Pandora Blair {fin}

The Beginning:

EIGHT

The lights flicker violently above me, and other than the blink of the light, I am alone. My body aches from the crack of the whip, the beat of the cane, the bite of a voice, and I want to shut down. "Pandora," a man seethes at me. "Pandora, why are you such a shit? Can't you be like a good girl, and do like I damn well say?" No. No, I can't. Why would mother leave me here, with this fiend. I ask him, "Mama wouldn't leave me here. Take me back to her, please? I can't stay here, she'll come looking for me." He laughs. "Well she did, so shut up." My green eyes well up, and flood down my cheeks, the green falling out, until no color remains, a black hole of nothing left. "No, no, no, ple..please take m..m..me back t..to..to her. Y..you scare me." The laugh tingles down my spine, chilling my core till nothing moves. The cane says to me, as hard as it could, "No."

The bruises never quite heal, and they will never fade from my mind. "Attack me Pandora," he always says to me. "Try and beat me." So I try, the practice knife that I'm using hitting fresh air, and his practice sword hitting the back of my legs, arm, head. Then the bruises start to turn to cuts, and blood congealed on my skin, in my hair, turning the dark blond red. But it's my blood on me, and the sword still hits me. "Please stop hurting me! Please?" The whip whispers to me, "No."

I want to cry. My only friend are my tears, which fall often, but they cause me more pain. "Pandora," he screams at me. "Pandora, tears are a sign of weakness!" And the cane came soon after, and all I wanted was to cry more, to let it all out. Mama, please come and get me soon. I miss you, and this man scares me. "Let me see my mummy! I hate you, you monster!" I scream at the fiend, the monster. He whispers to me, "Yes. But only when you listen." And listen I do. "Your mother is up those stairs, but she trusts me enough with you. And if you try to leave, I will send you out on the streets." And tells me the secret. I'm his daughter.

The Present:

FIFTEEN

I writhe as I remember the events all those years ago, and the pain of what happened rushes back into my body. All of the wounds that he inflicted, where the bones stuck out, all of the scars that now litter my body, where the fiend once broke me, almost beyond repair. And all of the troughs caused by the tears that he caused sting with the tears, with them running down my face, like a plate of ice melted from my eyes. I bite my tongue, holding back the screams that racked through my body. I’m shaking, like I’ve just seen a ghost, a ghost out to get me. A small panicked sob pushed through my clasped lips, and my mother comes in through the bedroom door before I realised what happened. “Pandora,” she cooed. “Are you alright?” I nod my head, and then I shake my head quickly afterwards. I lean into her and whisper what happened, my blond hair sticking to my face with the tears, and I’m folded into a ball, wracked with the terror of what my father, my monster did, attacking me. If I remember rightly, I went into the hospital with a broken leg, arm, and about 6 broken ribs. Good job I was out cold for the whole experience really, wasn’t it?

The fiend finds me after a while, when I had relaxed a bit. "Pandora, can I borrow you for a while?" I get up, and I follow him to the stairs. I keep back from him and he nods to me, and opens the door to the basement. I follow him in. A woman was chained to the wall, sobbing. The fiend follows me in. “Kill her,” the fiend demanded, handing me a dagger. The time in the room stopped; my heart stopped beating, and the sobbing woman falls silent, her shoulders shaking through the silent tears. I don't know how words came out, but out they came clearly. “No. I can’t.” He stares at me, his eyes inciting pain towards me. He takes a step towards me, and the day where attacked me, stabs my eyes and I get the pure fear from that day. “Either,” he calmly told me. "Pandora, what is the point of a fish that can't swim? Or the point of a calf that can't drink milk? Then what is the point of a killer that can't bloody KILL?!" All I can do is shake my head. “Either, you kill her quickly, or I kill her slowly, screaming, and you’ll follow soon after.” And then I take a step back, away from my father, the fiend. He opens the chains, and she tries to run away. Knocking into the fiend, she runs at me, and stops. My hand is empty, and the dagger lies in her neck, and the blood covers me all over. She keels over, and I scream and run up into my room and no one can find me, with my eyes screwed tight, rocking, crying, the blood of the woman I murdered. That I was forced to murder.

And I scream, and scream, and scream, and scream, until I can scream no more.

And my screaming stops, like it started, when I realised what I had done, and I stop now like I've realised what I've been doing. The blood that came from the woman now litters the bed that I call mine. And my thoughts scream, louder then my voice can manage. YOU KILLED SOMEONE. I wince at the second word, and I want no more to do with it, and my thoughts escape my mouth, nothing more than a whisper. "You murderer. You murderer." And everything changed. I'm now no better the Capitol, sending people to their death, and today, I killed all the possible children this woman's had. And knock, knock, knock. My fiend, I mean, my father. "Why did I kill the innocent woman? You told me we won't kill innocent people." She looked so young, she had to, wasn't she? And now, for the first time, he spoke softly. "How do you know she was innocent? If you want to know, she killed her husband, and her children. She deserved to die. You have done well, Pandora." And then he left, and left me to the blood, my thoughts, and the woman's soul rested heavy on my body. And just fuck the world.