Chapter 36
W ith Tony having the power of speech back, he begged and pleaded for his life. “Kyla,” he said, his eyes full of pleading. “Please. Come on. What’s done is done. It’s in the past. I’m a father now. Don’t scar my children forever.”
Kyla stared at him, poker faced, taking his words in one by one and deciding how to reply. “‘What’s done is done’. Is that really how you think about what you did to me? What you did to our child ?”
“I did what was best for everyone involved,” he said, straining against the vines holding his wrists.
“Did you? Who told you that? Because I certainly disagree that you did what was best for me.”
“You were too young to have a child. You needed to live a little first, enjoy life, be without burden.”
Kyla tilted her head back and laughed, a proper deep guttural laugh that shook her stomach and vibrated through her chest. Seconds ticked by as her laugh bounced off the walls of the silent house, the children, Anna-Rose, and Tony all watching her, waiting, wondering what she would do next.
When she finally eased her laughter, she lowered her head and glared at Tony, her eyes sparking with hatred. “Enjoy life? What’s your definition of that Tony? Because being told at the age of eighteen that I can’t have kids, being pushed from psychiatrist to psychologist to therapist because no one could help me, battling with depression, anxiety, trust issues, and trying not to kill myself on a daily basis is not my idea of enjoying life.”
Tony stared back at her, mute, unable to say a word. He knew in that moment how much he’d fucked up. Fucked up royally. After nearly a minute of staring each other out in tense silence, he finally whispered, “I had no idea.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Kyla yelled, throwing her arms up in the air in exasperation. “Because you were too busy running away with and fucking my mum!”
“What’s fucking?” Lina asked.
Kyla turned around, seeing her younger half sibling staring at Anna-Rose, expectantly waiting for an answer. “Please,” Kyla said to her mother. “Indulge her. Tell her what that is.”
Anna-Rose looked up at her daughter, her eyes full of water. “Please, Kyla. They’re innocent in all of this. Don’t force them to face the same horrors you did.”
Kyla raised an eyebrow and considered her mother’s words for a second. More like a split second. “Why not? If it was good enough for me to endure, dear mother, it’s more than good enough for them to also endure. You can’t have favourites now, can you?”
“You heartless cow,” Tony shouted. “You’re a fucking heartless bitch.”
Kyla whirled back around to face her former lover, pure ire flowing through her veins, splashing against her insides with a dire need to be let free. “Quite the opposite, Tony. If I had no heart, I wouldn’t be feeling all of these things inside of me, now would I? I wouldn’t still cry at the sight of pregnant women or lose myself in depression for days at the sight of a baby, would I? That if anything proves that I do have a heart. However, if you wish to see a heartless cow, or a heartless bitch, I can indeed show you that.”
“You’re a nasty lady,” Lina said, her voice full of scorn. “You’ll never get into Heaven.”
Kyla turned her head and smiled at the little girl. “Who said I wanted to even go there?”
Lina sucked in a sharp breath and grasped a hold of Anna-Rose’s arm, clinging onto her like a koala onto a branch. Arana still sat on Anna-Rose’s lap, holding onto her mother like a baby monkey.
“I think I’ve heard enough out of you for now,” Kyla said. Lifting her right arm, she pointed her index finger over to the corner of the room. “Go and stand over there and take your sister with you.”
Lina shook her head and huddled closer to Anna-Rose.
“Do it now, before I get my viney friends to drag you over there. Your choice.”
Lina glared back at Kyla, not moving, her blue eyes filled with defiance yet tinged with fear.
“Fine,” Kyla snapped. “You had your chance.”
Kyla moved her right arm and pointed it at Lina. In that instant, the living room floor began to creak and rumble. Seconds later, the floor burst open, thick brown vines snaking through the jagged hole in the middle of the room.
Lina screamed. Arana sobbed. The vines flew through the air, heading straight for their ankles. As the tip of one wrapped itself around Lina’s leg, she yelled, “Ok. I’ll do it.”
Kyla dropped her arm, the vines retreating back to the hole in the blink of an eye, peeking through the opening, waiting for the next command.
Lina grabbed her sister’s hand and tugged at her. Arana shook her head and continued to cry, only holding on harder to her mum.
“Come on, Arana. Do you want that thing to touch you?”
Arana shook her head.
“Then you need to come with me.”
Arana nodded, then several seconds later, she finally released her grip on Anna-Rose and followed her sister like a lamb over to the corner of the room.
“Good,” Kyla said, giving them a small smile. “Now, what happens next is for your own good. All of it. ”
Kyla envisioned in her mind exactly what she wanted, watching with nothing but sheer satisfaction as the vines responded, giving her her desired result in less than ten seconds.
The vines coiled around the two girls tightly, covering every inch of them, save for a small gap for their noses and their eyes. Hot tears fell from the girls’ eyes as their muffled screams and pleads were almost drowned out by the thick vines keeping their mouths shut.
“They’re terrified,” Tony said. “What is wrong with you?”
Kyla rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to him. “I’m bored of you now. Time for you to be quiet.” With a flick of her wrist, a thick vine slid back across Tony’s mouth, silencing him once again.
Moving to stand in front of her mother, Kyla folded her arms across her chest and smiled at Anna-Rose. Anna-Rose looked up at her daughter, the emptiness in her eyes telling the world she’d resigned herself to her fate.
“Not even a tear to shed?” Kyla asked, cocking her head to one side.
“I’m not going to give you the satisfaction,” she replied. “I want you to hate yourself forever for this.”
Kyla dropped her folded arms and squared her shoulders. “Do you hate yourself for what you did to me?”
A second of hesitation passed through Anna-Rose’s eyes before she replied, “Of course.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
Anna-Rose sighed and looked down at the floor. “If I hadn’t done what I did, Kyla, I wouldn’t have Lina and Arana. I don’t regret having them—”
“Fucking wow,” Kyla said, a fresh stab of pain searing through her heart. “You are unreal. What did I ever do to you to make you hate me so much?”
“If you’d let me finish, I was going to say but I regret the situation that happened that made their lives possible. You’re my daughter, Kyla, how could I ever hate you? Every time I look at you, I see myself.”
Kyla snorted. “Don’t you fucking dare. I would never do to my own child what you did to me. Not that I’ll ever have a chance to prove that.”
“I’m sorry, Kyla. Really, I am. I’m sorry I made a terrible error in judgement, that you suffered like you did, that we lost each other, that you feel you have to do this to quiet the anger in your soul. I’m sorry.”
Kyla felt her breath catch in her throat, a lump lodging itself as tears started to prick at her eyes. She couldn’t deny she was angry, so very very angry. She’d spent so many years, lost so many years being full of hate and bitterness. An entire decade of her life had been robbed from her.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Kyla pushed the rising emotions away, focusing on what brought her here. Seconds later, she opened her eyes, marched over to her mother and grabbed her by the throat, yanking her to her feet.
Anna-Rose didn’t make a single noise nor resist. When garbled noises from Tony filled the air, she still kept her eyes on her daughter, wanting to keep the eye contact, to force Kyla to face the reality of what she was doing.
“Now,” Kyla whispered, her eyes glazing over with a hardened stare. “Seeing as you apparently care for me so much, it’s only fair I share my pain with you, right?”
Staring her mother straight in the eyes, Kyla placed her free hand on Anna-Rose’s stomach. Her mind flooded with memories from that fateful day, from when Tony had almost caused her to bleed to death. Kyla channelled all of her fear, all of her agony, and all of her desperation into her energy, her palm tingling as the heat from her magic flowed out of her.
Within a few seconds, Anna-Rose crumpled, clutching at her stomach, her eyes scrunched shut as she screamed in pain. Kyla tightened her grip on her mother’s throat, forcing her to straighten up. Kyla could feel her mother’s pulse beneath her skin, the racing beat, the slight sheen springing to the surface of her skin.
“Are you feeling it?”
Kyla pressed her hand harder against her mother’s abdomen, against the loose skin that had once been stretched by her own limbs as she grew inside that stomach. Now though, that meant nothing. All she could think of was the cold, thin metal being forced inside her, ripping through her delicate tissue, tearing her to pieces.
The memory of that day had been burned into her mind but now, now she imagined it wasn’t her laid on her bed, spread eagled to a cruel tormentor, but instead her mother. In her mind’s eye, she built up a huge shovel, like a snow plough, and pictured every speck of emotion and feeling from that day being pushed out of her and into her mother.
Anna-Rose began to tremble, her knees struggling to support her as the overwhelming emotion from Kyla flooded her body, breaking her down chunk by chunk.
As Kyla’s festering emotions poured into her mother, the heat from her palm began climbing up her wrist, then seeping into her forearm, each second she kept the touch on her mother notching the temperature up a degree.
When the heat emanating from her reached borderline scorching, Kyla let out a frustrated scream. She wasn’t done ploughing her mother’s quivering wreck of a body with all her pain and fear. She would make sure she sucked up every last drop whether she liked it or not.
Letting go of her throat, Kyla placed her other hand on her mother’s stomach, wanting to share the load between both hands. The instant she did this, it was as if a dam wall had been broken—everything flowed out of her at twice the speed.
Anna-Rose wailed like a child. Tony continued making noises, the girls muffled screams almost drowning out his grunts of protest. Anna-Rose collapsed, her legs buckling beneath her.
As quickly as Kyla wished she had some support to hold her upright, the vines from the hole next to her sprung to life, coiling around Anna-Rose like a snake, stretching her into a standing position. Her entire body from head to toe shook violently as Kyla continued her outpour of hatred.
Finally, after another minute passed, Kyla felt her palms turn ice cold. She knew then that it was all gone, all of her seething, fermenting negativity, all of her excruciating agony, she had finally shared it with the one person who deserved to feel it.
Stepping back, Kyla bent over and placed her hands on her knees, taking in big deep breaths. Every part of her felt as heavy as lead, like all of her energy had been sapped away, leaving her nothing but a body stumbling around.
But at the same time, she felt light, like a shadow had been lifted from her soul, the heavy weight of old scars and painful memories dealt with and packed away. For good.
Standing up straight, she smiled. This was what she’d been waiting for. And boy was it worth the wait.
Looking at her mother’s face creased with anguish, her eyes screwed shut as she hung limply by her neck, the vines taking all of her weight. She began shaking violently, blood trickling from her groin. Seconds later, the trickle turned into a flood.
Anna-Rose turned a sickly shade of grey and in that moment, Kyla knew she was there , right in that moment when she knew Tony had caught the little foetus and tore it from her womb. Anna-Rose’s light denim jeans were staining dark red, a stream of blood coming from her, pooling onto the floor beneath.
At this point, Kyla had passed out, during the real thing, but of course, her mother wouldn’t be given the same mercy. Kyla narrowed her eyes, ready to prick at Anna-Rose’s consciousness to keep her awake if necessary.
Seconds later, her mother vomited, the acidic stench of bile seeping through the air. An almost clear, runny liquid dripped from her chin onto the vines wrapped around her neck.
She opened her eyes and looked at Kyla, tears leaking from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Kyla. I had no idea.”
Kyla raised an eyebrow. “It shouldn’t have taken this to get an apology.” Anger bubbled in her veins, the reality of the situation overflowing yet again. Kyla couldn’t help but let it out in a scream so loud, her voice box cracked with the exertion of her yells. “I didn’t even want an apology back then—I wanted my fucking mother!”
Anna-Rose dropped her eye contact and turned her face away, her tears now soaking into the vines around her neck to the point of changing their colour.
“You can think on that whilst I continue,” Kyla said, whirling around to face Tony.
She grinned at him. She knew this one would be particularly fun.