Scarred Roses

Prologue

All flowers die one day. Just like the cycle of life: you’re born, you live, you die. When you think of flowers that way, it’s easy to see why it seems so depressing. But as other people say, it’s not how the flower dies that matters, it how the flower lives.

My sister is what they call a white rose. Striking, charming, beautiful and pure. Everybody wants her; adults wanted her as their daughter, girls wanted her as their friend, and boys fantasize about her in their wildest, most carnal dreams. She is all I am not. And…I could’ve been a white rose too. If I wasn’t so damaged. If I wasn’t so, damned unlucky. But there were things I had to go through that she didn’t. It was like running through a maze of mirrors, trying to find a way out. Trying to escape the terrifying image that seemed to shadow me. When I knew all along, what the image was. Me. My younger face, bruised and bloody, staring back at me with tears in her eyes. Her clothes torn, scratches and bruises marking her pale skin. I looked at this image like a monster, where in reality, the person who did this to me was the monster. He wasn’t a parent, or a sibling, or even a cousin. He is…I don't know what he is. I just hope I never have to see him again….