chapter two

I try not to think about it, I could be fine if I could just not think about it.
Lately this burning urge to find my birth parents had been crippling me. I couldnt spend another Christmas here alone. Every waking second I was plagued with nothing but the faint memory of her smell. It was so intense and maternal, and deep down inside me I knew I could never stop wondering.
I climbed the creaky wooden stairs to the room that I shared with three other girls. I could hardly call it my own. My room would have a balcony overlooking a quiet village. A mirrored vanity with a spread of perfumes and exotic lotions. I sat at the edge of my bed and started to braid my hair. The sounds of Chelsea Jankowski snoring filled my ears and greatly annoyed me. Visions of me smothering that fat bitch with a pillow flooded my mind, and then I realized my hands clutching one preparing to do so. I had to get better control of myself, but lately my urges to inflict the pain I felt on others was reaching a boiling point. I crawled under the covers of my twin bed and lay face first in the pillow. I usually slept this way to drown out the sound of my late night sobbing. As I lay there, hot tears seeped from the corners of my eyes. Oh God, her smell...



Violca ran as fast as her bare feet would allow her to. Her calves burned like a kettle on the stove and the wiry thorns and shrubbery she raced through cut her from the soles of her feet to the caps of her knees. Now more than ever she resented the fact that the servants of her colony were never to be allowed shoes for this exact reason. Without them running away was something only a mad man would consider. But the promise of freedom can drive a person to suffer anything to obtain it. Paired with the bitter cold of the January night, the pain she was experiencing now was second only to the birth of the child she held in her arms.
She remembered the misery.When her nightmare hadn't come that month she knew she was carrying the masters child. The first months she felt an exhaustion that she had never experienced before. Her body felt as though anchors were attached to her limbs, her nipples were constantly erect and she winced when even the softest of fabrics grazed against them. The second months brought nausea and a burning in her throat, it was so extreme that the other servants had begun force feeding her and holding her mouth and nose shut to keep it down.
The third months when her stomach became engorged to capacity with new life brought crippling back aches, swollen throbbing feet and anxiety about the pain that was to come. Her own mother had been a midwife. She witnessed first hand the pain and anguish bringing a life into the world without the luxury of modern medicine could manifest. Through those long nine months the master still took her every night. Violca was without a doubt the most beautiful woman in the colony and the masters first and only wife. He had been infatuated with her and pulled many strings with the other members to be able to marry a midwifes daughter.
The baby never made a sound. Violcas chest burned with the cold winter air, the shawl she was wearing was now wrapped tightly around her sleeping child. She finally understood a mothers love. She was willing to brave the snow and sleet of a winters night to free her daughter of the life her father had planned for her. If need be she would have laid down and died, and no one was bringing this child back to the manor, not even from her cold dead hands.
She had no idea where she was going to seek refuge, As soon as her family realized that she had ran away from her marriage they would shun her. Violca could not read or write as it was forbidden to women of lower stock in the colony, she knew the modern world outside the forest was an awful place but nothing was worse than the thought of her precious new born becoming a high priestess in the church of Satan.
She swore to herself then and there that her daughter would never witness the things she had to endure being married to a Satanic priest.
The child was born September 7th 1991, just as the priests had predicted. In the colony everything was planned by Astrology. Including births deaths and marriages.
The master wanted a feminine daughter born under the sign of Virgo. Violca had been promised to a young farmer from birth. She was a Libra and the boy was an Aquarius, but once the master had laid his evil eye on her at the festival of virgins she would never see the man she loved again. Violca wanted to keep running but her knees started to wobble and knock together. She could see the river ahead of her but it seemed so far away. She kept running as far as her feet would allow and then her body collapsed beneath her. As she slammed down to her bloody knees she gazed into her hands at the child who was no longer asleep but staring wildly up at her with her doll like grey eyes. She had the same piercing grey eyes as her father. She could here shrieking and yelling close behind her and she knew her time was quickly running short. She decided then and there to blind the infant. Blind her from seeing the horrors that her father would undoubtedly bestow on her.
The moon was full and high, and she scrambled around for something sharp. After a few seconds of her frantic searching she found a sharp rock, she wanted to inflict as little pain as possible to the child. "Her life will be full of pain" She whispered to herself, wiping away a tear. She turned around and raised the rock above her head when she suddenly realized everything had gone still and colder than it had been before. She willed herself to look up slowly, knowing her captors had caught up with her. She was frozen solid, the rock high above her in her trembling frost bitten hands.
Her eyes met the masters, and before she could blink his large hands were crushing her throat. She kicked and squirmed as he raised her a few feet above his head, the blood dripping onto the laying infant from her torn and ravished legs. He stared at her intently for what seemed like a decade, she had never seen such a look on any man before and was clawing and scratching at his arms. The others had caught up on their horses. "Cedric!" One of the priests called out to the master. But Cedric wouldnt look away, he kept his stare on Violcas eyes. Her face was quickly turning purple. "Cedric, no!" They called out again.
He loosened his grip just enough for her to grab a quick breathe. "Why?" He growled to her face. "After all that I've sacrificed for you!?" He growled before spitting in her eyes. He let out a long guttural scream that ended in him tossing Violca into a large bush of thorns. She shrieked with the pain of the thorns and the crushed bones in her throat.
Her wailing and coughing echoed throughout the forest. She held onto the brittle grass as she chocked for air like a drowning victim. The other servants could hear it back at the colony and later wrote a song about it.
Cedric stared down at the infant. She looked up at her father and smiled. He gently picked up his precious daughter in his strong arms and licked away her mothers blood from her cheeks. "My little one." He whispered. The priests and servants had finally caught up, they dismounted their horses and rushed over to their master.
"Has the heir been harmed my lord?" Asked one of the servants. A very tall thin ghost of a woman named Bianca.
"No!" He snapped back. " I told you to watch her! To not take your eyes away for a mere second! "
"Yes my lord" She said trembling. Her feet were also bare and bloodied and she painfully winced forward to take the baby.
Cedric held the baby to his chest with one arm and slapped the servant as hard as he could with the other.
The baby let out a devilish giggle. Bianca's eyes welled up with tears and she held her hand to the awful stinging on her cheek. He handed her the baby and made his way back to Violca. The priests had surrounded her and were openly discussing a suitable punishment.
"I think shaving off her hair and eyebrows would be suitable, perhaps display her in the courtyard for a few months until she comes to her senses" Said Father Cadieux.
"You cant be serious, the crime she has committed is worse than treason. Think of all the information she could have given the police about us? Add that to the fact she just tried to blind your new queen! She must be sacrificed!" Said Mother Lavinia.
"Have you forgotten that you decreed to stop breeding the servants and that no one in the entire colony has any milk for the child? Are you suggesting we raise an heir on formula?" Father Cadieux spat out.
Mother Lavinia was embarrassed that she had forgotten this and mounted her horse and trotted off towards the colony.
Cedric, Bianca and Father Cadieux stared down onto Violca whose body had gone limp and lifeless with the cold and agonizing pain.
Cedric dragged her by her hair and laid her over the rump of his horse. He took a long rope from his saddle and tied it in a noose around Bianca's neck. The rope stretched about 6 feet from the saddle. He grabbed the baby out of her arms and mounted his horse. "Show me your not completely incompetent and try to keep up this time." He barked back.