Young Writers Society

Link to the book cover : 

http://imgur.com/a/L2TVj

Here's me discussing this project over at "Writers Corner" : https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/viewtopic.php?...

You won't really be missing out on anything important, but if you're particularly interested in this story, you might benefit from clicking the link. 

Let's get this show on the road!

_ _ _ _ _

mother

mother

forgive me

for I have sinned

and buried it

in your grave.

_ _ _ _ _

PROLOGUE

_ _ _ _ _

He watches her die.

To be fair, he cannot move any part of his body except his eyes. Watching the little girl die is quite literally the only thing that he’s capable of doing. However, he also knows that it is unlikely that he would be motivated to help her even if he could move. It would be strikingly easy, if his hands were able to move, to step forward and place his shoulders, or hands, below the girl’s kicking feet. The rope that has the girl strung up like butchered meat isn’t so short that he wouldn’t be able to provide a stable surface for her to stand on. After the girl regains her breath, he could devise a clever plan to cut the rope and let the girl breathe.

However, in reality he cannot move -doesn’t want to move-, and therefore he simply watches in an almost reverent silence.

It doesn’t take very long for the girl’s movements to turn sluggish. He follows the slowing strokes of the girl’s small legs and curiously compares it to a bird’s mating dance. Or, perhaps, a little child learning how to swim, held up in the water by the hands of a parent, legs kicking lazily and the child laughing in excitement.

He almost laughs at the irony until he remembers that he can’t.

When the girl’s feet give a slight tremble then fall limp, he thinks of a dying fish then quickly corrects himself. A dying fish usually gives more of a fight.

His shoulders relax, and his spine straightens. Cocking his head, he brings up a hand and slowly clenches it into a fist, languidly bathing in the foreign feeling of being back in control of himself. Staring down at his hand, he wiggles his fingers in an almost playful way. They look alien to him.

Somehow, he knows that his breathing shouldn’t be so calm. His heart should be beating faster. His head should be going wild with shock and horror and disgust. A girl just died.

So?

The corners of his lips quirk. He looks back up at where the girl was hanging just moments before. 

There is nothing.

He blinks, then blinks again. Perhaps his eyesight has decided to fail him; however, he doesn’t think that it’s likely. Everything else except the girl is still clear in his vision. The small smile on his face melting away, he takes advantage of his new range of movement and turns around to stare into eyes that are his very own.

A mirror, he manages to convince himself before his body betrays his shock. It’s a mirror. As he’s stabilizing his breathing, he finds his hand lifting and approaching the surface of the mirror. Every nerve in his body is screaming at him to don’t and he clenches his teeth and starts to lift his other hand to stop himself because don’t don’t don’t —

Then the mirror reaches out to him and twists his wrist in an unbreakable grip. He watches himself smile crookedly and there’s a wave of terror rising from his throat, but the feeling is so detached that at first he doesn’t even notice it.

Did you like it, he feels the whisper before he hears it. Did you?

He opens his mouth to scream.

The hand on his wrist tightens and he hears a sharp snap. Suddenly, shards of glass are stabbing into his arm, going under his skin and traveling towards his heart, but even as he crumbles onto his knees he doesn’t know if the pain is his own.

There’s someone breathing on his ear and he knows that the mirror is trying to stare into him. He closes his eyes tightly in response and shudders. The numbness from before -watching but not watching, feeling but not feeling- is beginning to wear off, and he feels everything like a sharp stab to his guts.

The mirror reaches into the bones in his wrist and crushes it.

Coward.

Somehow he knows that there’s something that is pure danger rushing at his eyes, and his instincts force him to snap them open. He stares stupidly at the shards of glass flying at him, about to tear open his world.

Then a blissful moment of nothing at all.