Solitude isn't easy.
Being alone, it's suffocating.
It leaves your chest hollow, burning with repressed hopes. Your throat is constantly tight while you hold back tears, swallowing the words you want to shout at every person who walks past you and acts like you don't exist. Like you're a disease, a shadow drifting behind every stranger you cross. Your eyes burn, red and angry, tears welling hot and warm within your lids. That's when your nose starts to run, and your breaths become choppy.
You don't exist.
You never existed, not to those around you anyway.
Not in this life.
Scarlet's lips trembled. Her hot tears spilled over her lids and onto the white fabric she folded so gently. Her purple fingers were a striking contrast against the cool linen. There were others in the laundry attachment of the pack house. It smelt of detergent and fabric softener. Winter was slowly picking up, it was time to change the summer comforters to the winter duvets. Scarlet was cleaning the Alphas linens. Her fingers hurt. It was a stupid reason to feel so sad about the day, but Scarlet could only take so much folding.
The others in the laundry unit stared at the back of her head, her long and matted brown hair falling to her elbows. Watching her hands, purple and swollen, folding and folding and folding, the repetitive motion cramping in her fingers and wrists; the pain echoed to her elbows. They whispered, sharp tongues slewing gossip and hate, they giggled as they mocked her clothing and anorexic body. They wanted her gone. They were folding their young's bedding, they didn't want her scent permeating it, ruining it with the smell of her depression and uncleanliness.
Burn it. They spit. We'll have to burn it.
Oh her knuckles ached, hot tears spilled over, throat tight as she wanted nothing more than to scream at these women to be quiet! She yearned to clamp her broken fingers over their mouths and hiss at them for the terrible words that bled from their tongues. To rip their throats from their body and watch them gurgle on their gossip- she could watch their blood ruin their children's bedding.
A whimper left her throat, a hiss of a repressed sob. She sucked in air through clenched teeth, her ribs inflating excruciatingly as each vertebrae stretched. A gasp left her mouth, another tear turned a spot on the white linen grey. She could list her pain, list her beatings. Go into terrible detail of the burning and breaking her carcass has been through- and that's all it was really- a carcass. It wasn't worth it anymore. All the looking and counting broken bones, all the bruises and cuts and open gaping wounds from devices that shouldn't have left the kitchen or worse, the cells. The burns from silver, the taste of blood on her tongue always being constant. She was tired, her body mimicking the age of the elders she cared for in the evening who spit on her and hissed with their lost voices. She was embarrassed.
She was embarrassed from all the eyes landing on her form and whispering terrible words to each other. She was embarrassed that every person hated her so easily, mocking names leaving their lips, quick passing injuries from young and old. Was she so easy to hate? Was she so terrible a person that all in her pack had to ruin her? Her chest burned red, her cheeks a similar state as her tears kept from her eyes and crashed into the white water of the Alphas linens. This ocean would soon be completely grey if she could not control herself, she knew her Alpha would not be fond of tear-soaked bedding.
Scarlet would never dare say it out loud, but she didn't ever remember doing anything to deserve this treatment. All her brain supplies was cold winter snow hitting her face. Feet trudging heavily through ice that reached her ankles. Her parents telling her to endure, if she were to be strong she would endure.
Endure.
Then heads separating from bodies.
She remembered no more, and no less.
She's been hated ever since.
It was confusing. When Scarlet was young she would ask questions like 'why?' And 'what did I do?''. That behavior stopped quickly, the hits became more furious and answers never actually left their mouths. It didn't matter anyway, having an answer to her question. She had lived alone her whole life, nobody ever spoke to her, sat next to her as she ate, tried to be her friend, she was nobody, she was nothing. She lived in a small room at the very top of the pack house. A tiny attic space that contained a very small mattress and a thin sheet covered in holes from years of wear to wrap herself in. It held a small, circle window to see outside, though, even with the window closed, in the winter it let so much cold into the room she thought she would be frozen and dead the next morning. Her corpse would be perfectly preserved in its abuse for them to find when their morning meals weren't prepared- would her tan skin turn blue in the winter air?
She never was, unfortunately. She just shivered through the night, her bones practically rattling against each other for any type of movement to generate heat. If she ate, she did it in a small corner of the kitchen, so she was always ready to clean as pack members would bring their plates in when they were finished with the breakfasts she would cook them every morning. Though she rarely got more than a bite of leftovers on their plates as they brought it, nobody knew she snuck their uneaten scraps but it was her only source of food.
The incessant ache in her hands brought her back to the sound of women chortling their disgust with Scarlet. Her fingers hurt, it couldn't leave her mind as she continued folding the large linens. As her fingers bent and swung with the folding of clothing they stung and cracked. Burning with a sharp hatred for movement, Scarlet ignored their protest. They were purple and swollen after being stepped on. She had dropped a plate yesterday, the glass flew across the floor so fast. She scurried to pick up all the pieces, cutting her palms without care in her hurry, but Apollo saw.
Apollo always saw when she did something.
He walked over calmly, she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise, a sweat building down her back. Apollo wasn't one for talking, he didn't like to give tear-down speeches before he did something like others did to Scarlet. He just calmly raised his foot over her frozen frame, fist balled around the glass shards. Scarlet was used to a variety of pains, but this one was new to her, her fist being stepped on while long, jagged, shards of glass stabbed through her skin like butter. She couldn't hold back the muted scream as she tried to open her hand under his full weight, her fingers releasing some of the glass that wasn't embedded in her flesh. He turned the ball of his leather shoe on the back of her now open hand, Scarlet saw cracks of white lights exploded behind her closed lids.
A cry left her mouth, loud, the only sound in that whole kitchen. Fear fell deep within her stomach, dropping through her organs like her fear were a stone thrown down a well. Her chest immediately burned red with terror as the heat behind her eyes worked their way into fat, heavy, tears that flew down her cheeks at the pace of rivers.
He lifted his foot, though there was no relief from the burning.
His body worked without hesitation, smashed the heel of his leather shoe into her fingers. She knew breaking bones, and having her fingers broken wasn't the worst break she had experienced, though glass being shoved deep into her skin, scraping against her bone, it stole the breath from her lungs. He lifted his other foot that was still on the kitchen tile, his full weight now on her one hand- another scream pulled itself from her body.
His other heel came down on her right hand, the same process of glass piercing skin repeating itself. It was excruciating. He stayed on top of her until she simply laid on the ground, breathing sharply as she focused on staying awake, her body convulsing as she attempted to throw up anything remaining in her stomach. There was nothing. Tears were hot down her red face, her throat tight as she held back agonizing moans, her spine curling in on itself. He stared at her pitiful form, silently screaming and dry heaving beneath him, before he finally left.
Scarlet's glassy eyes fell behind fluttering lids as she blinked herself back to reality. Washing machines whirred around her, dryers beeping a happy tune to alert their users they were done. It smelt like laundry detergent and fabric softener. She quickly finished folding the fitted sheet, forgetting she had it clenched in her burning hands so long. She found happiness (if you could call it that) in the small things, though. Like, the laundry attachment was warm, welling with heat and humidity rivaling a sauna. When she was done here she would have to return to the Alphas suite and replace his fall linens with these warmer and heavier ones. He kept his room cold. After the Alpha and his mate- the Alpha Female- were attended to she would return to her room for the night. Her room was cold.
It was winter now. That window- though closed- would let in so much freezing weather from the night. It was best she ignored the women chortling behind her, nudging each other's shoulders while holding their noses. She should shove her embarrassment deep down, suck up her whining about her injured hands. This building was warm, and she owned no coat, her only comfort the ratty, thin, dress hanging from her skeleton. She best take these last few minutes to absorb the heat, toughen her skin before she has to leave the building and rush through the beginning of the winter chill. Her muscles relaxed, and she rolled her neck back to a satisfying click that shot down her shoulder.
She slowly felt her frustration ebb, remembering her place slowly settling her frustrated soul with a defeated sigh.
It was no use to get upset at her situation. It would never change. She best find happiness when she can, and be grateful for it.