Page 206 of Boy of Ruin
My back hurts.
Everything hurts.
My stomach is hollow, a constant ache that the bread and wine they bring me won’t sustain.
I pull my knees into my chest, wrap my arms around my shins as I shiver, head resting against my knees.
It’s dark in here. So dark, I can’t see my body, but I can feel pain in every inch of it. They don’t beat me here. They don’t hurt me that way.
They just…leave me.
I think of my mother. The bruises around her face. The men that came to use her. Threaten her. Terrify her.
I think of watching after Sid. Locking her in my room, even when she screamed for our mother. Even when she tried to hurt me, to crawl out. Even when I had to stuff a pillow over her face to muffle her screams. Because I knew…I knew they’d come for her.
We got on the same plane.
We went on to different lives.
She begged for me, in that office where they pulled us apart, before I woke up in here, in this hell.
My heart hurts, thinking of her. Of where she is. If she’s here.
For years, I’ve lived here, under this roof. Watching my older sisters be fed and cared for and loved and I…was nothing.
Less than nothing.
Only the one sister, the one who pities me, only she’s whispered anything of kindness, but it feels like a special kind of pain, too. Because even she isn’t brave enough to let me out.
When I do get out, I’ll wrap my hands around her throat all the fucking same.
Since my seventeenth birthday, a week ago, I’ve been in this cage. The same one they first put me in, when I was eight.
Nearly a decade later, and it’s only gotten worse. It’s not tall enough for me to stand. Not long enough for me to stretch my legs out.
I start to shake, pressure on my bladder from the wine they gave me.
But there’s no room in here…there’s no room for me to relieve myself, and I’ve tried to go through the bars. I’ve pissed on the floor of this basement and I can smell the sharp scent now, and something worse.
An anguished, broken sob leaves my mouth.
My throat is dry, and the cry comes out hoarse.
Someone save me.
She would. The sister that brings me food. Whispers that small word of comfort. Sicher.
Where is she?
“Please.” The word is a whisper, and no one is here.
No one is here.
No one will come.
Pati. Latin.
To suffer.
