(Disclaimer: Read this chapter on your own risk , you might cry 😢.)
Keifer's hands shook so violently that the diary nearly fell.
The handwriting on this page was no longer script; it was a collection of jagged, desperate scratches, as if the pen were a knife cutting into the paper.
Large, circular stains—tears that had smeared the ink into dark, ghostly clouds—covered the page.
August 20th
Dear Diary,
I'm writing this because I need to know if I'm still a person. I think I died tonight. I think the girl named Jay is gone, and only a hollow shell is left sitting here in the dark. Today is my birthday. I'm sixteen. And tonight, I watched God turn His back on me.
The man Mom married... he isn't a man. He's a beast that lives in the skin of a human. He sold our life, Diary. He sold the apartment where Papa's scent still lived in the curtains. He sold my books, my bed, my childhood. He threw it all away for bottles of poison that turn him into a monster. He turned my mother—my beautiful, gentle mother—into a shadow that shakes every time a door closes. He hit her, abuse her, she screams, and I, I can't even save her And when she wasn't there to hit, he looked at me with eyes that made me feel like I was already rotting in a grave. I feel like I want to scratch my face.
I still smiled. I kept the promise, Papa. Even when my stomach was screaming from hunger because he gambled away the grocery money, I kept my face perfect for her. I thought if I stayed quiet, if I was the perfect, smiling daughter, I could protect her. I thought my smile could be a shield for her.
But tonight, the shield shattered.
I came home and the house was silent, dark. It was a heavy, cold silence that smelled like iron. Then I heard it—the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Over and over. I ran into the kitchen. I saw him. He was standing over her with a bottle in his hand. My mother... she was on the floor. She looked so small. She looked like a broken bird. Her lips were bleeding.
I threw myself on top of her. I wrapped my arms around her head and screamed for him to stop. I begged him, 'Please, hit me! Kill me! Just leave her alone!' He didn't even look at me. He just kicked me away like I was trash. My head hit the corner of the table, and the world went white, but I couldn't go to sleep. I had to stay awake.
I watched, Diary. I watched as he took a knife from the counter. I watched his arm move. And then I heard the most horrible sound in the world—the sound of her life leaving her. I saw the blood, Diary. It wasn't like the movies. It was dark, and thick, and so, so hot. It tripped across the linoleum, a slow, red river that crawled toward my hands until it touched my fingers. It was so warm. My mother's warmth was leaving her body and staining my skin.
I crawled to her. I put my hand over the wound, trying to push the life back inside her. I kept whispering, 'Mom, please. Wake up. It's my birthday. You promised we'd have cake. Please don't leave me alone with him.' But she just stared at the ceiling with eyes that didn't see me anymore. The light was gone. My mother was gone. And the blood just kept coming, soaking into my dress, turning the pink fabric black.
He didn't even care. He just wiped his hands and told me to clean it up. He told me that if I ever stopped smiling, if I ever told a soul, he would finish what he started with me. He told me I belonged to him now. That my life was his to use until there was nothing left.
I hate my birthday, I wish I would never have my next birthday.
I'm sitting on the floor now, Diary. My hands are still stained red. I can't wash it off. I think it's under my fingernails forever. I am a emotionless girl sitting next to her mother's body, and I am still smiling. Tears are no more, I am smiling because if I stop, I think my heart will actually explode out of my chest. I am a ghost. I am a nightmare. Papa, why did you leave me? Why did you make me promise to stay in a world where the sun has been murdered?
The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the sound of Sophia's ragged, hitching breaths as she collapsed against the wall.
She wasn't just crying; she was grieving for the girl who had spent years pretending she wasn't covered in blood.
Keifer felt a cold, paralyzing rage. He looked at his own hands, then at the floor where Jay must have sat that night, trying to hold her mother's life together with her bare hands.
He thought of every time he had called her "ice queen." Every time he had been frustrated by her lack of emotion.
He didn't just want to help her anymore. He wanted to burn the world down for her.
No words came out from their mouth.
The pages were no longer clean. They were yellowed, brittle, and stained with things Keifer didn't want to identify.
The handwriting had lost all its childhood beauty; it was now a sharp, jagged scrawl of someone who was writing in the dark, in a hurry, with trembling fingers.
The salutation had changed. She no longer wrote to a book.
October 12th
Mom,
I'm sorry I haven't written. He doesn't like it when I have paper. He says I'm plotting against him. But I had to talk to you. I had to tell you that the last two years have been a nightmare I can't wake up from. Every day I wake up and I'm disappointed that my heart is still beating. I ask God why He keeps me here when You and Papa are already together.
I'm working three jobs now, Mom. I clean offices in the morning, I work at the cafe during the day, and I scrub floors at the warehouse at night. He takes almost every cent. He says it's 'rent' for living in this house of rot. When the money isn't enough, he uses his hands. He calls me names I can't even write down. He says you were weak, and that I'm worse. He says he should have finished me off that night with you. Sometimes, Mom... sometimes I wish he had.
But I'm fighting. He doesn't know. He thinks I'm just a dog he can kick, but I got into the university. I got a full scholarship, Mom. He thinks I'm working overtime, but I'm actually sitting in a lecture hall, trying to learn how to save myself. I hide my books in the crawlspace with the rats. They are the only ones who don't hurt me.
I think I'm losing my mind. Something is wrong with me. Ever since that night—the night the lights went out and you never woke up—the darkness has become my enemy. When the sun goes down, my chest tightens until I can't breathe. My head spins, and the walls start to close in.
Last night, the fuse blew. The house went pitch black. I was standing in the kitchen, and suddenly I wasn't sixteen anymore—I was back on the floor, feeling your blood touch my fingers. I couldn't move. I couldn't scream. My head was spinning so fast I thought I would be sick.
Then I heard him. He was behind me, his breath hot on my neck. He whispered that since it was dark, no one would see what he was going to do to me. Everything went black. Not just the room, Mom, but my mind. It was like I stepped out of my own body.
When I 'woke up,' the lights were back on. He was lying on the floor, clutching his head, bleeding. He looked at me with a look of pure, murderous hatred. He screamed that I had hit him, that I had attacked him like a wild animal. But Mom... I don't remember it. I don't remember moving. Maybe I am going crazy. Maybe the monster is inside me now, too.
He was so mad. He didn't just use his fists this time. He went to the laundry room and plugged in the iron. I tried to run, but I was still so dizzy. He caught me. He pinned me down to the floor—the same spot where you died—and he told me he was going to make sure I never forgot who owned me.
I felt it, Mom. The heat. He pressed the hot iron into my back, right between my shoulder blades. I heard my own skin sizzle. I smelled it. I screamed until my throat bled, but he just laughed. He said every time I looked in the mirror, I'd remember that I'm nothing but his property.
I'm lying on my stomach now. The pain is so bad I can't even cry. I'm just staring at the wall, trying to remember Papa's promise. Smile, Jay. Just smile. If you smile, you're still human. If you smile, he hasn't won yet. But it's getting so hard to find the muscles in my face. I just want to go to sleep and be with you.
I want to die every single day. When I cross the street, I hope the cars don't stop. When I'm on the roof, I look at the ground and it looks so peaceful. But then I remember Papa's face. I remember the promise to smile. And I think... if I die, who will remember that you were here? Who will remember that you weren't just a victim, but a woman who loved strawberry ice cream and pink dresses?
I'm so tired of being brave, Mom. My bones ache. My soul is heavy. I just want to come home. I just want to sleep and never, ever wake up.
Keifer slammed the diary shut, his breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches.
He felt like he was suffocating. He remember he saw a scar that night.
He hadn't realized she was hiding a brand.
"He burned her," Keifer whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, agonizing pain. "He branded her like an animal."
Sophia was curled into a ball, sobbing into her hands. "We have to kill him, Keifer," she choked out through her tears. "I don't care about the law. I don't care about anything. We have to kill him for what he did to her."
Keifer didn't answer. He couldn't. His mind was back at the manor, seeing Jay's quiet, polite smile as she served his father tea.
He realized now that every single smile she gave them was a victory over the man who had tried to turn her into a corpse.
She wasn't an "ice queen." She was a warrior who had been fighting a war alone for ten years.
A/n :
Hey buddies, I know this was terrifying but it's just my imagination. My imagination which I tried to turn into a story. I hope you guys like it, please comment and tell me how's it. ❤️
Bye buddies 👋 🫂 ❤️
Important announcement 🔊 🔊 🔊 🔊 🔊 🔊 🔊 🔊 🔊 🔊 🔊
If you cry, I want those tears in my comments, votes and follower list 💖💖