Page 16 of Be My Sinner

I can’t stop my eyes from finding my momma’s form on the desk. Her beautiful blue eyes, eyes exactly like my own, are wide and filled with fear. Her face is bright red from the slaps Peter, Abe’s dad, had given her, and her beautiful long hair is clenched tightly in another man’s fist.

Her eyes plead with me to run, to look away as more tears slide like a river of diamonds down her beautiful face. I watch as Abe’s dad pushes into her, making her body slap against the surface of my dad’s dark wood desk. He grunts loudly and then stops, pushing harshly against her again before leaning over her and spitting in her face. My eyes follow the spit as it runs down her cheek, to her chin, and then disappears down her neck. Tears slide down my own face, trailing off my chin and soaking the front of my pretty dress as I watch them being so viciously mean to my mom.

“Momma!” I scream and try to rush around my father. He momentarily loses his hold on me, and I force myself past another man. Then Zeke’s dad tries to grab me, but I punch him in his private area. A hint of satisfaction runs through me at the sound of pain that leaves his lips, and out of the corner of my eye, I watch him crumple to the floor.

I’m going to hurt all of them. All of the men who are hurting my momma. I’m going to make all of them cry like they are making my momma cry. God will forgive my sins. I will pray for absolution later and do as many good deeds as momma says I have to, to atone for my sins. God loves my momma; she is his angel, and I will be forgiven for saving her.

Just as I almost reach my momma, someone grabs me by the ribbons in my hair and yanks me back hard. I feel hair rip out of my scalp with a sharp burn, and tears fill my eyes and pour down my face. No, Momma! I almost got to her. I almost got her away from the monsters holding her down.

I awake with a start, my heart racing in my chest and the sour taste of bile in my mouth. My whole body is shaking, and my skin ripples and crawls with disgust. NO! Fuck, not this shit again. The dreams keep coming, waking me with terrors of times long gone. Of pockets of time when I was helpless and weak. When I couldn’t defend myself or anyone else. A time when men ruled me and took from me all that they wanted. They took from my mother, too.

I trail my shaking hand down my face as I try to force the beating of my heart to slow down. I need to calm down. They can’t get to me here. They can’t hurt me. Not anymore. No one will ever be able to hurt me the way they did, nor hurt my mother again. I will kill them all, just like I promised that day in that room so many years ago. I will be their reckoning and their damnation.

I will replace their cruel words and taunts, which will forever haunt my ears, with the sound of their painful screams. Screams and pleads for mercy, something I’m not equipped to provide. No, there will be no savior for the likes of the Brotherhood.

That day in my father’s office was the day that my world changed forever. The day my innocence died a horrific death. The day I realized that monsters were real, and they didn’t hide under your bed.

No, monsters walked in the light. They were your pastor and your friends’ fathers. They were members of your congregation, and Founding Fathers of the Brotherhood. They were your own father. That one was the worst of all the evils I discovered that day.

My father, who professed a deep love for my mother, stood back and allowed all those men to violate and hurt her, over and over. To use her for their own carnal desires, all while spitting nonsense about God. There was no way God demanded that sacrifice from my mother, or any of the other women those men abused. If there was ever a benevolent being watching over us, he had turned his back long ago on humanity.

We were nothing but abusers and sinners. Not even one step above the devils we professed to hate and fight against. The powerful men of the Brotherhood weren’t holy. They were evil and the worst types of demons. The ones who used the words of a loving God to force the masses into subjugation and submission.

I have spent eleven years with every waking thought on how I would tear those men limb from limb. My thoughts solely focused on how I would end their miserable hold on this world and cleanse it by fire. My time, though long, was well used. They thought they were raising a Sacred Wife, one they could someday abuse, like they did my mother and every woman of the Brotherhood.

Little did they know they were raising their own death, feeding her lies and betrayals to ensure that her wrath grew. I am vengeance, seeking retribution. I am the dark night calling them back to hell. I am the hell hound, tracking her prey and devouring it.

Five of the twelve men who abused my mother that day in my father’s office were still standing, and so many more just like them, who hide behind their titles within the Order. Men who are supposed to protect the females of their lines, not abuse them. Not break their souls, minds, and bodies.

I get up from the bed and turn on the bedside light, a fine tremble still running through my body. The nightmare’s cold claws refusing to release their malicious hold on me and sticking to my skin with a chill.

A grunt from the right side of the bed has me turning around to face the sound. Sammy’s beautiful blue eyes, filled with sleep and profound exhaustion, meet mine as he sits up in bed. The white sheet falls to his waist, exposing beautiful, golden planes of skin. Usually, the sight would be enough of a temptation to lure me back to bed and into his waiting arms. The ones that help keep me grounded and semi-sane in this world we are living in.

Tonight, however, they don’t offer the same lure. I can’t seem to shake this antsy feeling. The need for bloodshed and sorrow. I need to hear the screams of my enemies to replace my mother’s cries in my head. There is a sense of urgency within me, one I can’t place the cause of. I am safe here with Sammy; the Brotherhood doesn’t know it’s me killing its members.

“Another nightmare, Nightstar?”

I don’t bother to acknowledge his question. He can see it plainly on my face and how I hold my body rigid. As if, at any moment, someone will attack me, and I have to be ready to fight them off. I wipe what little sleep I had from my eyes, refusing to give voice to my nightmares.

Reaching down, I grab my black pants from the floor and slip them on. Then, I throw on Sammy’s oversized hoodie over the t-shirt I was wearing to bed. A chill races down my body, refusing to leave me even with the lights on, even with the layers of clothing now protecting my skin from the air around me. My hands shake as I try and fail to pull up my zipper and button my pants in one shot.

NO! Fuck this shit!

Anger fills me like poison spreading through my veins. A poison that I no longer know how to live without. I will not allow them to do this to me. I will not allow them, or their heinous memory, to make me into the same scared little girl who was afraid of every noise in the night. Every male who glanced her way, wondering if they were thinking about abusing her in the same way she watched her mother be abused.

“Little Dinah, you will be a perfect Sacred Wife with all that soft skin. You will serve your Lord, your husband, and the Brotherhood, won’t you, princess? A perfect Sacred Daughter raised to be a perfect, obedient, Sacred Wife.”

The sound of Noah’s voice rings in my ears and makes me want to vomit and scream at the same time. How many times did his eyes roam over me after that day? How many times did it make me want to run away?

“Get up. We’re moving up our timeline. Dorset and his sons die today.”

I move away from the bed to the bathroom, turning on every light I come across to banish the darkness still clinging to my skin. Once I reach the sink, I turn on the cold water and splash my face repeatedly until my skin is ice cold, and I can finally breathe. I still feel the impurity of my skin. The crawling sensation of men’s fingers brushing against my limbs. Of my father’s arms, trying to restrain me.

That sensation might be the worst of them all. He was a liar, a traitor to his wife and daughter. A willing abuser. He may not have readily taken part in the actions of those men hurting my mother, but he allowed it. He watched as they inflicted the abuse without stopping it. Just like when the time came, he would have allowed them to abuse me.

Gabriel would have never allowed it. Zeke wouldn’t have allowed it, either,my mind tries to whisper to me. I guess we will never know now, will we? Life changes in the blink of an eye. People you think you know so well surprise and devastate you. Causing you to rethink everything you believed to be true about them.

“Dinah, do you really think it’s wise to kill another one so soon and one so close to home? Dorset is only four hours away.” Sammy’s concerned eyes meet mine in the mirror. The lines on his face are deeper somehow than when we went to sleep. I know the pace I’m keeping us at, and all the deaths I’m leaving in my wake, are starting to do a number on him.

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