73. Petra #2
I can only watch as more people arrive, forming a circle around us. And once my brother pulls me up onto a marble structure, I realize where we are: the town square.
The place where everything began.
With the help of a few other men, they pull me into an upright position so they can all look at me—with clear disgust on their faces. Tying a rope around me, they secure me against the obelisk.
One piece of rope around my arms, one around my waist, one around my thighs, and one around my ankles. I’m fully secured. I cannot even slump down from my injuries. My neck is still bent at an odd angle, and I find that even in this position, I cannot move it. But at least now I can watch.
I can see people stepping closer, whispering about me, whispering about the devil’s harlot.
Is that what my father told them? Is that why he engineered this spectacle?
My questions are soon answered as my father steps forward and takes his place beside me. I see him from the corner of my eye, puffing out his chest and straightening his back like a peacock.
“Fear not, my townsmen,” he begins in a booming voice.
Everyone stops speaking.
“I am here to tell you that I lead the good fight against the devil. I do not care whether evil has penetrated my own family—I will eradicate it all the same. My daughter, Petra: She is and has been the devil’s minion. The devil’s whore. And I can prove it to you.”
Coming toward me, he pulls on my already ripped clothes until the upper part of my chest is revealed, right above my breasts.
“Look! The mark of the devil!” he exclaims.
Gasps erupt through the crowd. People step forward to take a closer look, before crying out in outrage, in fear, in condemnation.
And they all start chanting: The devil’s whore! She’s marked! Kill her! Kill her!
I can only stare in silence at the violent mob threatening to kill me. But as my father smirks at me, I realize that this is just a way for him to get back his reputation, isn’t it?
With Snowden dead, he has no more advantages to gain. But he can still redeem his virtue. By eliminating the evil in his own household, he will be seen as a morally upright martyr who decided to sacrifice his own daughter for the greater good.
A bitter laugh bubbles in my throat. Everyone is pointing at me, accusing me, calling me names I’ve never heard before, but no one tries to stop it.
Even when someone grabs a pebble off the ground and throws it at me, no one says stop. On the contrary, other people follow suit. They imitate what they see, and one stone turns into five, then ten.
I no longer feel the pain. Or at least I cannot distinguish between old pain and new pain. What is pain, even? I’m hanging on by a thread, and I know it. It will only take one more push for me to succumb to my injuries.
And still . . . I keep hoping he will come.
That he will come for me.
I might be beyond saving, but I want to see him one last time.
“Sin . . .” I whisper, barely able to form the word, yet it vanishes in the air with no response forthcoming.
Where are you? I think to myself. Where are you when I need you the most?
Why are you not here?
I know I shouldn’t blame him, but at the same time, hasn’t he always spoken about this greater-than-life love? About this fate that ties us together? And yet here I am, on the brink of death, and he is nowhere to be found.
Here I am, enduring in pain, and he is absent. I don’t know why I am so disappointed, but somehow, those feelings are more powerful than any physical pain.
Then I whisper again—
Just as one stone hits my temple. Blood pours down and into my eye until I cannot see anymore. I only have my other eye. But because of the position of my neck, I can only see the ground and a little bit above it.
“I will keep this community safe, I promise you,” my father continues, “and that promise will start tonight. I want you to know that I will eradicate all evil from Ratcliffe—starting with my own family.”
There are some steps around me before a foul-smelling liquid envelops me. It takes me a moment to realize it’s gasoline. Isn’t it?
“The devil’s whore dies tonight,” my father intones.
And then the crowd goes mad, chanting the words ad nauseam: The devil’s whore dies tonight! The devil’s whore dies tonight!
It’s a chorus of condemnation. Of glee at my suffering.
And then the match is lit and dropped at my feet.
My mouth opens on another soundless moan. I cannot even vocalize anything anymore.
And yet I can feel it—first, my shoes, but then the heat continues, eating at my flesh, going quickly upward, burning through the first layer, reaching the second, the flames burning through my lower limbs and growing taller and taller, threatening to engulf me whole.
If the pain I felt before was bad, this is a thousand times worse. I’m screaming on the inside, even though I cannot on the outside.
I scream and scream.
And all I can think of is him.
Where are you, Sin? Where are you when I need you the most?
The fire continues. It stings and burns and eats at everything it encounters until I simply become numb to it. And that numbness slowly takes over my entire being. My feelings, too, become so numb until I don’t even realize what I am anymore—or if I am at all.
It’s like the more the fire on the outside burns, the more the flame inside of me is extinguished. Until only the smoke remains.
And the echo of one word: Sin.
I don’t know when the end begins, or when being turns into not being.
But I do know this: He was never here.
He abandoned me when I needed him the most.