A Fairy Out of Her Tale - Dear Diary - 17. Scene 17

8th January 1995

Dear Diary of Guilt,

That should be the last of the animal cadavers coming out of me. I don’t think it’s possible to have any food left in my body after the last hour bending over the toilet.

Is it too much information for you? Wait until I describe the foulest taste known to fairies and the most putrid smell to ever descend on one’s nostrils. Then remember I just spent a whole hour surrounded by that horibleness in the tiny, windowless bathroom next to my bed. You feel sorry for having to think of it? Be glad you didn’t have to live it!

Snarky complains... Is it a sign my feelings are coming back? No, it’s still too soon. Not even half a day since those police officers made me vomit the truth with the same intensity my stomach propelled the dead meat out of me.

I better get on with the end of my tale, then. Before I regret my decision.

Morumpi threw me face-first against the blue rose bushes under my bedroom window. Thorns prickled my skin, drew blood, and opened small tears on my sacred robes. I could't move. I tried asking the roses to stop hurting me, but they were already under Morumpi's command and prickled me even more, like thousands of needles on the offence.

'You have blood on you.' Morumpi's voice sounded somewhere above me. 'What will your mum say when she finds out you ruined your most important outfit? She's going to be so angry... You won't want to be here when she finds out. Take your robes off and come with me. I got some spare clothes you can wear for my party.'

Where could he have gotten spare clothes? He couldn't have had the time since we got home. I still couldn't move without getting even more thorns embedded in my skin. The rose bushes weren't supposed to be so well-armed. Did Morumpi get them to grow extra thorns too?

He picked me up by my ponytail. I stumbled to regain my balance and fell on his chest. His arm closed around my waist, pressing me against his body. 'Do you know that demons can do some really interesting tricks using blood? They can mark you, follow you, and even be summoned to your presence with as little as a single drop.' Morumpi showed me his free hand. He made me watch him picking a rose with so many thorns it could have been a porcupine. He forced it on my nose until its sickly sweet smell overcame all my other senses, then threw it away with an appreciative sound. When he showed his hand to me again, it was covered in blood. 'With this little mark, you'll be ready to follow me.'

Morumpi ran his hand ran over my arm, smearing his blood over mine. His grip on me tightened as he chanted something in a strange language. It sounded similar to Fadalesh, but with more "v" and "z" and "sh". He repeated the same short sentence over and over, louder each time, but never loud enough to reach the other end of the house, to allert mum that something was going on.

A smoke cloud appeared in front of us. It smelled like the rotten eggs my friends used to trick the teacher with in our last day at school. Morumpi kept chanting, faster this time, as the cloud took the shape of a tall being with curved horns as long as my arms. The horns solidified from the smoke, but the rest of the body remained in its translucent shape.

Menacing eyes stared at me from the incorporeal being. A deep, urgent growl came from it, to which Morumpi replied something in that strange language from before. He walked me towards the smoke. The smoked laughed in triumph.

And I finally realised what my step-father was trying to do to me.

We weren't heading to a party, but to some faraway demon land. This smoke demon wanted to take me away like they did with my father, and Morumpi was not only about to let that happen, but he was pushing me towards it.

No.

I kicked between his legs and clashed my head against his jaw. The sound of crushing bones would've made me cringe, if wasn't busy taking my one chance to flee.

I should've ran to mum. Should've called for help.

But the smoke demon shouted at us again. It sounded like it was urging Morumpi to move, disregarding his pained expression as he knelt on the floor with a bloody, dislocated jaw, and one hand between his legs. I couldn't move away. The voice froze my legs. But it convinced Morumpi to move. He came at me again.

I couldn't let him get to me. I couldn't let him take me away like they did with my father. Was this how he was taken too? By someone he trusted who ultimately betrayed him?

I couldn't move away, but I could get other things to move for me. Morumpi controlled the roses under my window, but all the trees around us had been watching our struggle with nothing but fear and apprehension. He hadn't recruited them for his fight. Which meant I could.

The tree next to me tried to hit Morumpi with its branches, but he dodged it. The branch swung through the smoke demon, but it reformed immediately, and the branch broke off instead.

Right by my feet.

I didn't have time to think. One second, I had the branch in my hands. Next thing I know, Morumpi is coming and I swing the branch at him to make him stop. I wasn't aiming. I expected he would dodge like he did when the tree attacked him. But he didn't see it coming either. That branch, thicker than both my arms together and too heavy to pick up if I wasn't loaded with adrenaline and survival instinct, hit him on the side of the neck. He flew against the wall of my bedroom, fell on the roses next to the hole made by my own body. They no longer had thorns.

And he was dead.

The rest you already know. My powers deserted me. Left me in the worst pain imaginable, shattering whatever spirit I had left after realising my step-father betrayed me to demons. The smoke and any other sign that a such a being had been there disappeared by the time mum reached the scene and put together the clues of my crime.

Now you know everything. Every detail. I won't forget, even if in the future I'm too afraid to look back at the darkest time in my life. I'll come back and I'll read everything again, until it is as fresh in my memory as it was back then.

And if I'm ever blessed with lovers and children, they too will read this. Not that I think I deserve bringing new lives into the world after having taken one away.

Unless creating a new life is a way to compensate for the one I ended?

I shouldn't be so optimistic. Just because the police doesn't think I deserve to be punished, it doesn't mean I have to believe them. They're wrong.

I'm going to sleep now. I'm not in a chatty mood, and tomorrow the police people will be back to throw their wrong morals at me.

Thanks for reading!
What do you think of the last piece of the puzzle of Nessa's story? Was it worth a whole month of wait?
We're heading towards the end of part 2. Soon Nessa will be out of the hospital and dealing with a completely different set of challenges. 
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