The Sober Psychos

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿-𝟮 | The Palace

The constant noise of banging on the door was giving me a dull headache now. Her voice kept bellowing from the other side of the door,

"Young lady, you open the door this instant or we will seriously have to break it down to get through!"

Hah. As if. Break it down with what? Those pretty little manicured, delicate hands of yours? Or those perfectly pedicured feet? I sighed and buried my head under the pillow to keep away from all these banging and yelling. But my affectionate mother wouldn't stop.

"Hmm I see...." She mused, "My words don't seem to penetrate through your torpid eardrums. Very well, I'll just have to summon your father then. He'll manage your disrespectful attitude and uncouth behavior with a single snap."

I mentally rolled my eyes at that, digging my head deeper into the soft mattress under the pillow. My revolutionary idea of locking myself up in my own room wasn't going too well so far. Guess plan-C would've been way better than this one after all but the extents of risk in that is too high.

The banging continued for some more time and stopped abruptly, followed by the sound of footsteps approaching through the hallway. It stopped right outside my door and for a minute, everything was tranquil. Judging from that, they were busy hatching plots in hushed tones. Then my dear father's voice thundered from the other side,

"Amethyst, if you don't open this damned door this second, I swear to God there will be grave consequences."

I wanted to yell back at him, "What grave consequences, dad? No parties for a week? No shopping for a month? No handsome suitors for a year? Well I'm more than okay with that. This had been my main goal after all, but you don't know that, of course. So your grave consequences is equal to my partial freedom." But I just yelled in my head, so the only living things that heard me were my screaming neurons.

His angry fists collided against the wooden door so hard that it looked like my room was under the attack of Godzilla. Then it stopped for a while. Something was definitely wrong. It was like the calm before the storm. Then his angry voice roared from the other side,

"Alright daughter, you asked for it."

My heart skipped a beat and I gulped. I knew that tone of his too well to easily predict what will be happening next. Someone save me please.

Before I could even register what was happening, the door had been kicked open, the knob broke due to the impact and came flying across the room and my father barged in. I wasn't ready for what happened next. He scurried towards my bed and grabbed a fistful of my hair, pulling me upright. I yelped at the sudden surge of pain that disseminated throughout my entire scalp. I tried to move my head away from him but his grip only got stronger.

"Let go!" I winced in pain.

He just grimaced in response and surprisingly, let me go. I wasn't ready for that either. I stared miserably at my mother who had just sauntered into the room, totally unfazed by the situation here. I was going to say something but when my gaze shifted to the thing in her hand, I froze. I could feel my whole body becoming pale and stiff in fear. Just me and my rotten luck, nothing new. Because I knew too well what was going to happen next.

Father walked over to her and seized the cane from her hand harshly, earning a glare from her. Not because he was going to use it on her daughter but because he had snatched it so roughly from her hand that it might have spoiled her perfectly manicured fingers.

He strolled towards me, his lips curling up into a wicked smile. He stopped right infront of my bed, where I was sitting. I tried to get back but he hefted the cane before I could manage to slip away and the wooden cane came down, bashing my right arm. I screeched and tried to shield myself with a pillow but he snatched it from me and threw it away. He grabbed me by an elbow and pulled me straight up. Then he started flogging me with the cane, the lashes leaving red marks on my bare skin and it stung like hell. My whole body was screaming in pain. Even though I was habituated with such circumstances, the habituation didn't take the pain away at all. I wailed and begged him to stop but my sobs were washing away my words. My mother was too busy admiring her own reflection in the mirror to even bother telling him to stop.