Book of the Damned

Thunder slammed against the night sky, echoing how Cindy Parker felt inside. She scratched her face with reckless abandon, attributing her loathing as a result of wishing she was never born. She cried for an opportunity to stop the madness. She envisioned the cause of her misery—her grandfather— held captive, for of all things, tax evasion.

“I hate you!” She screamed tearing out another chunk of skin; a bloody trail leaving behind a face only a place like the Circus of the Damned could appreciate.

She pictured his swollen cheekbones, sunken gray eyes and furry unibrow, detesting her own existence. Hereditary abnormalities plagued her reality. She inherited her mother’s looks except those dreaded eyebrows. Her mother dismissed the facial curse with statements like, you’re a girl, and you can groom it. No one has to know.

For years she thought her existence came as a result of a gross error in judgment. Her mother was only thirteen when she realized amorous relations with someone she called Johnnie; Cindy’s alleged father. A violation of her mother’s privacy revealed the truth. There was no Johnnie; it was all a ruse so people would think her grandfather was a victim of his daughter’s bad decisions. Her mother wrote about how she despised that the man responsible for her misery was pitied by the neighbors. She feared her mate. The monster she called daddy.

Cindy’s screams echoed throughout white walls. Her anxiety led to self mutilation. She stopped scratching her face and slammed her head against the floor. The first contact with the cold tiles produced a lump above her left eye. The second impact brought forth blood from her right nostril.

“I hate you!” She rolled on the floor, crashing from one wall to another.

Whispers haunted her all of the time. During the day she heard her mother’s voice ordering her to do something she could never do herself. Get your act together and move on with life. That’s when Cindy would burst into fits of laughter. Irony. Her whole life was an ironic anomaly of epic proportion. Fathered by her grandfather and never having access to an older woman took a heavy toll on her psyche. She felt another piece of her soul dying, withering away. She longed for a motherly type since her own mother acted more like a sister.

Laughter echoed inside the hollow room as cold chills ran through her spine. “You want me to get my act together?” She stopped rolling and sat up. Blood reached her mouth. “Mom, you crazy bitch! Why did you leave me alone with him?”

At night, images of her mother, lying in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor, haunted her. A razor covered with precious fluid lay next to slit wrists.

Something stirred inside her; something horrible fed off her blood. She glanced down and yelled, “I hate you!” She wanted to punch herself but a sharp pain electrified her womb as if in total defiance. When she calmed down the pain subsided. She wept.

Voices. She heard voices approaching in the dead of night. The room’s lights went from dim to full blown illumination.

“Holy shit! We need to restrain her!”

She felt herself lifted by unseen forces, praying for the moment escape became possible. She uttered, “When will I die?”

A hoarse feminine voice said, “Not tonight, sweetheart.” She felt shackles on her hands and she writhed screaming for release, begging for death as more stabbing pains served to counter her tantrum.

A deep male voice said, “Should we sedate her?”

“No, she’ll spit the baby out soon enough.”

All of a sudden, blind rage gave way to horrid fear as the light which at first blinded her began to reveal her surroundings. A couple wearing green medical attire stared at her with wide orbs. A portly female spoke first, “Cindy, don’t expect sympathy from us. You push when I tell you.”

Cindy yelled, “I need something for the pain!”

The man said, “You tell us what you did with your grandfather’s body and we’ll give you something for the pain.”

“What?” At last she suspected the world had gone mad. “Everyone knows he’s in jail for tax evasion.”

“Come now Cindy,” the man continued, “You know darn well he made bail. What did you do with the body? The police found blood in your trunk, on the kitchen floor, and a trail which led to your garage.”

The intense pain pounded inside her. She screamed! The female said, “The baby’s not going to wait any longer. He’s coming now!” The woman readied her hands, set to deliver the child.

“No! Don’t let him come out! He’s tainted.” Cindy wailed in agony. “He’s evil!”

“Push!” yelled the female.

“No!”

For three minutes Cindy’s screams added to a horrific tension. Upon reaching a fever pitch, a veil of silence hung loose in the humid air. Cindy felt relief, but wondered about the deafening silence. “Is he alive?” She saw how the woman cringed.

Cindy laughed. She was relieved to break the vicious cycle of inbreeding.
The man spoke, “He’s moving.”

A baby’s cries filled the room.

Tears rolled down Cindy’s face, “No, it can’t be.”

The female said, “He has strange eyebrows, but I guess under the circumstances, they’re appropriate.”

“What do you mean? Show me my baby!”

The man spoke, “Tell us where you hid the body.”

“It’s in the basement, inside the wall with the others.”

The man stuttered, “O, Others?”

“According to my mother’s diary,” Cindy paused to gather her breath, “every time one of us is born with one eye, the men would kill them and hide the babies in the walls.”

The man asked, “How many of them are there?”

Cindy gestured for the baby. The woman complied. When she held her child in her arms she said, “There are two hundred and thirty-four, one for each year since my ancestors fought for our independence.”

She stared at her baby, the result of years of sin. The child, with one eyebrow across the center of its tiny face, opened its evil gray eye and grinned.
She squeezed his neck ready to toss the baby across the room but the man stopped her, pulled the infant out of her tired arms and handed it to the woman. As she exited with the baby in hand she said, “Thank God, he’ll be alright.”

“We need to kill it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that Cindy.” The man gripped her left knee.

“Why?”

“Well, we don’t do that anymore. Now we breed them to become soldiers. It turns out they're amazing killing machines. Besides, we have to keep the cycle alive. You killed dad, but you didn’t kill me, sis.” He smiled, “We’ll try again when you’re feeling stronger.”

He lifted his coat, pulling an old book out of his belt. “Our father had a diary too. We have many brothers and sisters, but you belong to me.”

-1, 163 words