A Daughter Scorned

I burned my house down. Cut the power lines. Set the combustibles ablaze. Poured gasoline on the pipes. There’s a guest inside and I will escort him back to hell. 

His venom laid claim to the floors and his gluttonous fangs tainted with the blood of my family veered towards my direction. “I, whose name is Ptolemea,—” I said as I brandished my dagger at the conniving creature, which slithered across the hallway. “—shall have your soul crushed by the weight of my resentment.” My eyes gunned his head, unblinking, refusing to turn away—the hunt had begun amidst the blazing walls.

“How dare you be so uninviting towards your own guest?” His distorted voice rang sharply in my battered ears. 

Though he towered before me, I remained unmoved by his mocking gaze. “You destroyed my family and cast damnation upon my blood, yet you ask me to welcome you warmly.” Drawing near, past the broken vases and the torn picture frames, my weapon gravitated towards his scabrous body.  

“I will have your head mounted upon our roof.”

His grin grew larger, his eyes bloodshot. “You? Defeat me?” Laughter salvoed out his throat. “Look around! Look at her complicity!” The savagery he has done, his greatest achievement, did he relish greatly as he tread within the house which could not even recognize his footsteps. His poisonous inscriptions spread on the curtains, his rotten fruits paraded above the dinnertable, and his malevolent scent filled the labyrinthian state of my home. 

“I am the parasite, the plague, the curse that she allowed and you cannot kill.” A false claim proudly spoken. The trigger to an impending doom. He had it coming.

 At that moment, years of memory for a battle I never fought rushed through my nerves as I swung the dagger against the wretched devilman. “How foolish of you to believe that I am powerless!” Strike after strike after strike after strike, I screamed and yelled and struggled and cried. Each thrust a reminder of the lasting pain that I endured silently upon that wretched revelation.

There was no stopping. 

My hands have tasted violence. 

He dodged, I stormed, he stumbled, I charged, he fell, I attacked. With gritted teeth. With tensed shoulders. With hardened fists. With hellish fury. 

“You unforgivable-” I stabbed. 

“...filthy-” I stabbed harder. 

“...BASTARD!” I stabbed the devil again and again and again. 

Suddenly, just as I was about to deliver the final blow, a force pulled me away and threw me stunned to the side. “How dare you!” The voice repeatedly exclaimed. “You ruined everything! You shattered my happiness! You destroyed my freedom!” 

Ah. I know that voice. I know her very well. These thoughts pulled me up from my temporary exhaustion.

“How could you do this to me?! You never should have been born! You are a horrible daughter!”

I could only respond in silence as the ceiling started to collapse and the fire rose to the darkened skies. To agree, to defend—none I could do in front of her. 

“All my life I’ve been miserable, the heavens made me miserable, why do you want me to stay that way?! Why couldn’t you all just let me be?! Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?!”

There is nothing to say. No answer to give. Deflated, my head laid low. 

I do not blame you, mother. You were seventeen when I was barely a being, and your heart remains seventeen despite my completeness. You are not suited to become one—a mother, I mean. I’d rather you stay a young woman, even if it meant I could no longer be. Now look at what you’ve done. You opened the door and you cradled devastation. You’re divinely insane. You drove yourself to immaculate desperation. 

Men. Mortal. Immortal. Some your enemies, some you’re devoted to.

God. It’s his fault. But I’ll ask for his forgiveness anyway. And for you to be forgiven too. 

Have him forgive you for looking at your children with your broken dreams’ anger. Have him forgive you when your face distorts and the fire burns cold. Have him forgive you for the innocent crime of seeking the warmth of a man who’s not my father.

In silence, I prayed. Allowing the flames to swallow me, my mother, and the other. Forgive my mother for being the way she is, and forgive me, Lord God, for I no longer am her child. As my final act of love, I will seek my own end—I shall lead my mother’s dagger towards my desolate heart to punish her womb. 

Beep.

My wrists hurt. 

Beep.

A sharp needle is lodged in my vein.

Beep.

What a terrible dream. That I, with my entirety, hope it really was just a dream.

Beep.

It was a terrible, terrible retelling. 

I awakened, greeted not by flames, but by the pure white walls of what seems to be a courtroom and a few familiar faces—there stood all who are complicit in my murder. Among them stood out, my mother in unkempt clothes. Forgiveness, forgiveness, she repeatedly begs.

I heard everything, you see, mother. That call. The other man’s voice. The address. The attempt. The sin. 

Yet I found myself just as remorseful as I recognized your battered womanhood. For I too am a woman, perhaps woman enough to understand your desperation. Too woman to not forgive you. And so I mourn my own jurisdiction. I will no longer call myself your daughter, but I still am yours.

My wish lingered painfully. The wish to truly be brave enough to dare face that man with a dagger in my clutches. All that, only for it to be mere fantasy, a silent desire. 

So I lay decrepit in this bed with my throat all wounded. In the family, I am already absent, asunder, defeated.