Chapter 20: Loving deeply even when it hurts

As the young bride saw the Lindorm impotent and writhing in pain, finally reduced to a bloody pulp on the floor, she ran to the corner where the things she had requested were. She brought the switches, the lye and the milk closer to where he was. She dipped the switches in the lye water and started hitting the bloody mass that was the Lindorm, repeatedly, until there was no twig in the switches.

Blood and bodily fluids flew everywhere, the beast screamed in rage but it was too weak and unable to fight back, having to endure the torture as the switches hit its brand new flesh which had never been touched by the air before.

His real form had been hidden by several layers of snakelike skin, the pink baby flesh delicate and vulnerable for the hissing bite of switches.

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"I was a good student so I was two years ahead, despite my adaptation problems at school and all. My parents insisted that I should go to the prom despite my assurances that I had no wish to mix with those arrogant creeps. My brother had been in a terrible mood but still they told me that they could handle him."

Laura chuckled lightly, her throat clenching as her past flashed before her eyes, making her dizzy with the memories which were resurfacing. "They thought they could handle him."

She cleaned her face on the sleeve of her blouse, looking at Norman with red blotched eyes and cheeks. "They were wrong."

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"Ziva?" Gibbs whispered, hoping to hear good news from his agent.

After a few seconds, our radio cracked, "I have a visual."

"Wait for my signal."

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"I went with a sweetheart of mine. I ended up... spending the night with him. I never came home that night."

Laura's face crunched as she remembered, so she lowered her head hiding her face, her voice coming out broken and cut here and there with heartfelt sobs, "Norman, my brother... he got mad. Really mad and he used a knife... a kitchen knife like that one in your hand... and he killed them. He killed them in their own beds. Mom at least tried to crawl away but..."

She couldn't continue, her shoulders shaking as her pain became unbearable as flashes of that horrifying day came to her. Laura was crying now, deep sobs coming out of her chest, as she remembered the terror of her younger days.

"I woke the next morning to the wailing of the sirens going down the road top speed. I ran back home just to find it a crime scene. My brother was being taken away by the county police in cuffs." She looked up at Norman and said, "As he walked by me... he told me that he had done that... for me."

"After that... I was a castaway in our town. I had to sell the house to pay the lawyers and I went to live with a distant aunt who despised who I was and what I represented. I was... evil for her. A bad seed that shouldn't ever been born. She had great pleasure in throwing at my face what a worthless piece of shit I was... every single day until I've saved enough money to apply for a community college as far as possible from that cursed place. And from her."

"My friends left me. My boyfriend - he was never my boyfriend, he just wanted my virginity - he left me too."

"Nobody stayed by my side. But despite what the lawyers advised me, I still visited him in jail ashe was - despite everything - my brother. My only family left. He still sang to me whenever he saw me."

Norman kept quiet, silently hearing her story without intervention.

"Three months after he was institutionalized he committed suicide."

She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to stop the tears falling. She opened her eyes and looked at Norman, seeing him studying her quietly.

"But … I've never left him. I've never left him. As she shouldn't have left you."

Somehow he felt the conviction on her words, as he stared at her, his future victim, with pity.

"She should have stayed. Just as I stayed by my brother's side."