Page 26 of The Sun and Her Star

I shudder as I think about her. I’m glad she’ll never know more than I told her. Herstaris really just a trapped and forgotten boy who has no future.

Before I could even let that scenario play out in my head, the door to my bedroom opens again.

He stands there with his four most trusted friends. All of them watching me.

“You’ve gotten too big for your britches, boy. That wicked book has filled your heard with insolence and sin. This is for your own good.”

I don’t have time to react before they’re on top of me.

The four men drag me outside while my stepfather walks behind us, raving about the “weight of his responsibility.” He laments, “the curse of having a sinner” in his house and his “fruitless wife.” They drag me kicking and screaming to the whipping post outside. They tie me up, and then they leave.

It was just him and me. I take my punishment. I don’t make a sound while he beats me. Not even when he breaks the skin on my back. When he’s tired, he drops his belt and yanks my head by my hair.

“Your hair is a sign of your vanity. Of self-indulgence that your worthless mother has allowed to breed in my house,” he breathes as he drags a blade across my scalp. The small stings I’d feel are followed by small trails of blood that slide down my face, into my eyes, and drip from my nose. I watch the blood as it splatters into the dirt. Disappearing into the dark dirt, reminding me that no one would remember me.

Except for Apollo.

I think about her, and I know that even if he kills me today, this isn’t the end of me. She’ll always remember me. So, I still don’t cry.

Until he holds up my book. Then, I struggle against the ropes, feel them cut into the skin at my wrists as I twist and turn trying to break free.

He laughs, and it’s full of triumph. Because he knows he’s won.

“No, please.”

“Stop your sissy crying, you sinner,” he yells as he rips the first chunk of pages out.

“No, stop. Stop, please,” I say over and over as I watch him tear my book to shreds.

He drops the empty cover on the heap of paper

“I’m going to rid us of this. You will cease your covetousness. You will serve as an example today. Everyone will see what happens when they turn away from the word of God and submit to the temptations of the flesh,” he raves at me before he stalks off.

I don’t know how long he’s gone. Time is meaningless. I just stare at the carcass of my book. The carcass of my life.

When he comes back, he’s brought a crowd with him, and he’s holding a bundle of clothes in his hands.

He drops them on top of the pile of trash that was my book and drops my compass on top of it.

The last part of my heart that was unscarred takes the brunt of that blow.

My compass.

My mother had given it to me. She said it was my father’s.

I look up at him then with a hatred so fierce my entire being burns with it.

“That devil in you is going to be chased out. You have built idols out of worldly possessions. You have had lustful thoughts and engaged in self-pleasure. But the demon in you will not survive. We will chase it away,” he screams and looks out at the crowd.

He pours kerosene on the entire pile and sets it on fire.

At his command, his group of henchmen seize my bound arms. I want to tell them they don’t need to hold me. When he destroyed my book, I knew I would never defy him again.

I don’t have anything left worth fighting for.

He orders them to hold me still while he pulls my pants and underwear down.

I stand there unmoving while he pronounces me guilty of consorting with the devil and of courting sin.

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