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When I get older, I’ll make the world see what this place is really like. I’ll burn it to the ground.
“Your mother didn’t want you to know her name.” She sneers. “She didn’t want to be associated with a weak, ugly thing like you.”
I cry again. Everything hurts.
“No!” I shout even as the tears leak from my eyes. “She—she’d l-love me if she met me.”
She chuckles so hard she almost drops to the floor. “Oh, that is hilarious. She doesn’t want you, Adriel. She left you here for a reason. She never once asked about you. Never called. Never even wrote a letter to ask how you were.”
She kneels and grabs my chin, tilting up my eyes to her demonic ones.
“You meant nothing to her or your father. I bet she would’ve gotten rid of you while you were still in her belly, but her mother was religious, and she’d never have allowed that. Or your mother would end up in hell like you.”
“This—this is hell.” My chin trembles.
Her face grows with unrestrained rage and her eyes, almost black, grow closer until her nose is touching mine.
“You don’t know hell.” Her fingers bite into my skin. “This place is a gift for wicked little boys like you. You should thank us instead of being so ungrateful.”
She stares at me in disgust and hits me again, the whip right across my back.
“Sister Mary!” Sister Agnes calls. “That’s enough for today.”
She’s older. Her superior. But she’s no better.
“Go on, Adriel. Go to Sister Laura,” Agnes says. “She will clean you up.”
I grab my clothes and run out of there, hiding behind my whimpers as my feet throb and ache with the burns she put there. But I ignore it, needing to escape as far away from her as possible.
Entering my room, I put my underwear back on, dropping to the floor as I sob.
“Why?!” I ask as though my mother can hear me. “Why did you leave me here all alone?”
But no answer comes. She never cared about me then, and shedoesn’t care about me now.
My hand clamps against my thigh as I concentrate on Sophia, needing to forget Sister Mary and all the others who ruined me.
It wasn’t the first time she did that, beat me until I wanted to die. Through the years, it was all she did, reminding me she was in charge.
But she’s dead now, along with all of them. Their sins exposed. It’s what I did before I burned that place down. I collected the evidence, the photos they took, the videotapes, showing all the ugly things they’d done. It was like they wanted to keep them as keepsakes of their depravity.
But as they sat there tied up in a circle, screaming through the gags, I told them what I planned to do. Reveal all of their sins, make the world know who they all were. Then I swore they’d burn. And I kept every single word. I’m anything but dishonest.
I grin, enjoying this memory now. Sister Mary’s screams are a comfort, like I’m still that boy who needed saving. And these memories? They give him that.
Givemethat.
Watching Sophia, who was about my age when I was hurt that way, I can’t imagine it happening to her. I’d never let it.
Sitting on the bench, out on a rocky path leading up to a walk-through, I see her well, but she doesn’t see me. This is the only bench here, so I can watch her from a distance, a small shrub covering me from view.
I don’t even know why I’m still here.
I haven’t had many reasons to follow the girl. She’s not involved in any of this. And sure, maybe I don’t have to kill her father, but if it hurts my mother, then even her pain is worth it.
Sophia kicks the ball hard, and it heads in my direction, rolling closer and closer. Until it hits my foot.
She bounces after it, telling her friend she’ll be a second.
