Saved By the Devil

Knight In Rough Armour

Brenna

I should’ve known.

But knowing it wouldn’t have done me any good.

As soon as I entered my aunt’s house, I was grabbed by my long hair and dragged to the small bedroom where all my beatings and torture take place. This had been done to me so many times and I had even considered to chop off my waist length hair but I couldn’t do it even to save myself the pain of my aunt’s hands fisting them and dragging me around. I loved them because I got them from my mother, she too had long coffee brown wavy hair as mine and many a times I had seen my father caressing her hair through his fingers.

So, it was me retaining a part of my parents’ memories by keeping my long tresses even when sometimes I wished I was bald.

Like now.

Once inside the room, my aunt flung me across the room. I cried out as I crashed into the wooden cabinet.

“Aunt…” I stopped short on a scream as the first blow came.

I looked in horror as my aunt held on to the baseball bat. “P- please… Don’t!!” I screamed as once again she hit me on my upper thigh.

Without waiting for a second, the third blow came and this time it was too much, the breath left my body as I laid there gasping in pain. Tears trailed down my cheeks in constant stream. I heard her say, “Ray came demanding his money back, whatever you did make it right or I will kill you.” She kicked me in the stomach as she spat out, “Why can’t you just be a w***e that you’re meant to be. He'll be here next Sunday, be prepared to do what you’re meant to do.” She turned away but then with a cruel smile on her face, she once again kicked me hard in the stomach. If I’d had something in my stomach, it sure would’ve spilled out my mouth, but I only retched as my body tried to expel all the pain.

I laid there on the cold floor wondering how many times I could take these type of beatings before she really did kill me. My body tried to give up and blackness surrounded me beckoning me to surrender and let the pain fade away, but I wasn’t sure if she was done with me or not. So I brought up all the strength I had left to stand up. Standing up was a chore, I realised soon enough. My legs were jelly under me, and I had no doubt that both my upper thighs would soon turn black and blue.

And, with my stomach where she had kicked, I probably wouldn’t be able to stomach any food if I get any.

I didn’t understand what I had done for her to hate me this much, to treat me like this. From her rambling whenever she criticized me and abused me verbally in the beginning I came to know that it wasn’t as much me as it was her circumstances she hated the most.

I only knew that she was my father's sister and whatever she wished to tell me.

According to my aunt my mother had used vile ways to trap her precious baby brother…. And, when my father fell in love she cut him off from his family. This was reason she gives me for hating me, because she hated my mother.And, unfortunately except my father's smile and his white skin colour I was all my mother, from my hair to my brown eyes to my figure.

But, I knew my parents. I knew how happy they were. How happily in love they were. She only told me that my grandparents didn't approve of their marriage but she never talked about my aunt.

She had told me that my grandparents from my mother's side were in heaven and my father’s parents didn’t like my mother so my father stopped going to meet them because they always verbally cursed my mother. Their hatred must be as deep as my aunt’s because they didn’t even come to meet me after my parents’ death and my aunt gloated over that fact.

In front of the child services she was the epitome of perfect lovable aunt— She didn't have her own children and she would love to take care of me, yeah that’s what she said. An only relative of mine to take care of me, and one week after my parents’ death I was dropped off at the gate of this hell.

Sometimes I wonder if it was her loneliness that prompted her to act that way. I hadn’t seen her talking on phone. I hadn’t seen her going out. She didn’t even have a job. She pays her bills with the money she gets for me from my father’s insurance until I get to an age. I had heard her once talking on her phone with the lawyer. The lawyer must have asked to talk to me because she had denied saying that I was gone to a friend's birthday party. I didn’t have friends. Only Kiara, and seriously I didn't know how I got her, she must have felt pity for me.

Shaking my head, I grappled for the last dangling step as I crawled into my attic. Once there I slumped down on the cold hardwood floor, not having enough strength to move the few steps needed to my makeshift bed.

I closed my eyes and surprisingly an image of Maddox leaning over me caressing my cheeks came into view.

I wonder what he’d think if he saw the bruises on my thighs and stomach. Not that, he was going to. My aunt was careful like that as one time when she had broken my arm, she was called in the school by the principal, Mrs. Natalie Carter. After that she always hurt me where no one could see and it hurt much worse when my clothes rubbed along the injury.

I wish I could just run away. Or, for once had the energy to fight back.

PAST

Since the day I had enrolled in Willow Creak High school I was a target to many mean girls and boys. They had done everything short of beating me, to embarrass me and to make a fool of me. Afraid to even look up to any of their faces to prompt another round of them bullying me, I had opened my locker to grab my books for the next classes and had to jump away when what seemed like the trash of whole school tumbled out of my open locker.

It had only took me a second to realise what was happening, my hands had automatically delved into the garbage as I pulled the empty cups and paper plates and wrappers out. I could hear the crowd of students giggling and laughing at me. But, I wasn’t listening to them, I had much more important thing to find. And, when my fingers found what I was looking for, that was when I had lost it.

I hadn’t cried once because of their mean bullying but this…. This broke me and fat tears rolled down my cheeks as I clutched the small photograph of my parents with me in the middle. It was ruined, coffee stained marked my beautiful mother’s face and a gum was stuck over my head where I was standing in front of my father. I was afraid that if I tried to remove it, it’d only tear the picture.

When I was crying into my hands, sitting on the trash that had spilled out of my locker, I had felt the presence in front of me. Then, I was lifted upright with warm hands under my arms. Looking up, my brown gaze had met blue ones.

Without saying a word, Maddox had taken out his handkerchief and had wiped my tears.

Maddox Carter, a cool privileged kid of the school and prince of Willow Creak was also the kid who made every one scared because he had three scary big brothers. He also scared me, but then he surprised me, turned out he didn’t like someone making fun of innocent victims.

From then, he was my knight in rough armour—Because there was nothing shiny about him, I had seen it even then, and I was his damsel in distress. Turning from me, he had said to the crowd who was till now giggling and laughing at me.

“Whoever had done this, clean it now. If not, then they’d have to deal with me and my brothers.”

OH GOD, I REALLY FELT SORRY AND SAD FOR BRENNA.... ITS GETTING TOO EMOTIONAL IN HERE, WHERE IS MADDOX!!!

AND, WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN BRENNA WOULD GET OUT OF HER AUNT'S CLUTCHES? GOD... THAT WOMAN IS HORRIBLE!!!

Keep Smiling and Be Safe.