Andrei and Rhian

His sister, his niece, his mother, and his father—each had been taken by the Waste, and each night the brown-eyed boy prayed to be taken next. In his waking hours, he stomped on gardens and kicked over fences, he picked pockets and pilfered produce, he attacked children with rocks and words. But none of it was enough to earn the wrath of Amalia, so he begged, pleaded, and swore to starve himself straight into Her merciful arms.

But life’s a tricksy minx, isn’t it? Ask for death, get torture instead. The boy got a him instead of a Her. The man came around with his promises of shelter, food, love. Horseshite. “It’ll be hard work,” he said. And the boy worked, and worked, and worked. Weeks, months, years.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Weeks, months, years over which our boy grew stronger, more capable, but still obedient. It would never be enough for the man who demanded eternal gratitude through eternal servitude. The weeks, months, and years were marked by thick, jagged scars across the young man’s back. A morbid work of abstract art.

'Course, the lad grew bigger while the old man shrunk, and at around his sixteenth birthday, our brown-eyed boy did what I would’ve done. He whipped that door open and killed the bastard in his bed.