To Hell & Back

“I made the mistake, not you. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry, Staysa,” were the first words I remember hearing. I hate those words. They marked the end of my world as I knew it. I don’t remember anything that happened between this memory and the previous one. It was all a blurry mess, for reasons that will become obvious. This memory, this nightmare, always starts the same way; it starts abruptly and in the middle, always leaving me wondering how it began.

I turned my head to see my father closing in on me. The large axe in his hand made my eyes widen in fear. I stared at my father in confusion as he attacked, swinging the axe down at me. I yelled in surprise as I evaded, my feet slipping out from under me. I hit the floor hard, just barely avoiding his attack. Adrenaline surged through me, pushing me to act. I lashed out with a foot, catching his leg. I heard him curse as he to fell to the floor.

My thoughts were muted, as if I had been drugged, but my mind still managed to scream at me to move. On reflex alone, I clawed at the floor to get away, wincing as pain shot through my hands. I didn’t stop until I was far out of my father’s reach. I looked down to see blood trailing down my arms from cuts in my palms. The cuts were smooth, curved, ritualistic, and spelled to remain open and free-flowing.

I heard a noise, making me look up. My father was back on his feet and heading towards me, axe held at the ready. He was limping slightly, but the determined look on his face still terrified me. He wanted me dead.

“D-d-da-da?” I stuttered, confused and frightened. “W-what are you d-doing?”

He didn’t say anything, he just came at me again. I watched as the axe arced down toward me. At the last moment, I twisted to the left, avoiding the blade. As the blade slammed into the floor where I had been, I reached back, grabbed ahold of his forearm, and wrenched my body back around, kicking with all of my strength. I felt my foot hit flesh, hard. Bones gave way. It should have been the end of the fight, but it wasn’t.

I grabbed the axe, wrenched it free from the floor, and then stood up shakily. I glanced down to see blood pooling around my feet. I briefly wondered why it didn’t hurt. Looking back at my father, I saw he was across the room, had pulled a knife, and was readying himself. A long, deep cut over one of his eyes bled profusely, while another on his chin dripped fresh blood. A small part of me noticed a slight discrepancy in our positions. How did he get across the room? How much of this memory was I missing?

“I-I don’t want, I don’t want to do this anymore,” I pleaded. “W-what’s going on, Da-da? Can’t we s-stop now? P-please?”

He wiped blood away from his eye and moved forward slowly, ignoring my words. When he got close, he suddenly lunged forward, stabbing at me with his knife. My training took over again. I sidestepped to avoid the knife, but instead of falling back, I surged forward. I slammed into his middle with my shoulder. I pushed with all of my strength, shoving him back until he collided with the wall behind him. Had I more time, I would have been astounded by my own strength and speed.

Without pausing, I stepped back and spun, swinging the axe around and down as I did. The blade slammed into his shoulder, biting deep. He screamed and pushed me away. I fell back, my body exhausted from the frantic fighting mixed with massive blood loss. I watched him tear the axe out of his shoulder and drop it to the floor, just before he slumped down onto his knees, exhausted and in pain.

Even after all that, he kept going. He got up and lunged at me with his good arm extended, a knife in his hand. I ducked to the side, took up the axe again, and swung blindly back around behind me. I cringed as I felt it sink into flesh.

“Why!” I screamed when I saw what I had done. I screamed in confusion and rejection. The axe was lodged between his hip and ribs. I stared at the wound as it gushed blood. I didn’t want this. I screamed again as I stepped back from him. I felt helplessly confused. He fell to the floor like before, but this time he didn’t get back up.

I don’t know how long I stood there in shock just staring at his body. I heard a door open, bringing my attention back to reality. My eyes went wide when I saw my mother standing in the doorway. She held a machete in one hand and a sacrificial knife in the other. Somehow I knew it was the same knife that had been used on my hands and feet.

She has come to kill me, I realized, coming out of my shock. Confusion reigned for a moment, before it turned to anger. I felt betrayed by those I loved most, by those whom I had relied on my whole life. My whole body burned with a sense of betrayal as I tore the axe from my father’s body and stepped towards her, saying, “You too? Why, mother? Why!”

We moved at the same time, heading right for each other. Instead of blocking or parrying her attack, I darted forward underneath her guard, using my small size and speed to my advantage. Unlike my father who had trained me, my mother wasn’t used to fighting someone as small and fast as me. I slipped right under her attack, then surged upwards to slam into her abdomen. I lifted her up and slammed her down onto the edge of a nearby workbench. The legs of the bench gave out from the abrupt weight, dropping us to the ground, me on top of her.

Before she had recovered, I pushed back away from her, swung the axe up and around, then brought it down on her leg. It bit deeply, just above the knee. She screamed as I wrenched the axe out of her leg, tearing the wound open savagely.

“Why?” I asked, watching her writhe, gripping her leg. “Why?”

I wanted to say more, I wanted answers, but exhaustion had finally taken over. I fell to my knees and just bled. When I heard my mother scream, I looked up to see her pushing herself off of the collapsed workbench. She held a bloodied spike in her hand for a moment before tossing it aside. I saw blood pooling out from her side where the spike had gone in. She tried to get off of the bench, but her legs weren’t able to support her. I saw another bloody spike on the workbench. She had been impaled by it, I guessed.

I lost consciousness for several moments, coming to when I heard my mother calling my name, “S-Staysa? Staysa! Are you…”

“I’m dying, Momma,” I whispered quietly.

She stared at me for a minute, a confused look on her face. I watched confusion turn to surprised realization. “It… its… Fuck… No time now. C-come here… I can… I must… save you… not…”

The memory skipped forward, so the next thing I knew, I was straddling my mother’s corpse and staring up at two Witch Hunters. Witch Hunters are the Vatican’s modern day counter to the supernatural threat. They were little more than a sponsored death squad for witches, originally formed from a group of pious ex-soldiers that wanted to use their talents for their faith. Modern day crusaders, you might say.

Who called them? I wondered, my thoughts sluggish.

They watched me slowly bleed, refusing to help me in any way. I never got over that. Despite the four deep cuts and assorted bruises and broken bones, my body was fighting hard to survive. I blacked out, waking up later in the hospital. A nurse told me five weeks had passed.

The doctors said I may never fully remember what took place that day. The forensic evidence suggested that the fight with my father was much longer than I could remember; there was too much blood and damage strewn about the room to match my account of it. I suffered a severe concussion, massive blood loss, muscle tearing in my arms and legs, and an assortment of broken bones, as well as the obvious psychological damage.

It is amazing how a few minutes can change your life. My dreams ended that day. That is not to say that I was forever a lifeless shell, but no more would I believe that an idyllic lifestyle was possible for me. There is something about your father trying to brutally murder you with an axe that does things to your ability to dream, I guess. My mother, who I had dearly loved and missed for most of my childhood, continuing where my father had left off didn’t help my mental state.

An old witch named Ted had stepped forward to claim guardianship over me while I had been unconscious. When he revealed that he had recently come back from fighting in Europe, I demanded he train me as my father had. He agreed to do it, making me his apprentice. My parents trying to kill me only solidified my resolve to learn to fight.

During the apprenticeship with Ted, I learned that whatever my mother had done to save me was covered up with a powerful amnesic charm. It was powerful enough to make reversing the effects dangerous. I had to live with reoccurring partial amnesia from then on. My training had to be repetitive and intensive to make sure it stuck.

Sasha probably saved me from suicide. Many of her family, including her father, died in the war. I choked back my own emotions to help her. It was somehow therapeutic for both of us. Sasha became my reason for living. Our relationship became more intimate, our bond solidifying in our shared grief as we grew older.

Ted managed to get me into a scholarship program to go to the same private school as Sasha which helped things. The next few years went by in a blur, somewhat literally, for me. I know I had a rough time in the social area of school, but I couldn’t bring up the memories. I didn’t want friends anyway, I wanted the education.

From what little I could recall, it went as well as could be expected until the anti-supernatural crowd won a huge victory around my fifteenth birthday. While we, the supernatural crowd, officially gained full citizenship in America, it came with a hefty price. The penalties for breaking any law if you were supernatural were increased dramatically over what a normal human would face. Most felonies were punishable by death, since keeping supernatural beings locked up was thought to be next to impossible.

The school I had been going to, riding the anti-supernatural sentiment, terminated my scholarship. Schools around the country did the same. The only openly supernatural kids that weren’t kicked out were segregated to special classes. Civil rights activists had a field day, got tons of donations, and were determined to fight it in court, but it would be many years before any changes were made. In the meantime, we suffered in relative silence. I was more concerned with not being lynched rather than being kicked out of school, especially when it was ruled that witches were exempt from castle doctrine laws. It was death for a witch to kill a human, even in self-defense, and I was never afraid of violence.

Ted cut me loose shortly after my scholarship ended. Draconian regulations made witch apprenticeships almost impossible, and too many governmental agencies knew about my apprenticeship to try and hide it. He told me to run and keep a low profile, because witches, especially young ones, were going missing. He didn’t give me specifics, but he told me that something was happening and I wouldn’t want to be a part of it.

I went through the next year and a half trying to avoid people that were looking for me. I continued my studies by myself with stolen books and trial and error, while I took odd magical jobs, always on the lookout for who I knew not. I warded safe houses for private contractors, put up sound barriers for sensitive business deals, things like that. It made me money to live on, and they sure had no qualms about keeping me off the books.

When things got tough, I could always resort to petty theft. There was something satisfying about robbing the house of a priest who preached for the death of my species.

I also got firsthand knowledge about dealing with the black market and several different organized crime groups. I hoped having friends in low places might come in handy later on in life, not that I had any other choice but to deal with people that wouldn’t, or couldn’t, turn to the authorities.

This kept up until a very persistent lawyer contacted me, having spent a year looking for me, to tell me that my father had left a house for me. It had been missed in the will, somehow. I thought it might be a trap of some kind, but I was too exhausted by life to care at that point. It also meant I got to see Sasha again.