writingcamp My Punishment

Prologue

"Long is the way, and hard, that out of darkness leads up to light."

"The mind id its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

-John Milton's Paradise Lost

    "Aubrey? Aubrey? Please open your eyes sweetie. Please, oh God please. Just open your eyes. Don't take her God, please don't take my baby girl. I'm so sorry. I know I was wrong but you can't take her from me. She's all I have left. I need her. Please, please, please don't take her. Aubrey just open your eyes."

    I could hear my mother's screams and loud and uncontrollable sobs, she was grabbing my hand and shaking it vigorously as if that would magically awaken me. I could hear her frantic cries and pleas for me to awake and look at her once again, but I just couldn't open my eyes. I didn't want to. After what she had done to me, I could honestly care less if she was now wishing to repent and pray for forgiveness, and if now, after all of these years, she finally decided to love me. 

    If it something like this for her to realize that I was her daughter, her flesh and blood, and if it took this long to want me then I didn't want to awake just to forgive her at the drop of a dime. I didn't want her to be happy or for her to feel joy of any kind. I no longer cared and I no longer desperately searched for her approval.

    I went too long cowering in fear and hiding in the shadows. Now it was over and it felt great that for just one moment in my pitiful life, I didn't care. I had no worries, no pain, no fear, there was nothing. I was left with the emptiness that now had me lovingly wrapped in it's warm embrace.

    As I lay there with my body slowly shutting down, my life had begun to replay itself in my head. Every horrible torturing second of it. I didn't want to see it, but it was there. It was all there to remind me of every tear, every fake laugh, every deceitful smile, every taunting part of it. All of my lies and every time I said "No, I swear I'm ok." Every single thing was coming back to me. 

    It was just like how they say it is. You see it all flash across your mind and you get your last look at your life to embrace your memories, but mine were memories I could no longer bear remembering. I could not only see, but also feel the pain, the mocking joy, the fear, the tragic love, and worst of all, the heartbreak from the times when I was actually betrayed into being happy.

    I was no longer afraid of death, I embraced it. It would be my savior and my way out. I was finally going to be free: free from the Hell I called my life. The Hell I lived in day in and day out. I was finally going to be able to fulfill my one dream, which was just to end it all. This would be my one success. The one solitary thing that had ever had a good impact for me, and ironically it had to be my death. The one thing I had longed for for so many years had finally come to me like a knight in a darkened armor to whisk me away and carry me off into the night. To carry me away so I could finally be at peace. 

    While my mind was whirling trying to dodge everything swirling around it, I couldn't stop but wonder as she sat there begging and pleading, if it had ever crossed her mind that she could have prevented all of this. This was her fault, if she would have just treated me like her child other that her "Little beast from Hell" then we wouldn't be here today. She made it very clear that she didn't love me or want me and she had never even made an attempt to care. She very obviously wanted nothing to do with me so I granted her one wish. She would no longer be burdened by my presence, I would no longer be her abomination, and she would no longer feel the need to look at me with disgust and hate.

    It was such a shame how much she hated me when I so passionately longed for her to just wrap he arms around me and tell me how much she loved me. All those years ago it would have meant something and it could have been the change, but now it was too late. It felt too forced and too fake. I needed her to love me, but instead I was just her "rotten brat that eats and cries and whines, and gets in the way." I was left in the darkness of the cold and cruel world. A world that is no place for innocence, purity, and naive children. I learned too quickly of pain, too quickly of heartbreak, too quickly of Hell, and nothing of Heaven.

    It wasn't always like that though, all of the hate and scorn. I can faintly remember a time that she had loved me and assumed the roll of an ordinary parent. At one time she did even look at me as if I was a precious gift from God. It seems like it may have all been a dream, but I'm sure it did happen, it was when my father was alive. She loved our little family and would do anything for me. That was before the accident though, and when I was the one that survived she never felt the same about me again. I was scorned and hated for taking the life of her one true love and her soulmate. I was from then on the child from Hell; her punishment.

***

    The ambulance sirens wailing around me snapped me back into reality, back from my only happy memories and into my demonically haunted present. I could hear the unsteady beats of the machines that were monitoring the vitals of my body, and then suddenly, with an intake of breath they had started going haywire. They were beeping more and more out of control notifying me that it was quickly going to end and I was finally going to be at peace. Along with the pride of knowing that my life was coming to an end, was the pain that was becoming more and more intense with each passing breath. Each intake of pain was like a sharp dagger stabbing at my flesh inch by tiny inch. Oh how it hurt and I let out a deafening silent scream.

    Like everything else, I had kept even that silent scream unknown to everyone else because I wouldn't let her see my pain anymore. She had lived for my pain so it was as if she would get some satisfaction from still seeing it now. I wasn't going to give it to her. This was going to be my peace and it would be the last thing she would see. That would be her punishment; knowing that she wanted my destruction and instead I gave myself my peace. 

With another flash of body numbing pain, the heart monitor gave off a high pitched wail. I could hear the paramedic say the words I had longed to hear for so many years; "We're losing her." I took one last breath and felt myself fade away. It was over, it was finally over, and I was finally free.