Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
I straighten out the bent page with the intention of closing the diary when something in the passage catches my eye. A single sentence the ink of which is smeared by droplets. Tears. I’m sure.
I knew before I took the test. Knew before I peed on the stupid stick. I know my body although ever since that night, it hasn’t been mine. I can tell you exactly how far along I am, too. I tried to get the test sooner but it’s not like I’m free to come and go as I please. Thank God for Kelly.
Two months.
Two months I’ve been carrying their monster in me. Growing another monster.
A baby, not a monster. That’s what Kelly says. It’s half mine. I have to stop calling it a monster. But every time I think about it, I’m sick to my stomach. I think of him, of all of them, touching me. Their hands on me. Inside me.
God I want to throw up and it’s not nausea from the pregnancy. Shit. Shit. This is a nightmare except that a nightmare has an ending, and this is only the beginning. And I will never wake up from it.
It takes my brain a few minutes to process what I think I’m reading.
I check the date of the entry and although I can’t see the month or day, I see the year. The entry is from twenty-three years ago.
Feeling a chill, I turn a few pages and read another:
I can’t get rid of it. I thought I could. But when I got there, I couldn’t go through with it. It’s not for any reason I can make sense of. I don’t believe in any god. If one existed, he’d have struck the beasts down. If there was a god, he wouldn’t have allowed this to happen to me! But it happens every day, doesn’t it? Women are raped every fucking day, aren’t we? But like this? Like they did me?
But she’s my baby too.
What if she has the monster’s face? What will I do? No, I can’t think about that so instead, I imagine tiny hands and feet and a little face. Half her blood is mine. That means something.
Oh! Oh! I feel her! There. Again.
It’s a tiny fluttering like a butterfly’s wings. Timed perfectly. Like she wants to tell me it’s okay. She wants to say she’s not a monster because monsters don’t touch you with butterfly wings. Monsters grip you with fingers that dig into your flesh to leave marks.
She. It’s a girl. I know it. I feel it. At least it’s not going to be a boy because boys become men and men become monsters.
I need to figure this out. Stay strong. Because if I don’t get away, she’s just as doomed as me.
The entry ends there. There are doodles in the corners, the same thing she keeps drawing. There’s something familiar about them.
I need to find Amal.
As if on cue, the door opens and for the briefest most fleeting, most stupid moment, I feel a relief like I have never felt because for that instant, I think it’s her. I think it’s Amal.
But that relief is replaced quickly by a dark dread when I see Robertson moving out of the way to allow Senna to enter.
That same sensation I’d felt when I’d first met the man overcomes me. It’s a feeling of ants crawling over my entire body and I’m unable to move. To swipe them away.
I shove it all down. Bury every emotion. It takes all I have but I do it.
“Where is my wife?” I demand, dropping the diary and stalking toward him. “Where is she?”
Senna continues to take in the room before he bothers to look at me, all calm confidence in that grin I hate.
I think about Sev. About what they did to him. I imagine Councilor Senna standing on his raised dais condemning my brother to have the mark of The Society removed by branding.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” I say in red-hot fury as dread grips me. If they hurt her, if they fucking hurt her, I will kill them! I stalk toward Senna. He’s barely six feet tall and I expect him to cower, but he doesn’t.
“Crude language, Mr. Blackstone,” Senna says.
Two soldiers that must have been standing outside stalks into the room. One has an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder like we’re at fucking war. The other stalks right past Senna and stops me in my tracks.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” I demand, the soldier holding me back from him because I could snap his neck single-handed if he was unguarded.
He looks me over and raises his brows, a curl to his lip when he speaks.
“But I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything different from you. I don’t know where your wife is. Why would I? Perhaps she’s left you.”