler, but redder and bloodier, than my mother, who laid beside him. One last winning grace.

And even when, a month later, hate rolled through my body as I looked at the same woman, fully healed but still refusing to wake up, I could not forget the large bloody smile painted on my father's face. I couldn't forget it, but I couldn't decide what to feel of it either. After all, he had brought this on my mother. Vulnerable, with the machines giving her life, making her breath. Relying on them, she lived. But only just.

-Edited and rewritten by the wonderful Kangarooster-