Marabella
I am in the same room, yet everything looks bigger. Maybe it is because he is a child in the vision, but I can even hear and feel Kyan like I am a host in his body, his toy car scooting across the floor inside the open door.
“We shouldn’t go in. The old hag doesn’t want us in here,” I hear Kaif tell him, but he wants his car and the door is open.
“Kyan, wait for your father,” Kaif says, but Kyan ignores him.
His toy is right there, he thought as he quickly rushed in. He picks up the little blue hot-wheels car when something catches his eye. It glints at him as the sun shines in the window, the stone reflecting oddly, and Kyan moves toward, ignoring Kaif like he is in a trance. He climbs the three little steps and moves toward the table. It is a strange mini sword, yet it has a stone in the handle, which must have been why I saw it had a hole.
Kyan picks it up when a voice sounds behind him.
“What are you doing brat?” The voice is bitter and startles Kyan and he drops the knife back on the table and turns around. Only when he does, the knife bumps his elbow and falls to the floor. He tries to grab it before it does, but it slices his palm as he grabs the blade instead of the hilt, making him let go. For a five-year-old, his senses are insanely quick. Kyan hisses, and the blade lands at his feet as the stone in the center pops out.
“Useless, fucking useless boy,” the woman snaps, and his eyes dart to her. She is a withered old woman, with long white hair to her waist, and her nails are long and pointed but badly stained. She is thin too, scarely so and her cheeks hollow and eyes sunken in, but the look in her eyes is youthful and sparkly even, like the body has worn down but not the soul. Yet just looking at her instills fear in Kyan, and me. She has evil eyes, cruel eyes as she stalks toward him. Moving quickly despite how frail she looks. Kyan, in a panic, darts underneath the table.
He moves to the back of it when she bends down to look at him. She smiles at him, yet I don’t like the look in her eyes. “You know not to come in here.”
“I only came to get my car, Grandma. I promise,” Kyan says, holding the car out to show her. She clicks her tongue and her eyes focus on the fallen blade and the stone.
“You broke it,” she says and her eyes flicker.
“Daddy will fix it,” Kyan tells her and her eyes snap to his.
“Your father is just as useless as you. Damn pathetic. He is making you soft, ruining you like he did that bitch mother of yours. He was always pampering her and tending to her needs. Look where that got her. Dead, in the ground, didn’t it? You killed her, you Octavian’s kill everything you touch. What you need is good discipline. None of this naughty corner crap your father tries to do,” Kaif growls in his head at her words.
Kyan starts to cry and Kaif tries to calm him like he knows it would anger the old woman more by seeing his tears, Kaif tries to soothe him when the woman picks up the blade and stone and drops them on the table before bending down again. She clicks her tongue and shakes her head.
“I’m sorry, son. I was just angry. Come, come show me that hand,” she says, offering out hers. Kaif tells him not to trust her, and to wait for his father, but the woman motions him toward her and hesitantly he scoots forward a little. He places his now healed hand in hers, Kaif having already healed it, but he wants to go to his father, so he obeys. Only when he places his hand in hers, she jerks him forward, pulling him onto his stomach at her feet.
Kaif lurches forward as she whips his backside with a piece of a leather strap that she has from the table. He takes the blow, so Kyan doesn’t have to. He struggles under her, trying to get out and Kyan feels bad that Kaif takes his punishment, while Kaif, however, is livid that she touched him.
“I will teach you manners, boy!” the woman snarls, raising the strap again, only this time it doesn’t hit him. Instead, feet appeared by his face and her foot is no longer on his back as she staggers back. Kyan looks up to see the strap wrapped around his father’s arm, his arm bleeding, and the woman laughs maniacally in his face.
“You dare touch my fucking son, you old hag!”
“The boy needs discipline.”
“Never at your hands, you don’t touch my son, and if you do again, you will meet your maker far earlier,” he spits at her.
“Kyan go and wait in your room for me,” Dominic says when Kyan’s eyes dart to the leather strap, wrapped around his father’s arm, the strap appears to be tightening and for some reason, Kyan knew his grandmother is using magic, as his father’s blood drips down onto the floor.
“Now, son, go to your room, and wait for me,” Dominic repeats, not taking his eyes off his mother where he has her by the front of her blouse. Kyan scrambles to his feet and rushes down the steps to the door when his father is suddenly blasted back. Dominic smashes into the pentagram just as he reaches the door to escape. The woman laughs and Dominic growls, getting to his feet before he waves his hand at her and murmurs some incantation. The gasp from her makes Kyan turn around to find her clawing at her neck like she can’t breathe.
“Maybe it is your turn to be disciplined, mother,” Dominic says, getting to his feet. He turns and spots his son, who is staring horrified at his grandmother as she chokes. Dominic drops his magic, letting the woman breathe, not wanting to scare his son.
“Come on, I will make you some lunch,” Dominic says, turning his back on the woman and moving toward him. Kyan walks towards the door but sends a nervous glance back at the woman before walking out the door. Dominic’s voice is cut off abruptly as Kyan looks up at his father, only to see him ripped back into the room as shadows engulf him like tentacles before the door slams shut in Kyan’s face.