Friday Snippets #1: PoB prologue
#FridaySnippets fun starts today! Here’s my first snippet: the prologue to “the Path of Blood” in its revised version.
A couple of warnings:
- “The Path of Blood” as a whole, and this snippet in particular, features mature content, some of which might make people a little queasy.
- I’m not a native English speaker: this is translated from Italian so might be far from perfect.
***
Erthel could not move. Could not open her eyes. Could not scream.
Nothing.
An iron grasp pinned her wrists high above her head, something oily kept her mouth shut, something heavy crushed her breasts - and the pain. The pain inside of her, deep, rhythmic, unremitting, tore at her to the point that she couldn’t feel her legs anymore. The smell of blood, her own blood wetting her legs, that metallic, sickening, cruel smell of torn flesh, was the only thing she could smell.
Nothing else.
And then that sound, that rhythmic, muffled huffing burning her ear, like boiling water dripping down on the fire from under a pot’s lid. She couldn’t understand why, but that sound alone, so close, made her flesh creep.
When the rhythm broke, the sound faded in a choked hiss, but the bite of pain stayed inside of her like a blunt pulse. It was then that she heard the voice. A strong, deep voice, a man’s voice, just a hair’s breadth of her ear.
“Forgive me.”
Her heart jumped in her throat as if it wanted to speak. That voice on her ear, the weight, the hold on her wrists, the pain that still screamed inside of her, between her legs. The blood.
What had he done to her?
A freezing heat, a wave of disgust, of fear and resentment at the same time exploded in her chest, melting to a sickening itch under her skin, under her fingers, in the crook of her elbows. Erthel ground her teeth, her eyes filling with tears. Forgive you? How can you ask me to forgive you?
The weight over her lifted, and struggling, her whole body ringing with pain, Erthel sat upright. Only then she could open her stinging eyes, making out through her tears the shape of the man showing his back to her, and the vibration burning under her fingers sunk hard in her bones like a rain of needles. A sudden gust of cold air seeded goose bumps all over her body, and Erthel drew her knees to her chest in a shiver, but she found no relief, as if cold sprang from her own breath. She knew what was going to happen. She knew what that growing cold both in and out of her was, that painful pulse under her skin pushing to break free. They called it Gift, because one couldn’t choose to have it or not, but only how to use it, once learned to control it. And this time she knew she didn’t even have a choice anymore, because that urge had never been so strong before, and she wouldn’t be strong enough in turn to hold it back, tame it, douse it before it was too late, before it turned dangerous. She knew she had no way to protect herself or resist. She knew that in all likelihood, she was about to die.
And she didn’t care.
“No,” she replied.
She had the time to see the horror in the eyes of the man as he turned to face her, and in that moment, she realized that she knew who he was, even if she couldn’t give a name to that face – that a part of her, her body, her own blood had known all along. Then there was no more space for thoughts, because the vibration screeching inside of her became a deafening drum, the relentless, unmistakable beat that came before the Gift.
One, two, three.
At the third beat the vibration exploded under her skin in a wave of ice, and her scream of pain blending with the man’s was the last thing she heard before cold devoured everything.
.
.
.
Erthel woke up with a start, her heart pounding loud and her guts held tight in a bite of nausea. She breathed deeply, while her stinging eyes got used to the gray twilight of dawn, catching the familiar details of the room: the small round window, the attic’s ceiling beams, the nightstand with the water pitcher and the medicines, her cot, her mother’s profile under the covers of the other bed. As the restless ride of her heart calmed down, and confused glimpses of the nightmare came to memory, she had the impression that all that should remind her of something. But soon a known moan turned those thoughts away, and she kicked her bedsheets away to reach the double bed. She had to take care of her mother now.
***
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