(Flashback) My Emcumbrance

[Naselia]

Naselia had never fully recovered from the murdering of her mother. She always carried a sort of resentment towards herself. She could never shake the thought, what if I had been there? She always wondered why it wasn’t her. The very inkling that her mother’s murder was her fault devoured her from the inside out. But even more overwhelming than the hatred that she had developed for herself, was the hatred that she held for her father. Naselia had never actually liked her father, but never hated him either. Though he was abusive, he was still her father.
But after the incident, she could never even look at a man the same way. They all resembled the very being that stole everything she had ever cared about. She grew a hatred that could be matched by no other; it burned hotter than the most blistering of fires. This was the hatred that started with her father.
Naselia couldn’t tell anyone what had happened. She led then all to believe that her mother’s death had been an accident. If she had told the truth, they may have taken away her father, killed him even. And if they did that, how was she to get her revenge?
She had thought of it before, but only briefly. Not even actual thoughts, just occasional images flashing through her head. The incident changed that. Now that there was no reason for her to stay, Naselia did her father a favor and ran away. She stayed in her tree, out of sight. No one knew where she went. Not that anyone really cared.
She thought about what she should do. She knew that she had to do something. She began wandering the forests, learning all of the secret places that lay just beneath your feet. She learned how to survive. At first, she just felt sorry for herself, couldn’t believe that her of all people had been put in that situation. She missed her mother. Naselia whined daily to her tree. Taking out all of her terrible memories and settling them amongst the branches, to lighten the encumbrance upon her shoulders. It must have been too much for her poor friend to bear.
Naselia was out hunting, trying only to survive, when she returned “home”, her friend had fallen. Her best friend, gone. One would think that such a thing would force her to become disconsolate, but that was the last day the she had shed any tear. Her life had become impoverished. But she refused help from others. She was no longer going to expel her lamentable life upon others. She wanted to repair it herself. She would repair it herself.
When you decide to fix something, the first thing you need to do is to terminate the problem. Naselia had the problem figured out, now it was time to discover the way to eliminate it.
Her father had caused her to feel all of this grief, and now he was going to pay. She no longer had one place to stay, so she slept in a different place every night. She had no idea where to begin. Then one day, Naselia was sitting on a rock, hidden by the bushes, and she noticed a spider-web in front of her face. She watched as the spider made its web more intricate, weaving in all of the small sections until it was almost a complete shield of sticky unviability. Then in the blink of an eye, the spider was gone. She began to look closer, fascinated by the work put in to making such an inconceivable death trap, when a small bug flew into the snare of small threads.
She watched as he rapidly became more and more tangled in the web. The spider materialized as fast as it had vanished, pouncing on the insignificant bug. Naselia watched as the spider spun even more of its deadly thread around and around the insect, encasing it inside a silky coffin. Only once it was positive that its meal was secure did it begin to play with him. She watched as it slowly injected its poison into the lowly creature, it soon after cased to move. Unsure if it was dead or merely paralyzed, she leaned in, attempting a closer look. The spider the pulled back one of its many legs, quickly driving it into the meaty section of the insect’s body; the blood squirted upward, even though it was a small amount, still a lot for such a tiny bug. The spider then began to drain the life from it.
Her thoughts immediately went to her mother’s death. She had been helpless, and her father had guaranteed that there was no way for her to escape. Then he pounced. Beating her until her skin burst; staining the almost translucent skin with the liquid of her life. Letting it drain from the wounds created by his fist while he was off waiting until he could come home safely. In her eyes, he didn’t deserve to hold that life, the one that was so precious to her, in his hands. None at all before her death, and even more so after. She couldn’t take it anymore. He was finally going to pay for his sins; he was finally going to return her mother’s life to her. Naselia must discover what she truly believed to be the proper way to redress the situation. She spent countless hours debating on what the foremost decision should be.
Then she resolved that to think would be debilitate. She wasn’t going to let the one and only reason for her misery, continue dilapidating her life. Her mother’s life will not have been wasted. Her blood will not have been shed in a futile attempt for a small man to assert his self.
Naselia had discovered that the way to eliminate all of her problems had been just that. Eliminate the problem. Her mind never stopped thinking. Always reminding herself what Viratas would want her to do. Always reminding herself that if she wanted her mother’s blood back, her mother’s life back, she was going to have to take it.
These tiny reminders helped her develop a steady plan, a plan that she could no longer wait to execute.
She walked into the house, more silent than a dead mouse, in the middle of the night. She held the peppermint tightly in her hand. Her heart didn’t pound, and her hands didn’t shake. She had been preparing for this very moment for the last year.
She walked into his room and saw him lying on his bed. An uncontrollable smile swept across her face. She stepped silently over to the edge of the small resting area, placing her peppermint filled hand in front of her face, inhaling deeply. Another smile. She placed her hand over his nose and mouth, ensuring that he could still breathe, but not without the peppermint filling his nostrils. She watched with a certain coldness as he woke with a start then suddenly went limp. His breathing slowed to almost nothing. She used this time to quickly tie down his arms and legs to the posts on his bed. Once she was confident that he was secure, she reached into her backpack and pulled out the knife that she had taken from the kitchen. Slowly, with an almost professional precision, she brought the knife to his throat, the point of it slightly piercing the skin. Before she even breathed, her eyes followed the small trickle of blood that slid down the pale side of his neck, and took a moment to ensure that it would be forever engraved in her memory. She slowly drove the sharp knife further into the soft skin, watching as the blood began to flow more steadily. Once she had dug far enough into his throat, she withdrew the knife and replaced it with a few of her fingers. She could feel that the man’s breath no longer made it to his nose, but exited at the site of her now blood covered fingers. She used her claws to grasp the larynx, and swiftly ripped it out of the man’s body. This sudden motion was followed by a silent cry of pain, the man now fully awakened. She cast aside the useless body part, replacing it in her hand with the knife. She smiled as the man now struggled to scream for help, a feat she knew to be impossible. Now it was time to play. She dragged the knife first across his chest, watching, slightly shocked, at the amount of blood that instantly glued his shirt to his lacerated chest. Then she sent a few careless swipes over the man’s arms, beginning to laugh at his silent cries, tears streaming down the sides of his face. After having her fun, she sat down the knife and picked up his right arm (the one closest to her) and bit deeply into permissive skin on the inside of his wrist. She began to suck the thinning blood from the man’s arm, to symbolize her drinking away the rest of his life.
She waited as his despairing cries dwindled down to almost nothing, and then release the now flaccid arm. She looked into his drooping eyes; his face slightly splattered with his own blood, and searched them for any trace of her mother. For any trace that said she still lingered. She found none.
She grabbed her knife and held it at his throat, deliberating on whether or not to slit it then. Then she saw the distortion begin in his face; his limbs straining against the ropes, signaling that the poison had already begun liquefying his insides. She smiled for the fourth time since entering this escapade, her fangs still not fully retracted, gleamed with his blood. She withdrew the knife, stowing it back in her bag. She stayed to watch the man; his futile attempts at screaming never cease to make her insides feel warmer. His straining at the ropes lessened; she knew that she wouldn’t have to wait much longer. He looked up at her (his red eyes barely visible behind all of the tears) and held her gaze. She stared at him with a coldness so ferocious that it could have given him frostbite.
“My mother was lost, but now is found, my father now dead, will make no sound.”
These words may not have been heard by this man’s ears, but they meant more to Naselia than any of the other things she had told herself.
She grabbed her bag and headed quietly for the door; the reason for staying now completed. Her father was dead.