A necessary evil

A necessary evil

There was a young girl, lost in life and judgments whose father was poor and mother ill. She was a beauty, with wavy red hair and pale shoulders flecked with freckles. She lived on a farm, as green as could be, with a river running true past the white house, from her window she could see the shining water and dipping willows. She would dance under those willows, twirling and twirling, losing herself. Her father would return from the village as the sun began to sleep, walking past those willows, she’d wait for him to pass by, leaping out at him and embracing him. Father would spend all day waiting for her smiles, waiting to feel her thin arms about him, her sighs upon his chest.

One day, under those sighing willows, he paused, awaiting her giggles, her love. But they never came. He waited as the shadows stretched, then died, as the light faded. For years until his death, he waited and waited for her, hunting, moving through the fields and alcoves, searching for his little girl…

-1-

Alexander looked over the edge of his desk at the small, wisp of a child trembling before him. And she was tiny too, the orange shapeless hospital gown hung limply over her frame. She refused to look at him. The dark rimmed eyes locked to the floor, head down, hands behind back, she was the picture of obedience sitting in that large chair. She was a ghastly sight, gaunt from hunger, and the stubble on her head barely covering the scars that seemed to map her scalp.
He tore his eyes from the pathetic creature, and looked to the guards at her sides, then to the doctor, his hands like talons on the girl’s shoulders. Standing as if a protective father, but shadowed and dark, his love for the girl only shown through his wants to keep her locked, and tested. His own little princess lost in the dark. Alexander tapped his pen on the desk, absent mindedly flipping through the pages on the surface of his desk. The doctor shuffled from one foot to another, and Alexander kept his head down, watching from under his lashes as the doctor sweated for the renewal to be given.

It was.

The girl was dragged back to her small, lightless cell. And with the slap of bare skin on concrete she was flung into the darkness, and left alone. She liked this loneliness. This silence. To be alone, was to be free. At least on some level. And that was all she needed. In the darkness she had the power that was once stripped from her. In the darkness she ruled. In the darkness she was queen. She had power. And a plan.