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ASHER
From the moment my consciousness merged with Quinn’s, I could sense that I had been snapped back in time. While the wallpaper around me was heavily faded and the wooden planks beneath my feet had clearly seen better days, there were no obvious signs of how far back I’d gone. The weight in the air was extremely heavy, pulled down with so much negativity that I couldn’t begin to locate the source of it all.
“No! Please don’t!”
My head whipped toward the back of the house. There was absolutely no hesitation on my part, my feet eager to move long before I registered the wail as Quinn’s. The house was so small that it didn’t take much before I found my way toward an open kitchen, complete with Anita dragging a young teenager through the door by her hoodie. My nostrils flared at the sight.
Quinn clawed at her mother’s hand still tangled in the material. Her movements were so desperate that the hood was already beginning to tear. The sound seemed to prompt her to try and jerk around onto her knees.
Anita let go long enough to let Quinn drop and stun her into paralysis. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going, you little bastard of a child?” she snarled. A strained grunt squeezed from her lips as she coiled her body to grab another fistful of the material. This time, she aimed for the main piece to avoid Quinn breaking free. “What did you expect would happen when you started to steal from the neighbor’s gardens? Did you think no one would notice?”
I seized the doorframe beside me, keeping close enough to it as they approached. My presence here certainly wouldn’t be noticed unless I wanted to expend the extra energy. It wasn’t a valuable way to use that strength when the past simply couldn’t be changed. As much as the sight of Anita turning on her own child enraged me, this had already happened. From the feel of Quinn’s soul, I’d been yanked back at least two decades.
My pet was noticeably younger, no older than sixteen. Yet the angelic ignorance haunting every fiber of her being reminded me of someone that had been shut in the house her entire life. Everything she knew was within these walls, from Anita’s endless rage to the lack of food gracing a plate she might not even have. Her soul was haunted by hunger and pain. Even if she was beginning to be graced with a height that would eventually help her survive, she simply didn’t have the strength to hold her own.
Quinn twisted her body with a desperate attempt to use the force to rip the hoodie off her body. All it would take was a few jerks before she could simply slide out and break free. “I won’t do it ever again,” she rasped. “I swear it!”
Anita stormed past me with an iron grip on her frightened child, keeping her far too close to allow the chance at freedom. “This isn’t the first time you’ve stolen from Timothy. They might not have the cameras to catch you in the act, but I do! You’ve been going over there like clockwork, once a fucking week!”
I flexed my jaw and shifted my body to keep them both in sight.
Her mother made a beeline for a door tucked under the stairway, where a small rusted lock swung freely from the padlock hasp. She reached out to yank it further open before she dragged Quinn inside. Loud thunking inside warned that only a stairway lurked beyond and she had no problem dragging her own flesh down those steps.
My grip tightened on the doorframe until the wood started to cave from the pressure. I pulled away from it, taking a chunk with me. The piece simply dissolved into nothing long before it tumbled onto the floor. I threw a quick glance at where it’d vanished before my gaze drifted toward the intact doorframe. The fact there was absolutely no evidence of my rage only blew on the growing flame even more. Curling my upper lip, I ventured through the same door Anita had.
There wasn’t a single part of me that was surprised to find a basement lurking beyond that door with a staircase that had clearly seen better days. Anita dragging her child down those steps hadn’t helped the condition at all, leaving one step halfway down beginning to split. I hovered near the top while I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
It wasn’t long until the horrors of the room was revealed to me. While there was a heavy dampness in the air merged together with thick layers of dust on the brick wall, the cluster of objects scattered on the dirt floor were clearly new. One being a small dog cage that Anita had no problem with tossing her daughter into.
The cage was so close to the back wall that Quinn’s head smacked against the brick, dazing her long enough to allow her mother to slam the door shut and toss another lock on. As soon as the metal clicked into place, the full weight of her reality sank in. Her gray eyes widened. “N-No! Please don’t!” She scrambled around in the cage, flinging her weight against the door.
Both the cage and the lock were new enough to where it could bear the full brunt of the force. Neither one would be willing to cave.
The fear painting her face was nothing like the expression of defiance that I had grown so accustomed to — or the way her eyes rolled up into the back of her head with every thrust I delivered. It didn’t matter how long ago this took place, the sight enraged me all the same.
Anita stepped back to enjoy her handiwork. “Since when does your word mean a damn thing?” She jammed a hand into her back pocket and tugged an open carton of cigarettes loose. A few swift movements later, the carton was returned to her pocket with a cigarette trapped in between her chapped lips. She flicked a lighter to life.
Quinn flinched with every try it took for the lighter to emit a small flame. Her piercing eyes honed in on it with an ocean of fear swirling within. When the lighter was tossed onto the table behind her mother, she recoiled.
“You’re a bastard child. Your word is useless.” Anita puffed on the cigarette until it thrived, burning away the cheap material eagerly. She tugged it free from her lips and approached the cage, tapping a finger against her chin. “I suppose that means the little room you’ve made for yourself up in the attic has to be locked up. You were using the fucking drain pipe to get out of the house. Can’t have that, now can we?”
My young pet shrank away as her mother approached, soft whimpers escaping her. “Please don’t keep me in here,” she pleaded softly. “I won’t touch their gardens ever again. T-They’ll never have to worry about seeing me.” Her gray eyes followed Anita all the way over to beside her cage.
It didn’t matter how much young Quinn pressed her body against the opposite side, the bars of the cage prevented her from getting out of her mother’s reach. Now that she was trapped, nothing could stop Anita from leaning down and pressing the end of her cigarette into her exposed shoulder.
My upper lip curled as Quinn thrashed against the cage with a noise trapped between a wail and a high shriek. The emotion threatened to spiral out of control when Anita simply smirked, pleased by the noise. This was the woman that had so willingly handed over her own daughter to me, along with the annoying organization the child had tied herself with? I had sensed the greed from the beginning, but there was truly one hell of a corrupted soul lurking within this woman.
“P-Please stop…”
The rage simmered to a low dormancy when a soft whisper nearby jolted me out of the scene unfolding before my eyes. I swung my gaze over toward the far corner, stunned to find my pet barely upright. If it wasn’t for the fact she was pressed up against her own wall, there was no doubt in my mind that she would’ve crumbled onto the damp floor.
My pet was completely oblivious to my presence with those piercing eyes locked on the fragments of her memory still playing out. She kept her arms trapped against her chest as she struggled to take in deep breaths. Her lungs were desperate for the oxygen, but that didn’t mean she got much beyond the sharp inhales. She was borderline a panic attack with the pale complexion to prove it.
Quinn continued to rock slightly, her bottom lip shaking. “I won’t do it ever again… Please don’t hurt me, Mama…”
She spoke in perfect sync with her younger self and the word choice enraged Anita. The woman drew back long enough to slam her boot into the cage, sending it onto its side. “You will never refer to me by that again! I may have birthed you, but you are a bastard child. There is barely any of my blood running through those veins. I should have buried you alive as soon as I could walk.”
I thought my own father had been a cold son of a bitch — yet this mortal was truly something else.
