SONYA BLADE

It's the first day after the school year wrapped up, a warm May morning, and I have just decided that 1976 summer vacation is going to be the worst ever. Ten-year-old me shifts on the brown fabric of my dad's white Mercury. I put my wrapped arm in a comfortable position. I tear up, looking at my cast.

This summer was supposed to be incredible. Dad recently had knee surgery - which sounds terrible - but the military put him on leave from active duty until August. He signed up to assist my little league coach, and was going to take me for horseback riding lessons. Three months just me and him.

Daniel uses and control people, and will hurt someone if they get in his way… I guess I'm always in his way, even when I don't mean to be. He reminded me when he kicked me out of the tree, breaking my arm in two places and ruining our plans.

"Pumpkin? Are you okay?" Herman Blade has a soft tone that he uses on very few people. I'm one of those few. "Does your arm hurt?." I shake my head hard enough to make my braid whip back and forth. He smiles from the driver's seat, a warmth in his eyes that I don't see from many others. "Are you hungry?" I shake my head again. "Good. We shouldn't be late."

"Where are we going?" I whine. He pulled me out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn, before the sun even peeked over the mountains. I stifle a yawn with my bruised hand, lean my head against the door and stare out my window.

"Wherever the wind takes us." He shrugs with a big, sly smile, which I realize looks spot-on like Cassie.

Ten-year-old me frowns at that thought. Who is Cassie?

I doze off at some point and only wake when the car turns down a loud gravel road. I open my hazy eyes and look up at my favorite sight. The stables are off at the distance, and someone is leading a horse in the corral. I can't ride, but I still lift my head feeling a little better.

"So," dad says, "I know you can't start lessons for a few months, but that doesn't stop you from meeting these guys. You can get used to them and, you know, learn about safety and caring for them and all that."

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" I hug my dad and open the door, ready to jump into this full-force. He laughs and follows me to the fence. Ron — the owner — leads a brown horse to me. Her name is Isa, Ron says it is German for strong-willed. It fits, because she is a high-spirited, stubborn mare, and it will take her months to tolerate me.

I have a wild grin on my face. I thought the broken arm would ruin my summer vacation — no little league or riding meant being stuck at home with my drunken mother and abusive brother — but it was the best thing Daniel ever did to me. My dad is determined to spend every waking second cheering me up.

Daniel may have thought he could hurt me, and he usually gets away with it. My mom falls for the sweet-boy act, letting my brother use her emotions against her. Erica Blade does not see the cold, undiagnosed psychopath underneath.

Daniel will get away with his violent tendencies until we're seventeen, when he brutalizes a girl in my class. I can picture the cops asking me about Daniel, telling me that the girl — Sandra Hartman — didn't make it. That's the first time I'll realize that I'm not his only victim. I am his practice round.

If I had just said something…

It's a lot of guilt to put on one teenage girl. My testimony took Daniel off the street and put him in prison where he belonged, but that never cleared my conscience.

My counselor will try to ease my guilt and explain his condition. She will say when God made Daniel and I, he accidentally poured all the empathy into me.

What will keep me up is wondering if there's any of Daniel's cruelty in me too.

That doesn't matter right now. I am immune this summer. My dad loves Daniel, but he sees through the act, and everyone knows that the buck stops with Herman fucking Blade. His presence will keep me healthy, happy, and safe. That's what he always says: As long as we are H.H.S, then a parent has done their job.

Something in that thought makes me nauseated. Those three words, so simple, yet so impossible… I could never live up to that.

I never did.

SHUT UP! Not right now. I am going to enjoy my last summer with Herman Blade, the most important person in my life.

I better treasure this. He'll be dead by March.

I feel myself slipping into consciousness. The realization of what that was hits like a cold blast in the sweltering heat.

No! I want to go back. I try to reach for the dream, try to pull it back over me like a comfortable blanket.

The scent of sulfur hits my nose. The smell so familiar, the screams in the background so routine. Just like that, here I am again.

These punishments are all cruel, twisted ways of reminding me of painful emotions and memories but there are ones that are particularly inhumane. They're the visions that are so amazing, so euphoric, that waking up comes so close to breaking me every time. I call them the reverse punishments.

"It should be impossible for her soul to abide here, and yet here she is. This curse is unlike any other." My eyes snap open. I am not in my cell anymore. People surround me, but a bright orange light prevents me from seeing faces. I try to move my hands and block the blinding light. They're strapped to my sides. "The sacrifice is real." The first time I have heard someone speak outside a punishment. That voice should be beautiful, like smooth jazz on a hot day, and I should treasure anything related to conversation. Do I even remember how to have one?

"What?" I give an eloquent greeting.

"Oh! I did not expect you to awaken before the process." That voice isn't pleasing, however. it is grating. It is deceptive, like a serpent, smooth in all the wrong ways with the promise of hidden venom. "While I am loath to end our reunion so early, my dear, I am afraid I must. You will feel — How do I say this? — Excruciating pain, but you will thank me later."

"No — what?"

I may not be in my cell, but the headache doesn't give a shit. It comes back in full force. The light grows in intensity, and I find I can't turn my head away. I can only shut my eyes.

The figures start chanting in a strange rhythm. Now the pain moves to my chest. It feels like someone is pouring lava over me. I toss my head to the side to ward it off. Another woman lies beside me. She doesn't move or react to the men's strange actions .

Her chest isn't moving, and it gives me this strange desire to check her pulse. I reach for her, my arm still restrained to my side. The woman's head falls to the side. Blue eyes are open, but the dead stare and lax, lifeless face make me recoil. It's me. The hair, the clothes, the face are all the remnants of my life. The slack face a reminder of my death.

The dizzying sensation starts then. My eyes fall closed when my soul and body are shoved back together. I feel so many alien sensations that a soul forgets: my blood pumping through my body, heart thumping in my chest, my lungs expanding and constricting.

I realize now that this is life being given back to me. This is my resurrection.

It should be a blessing.

For now, It's agony.

I remember hearing about the quietest room on Earth. It is so silent that nobody has managed to last an hour. They d that the test subjects would beg to come out. They were driven mad because the silence amplified the sounds of their blood pumping through their veins, and their heart beating. Some claimed they could hear their bones crunching. As my body resumes all these necessary functions, it overwhelms my ears in the same way. I swear I can hear my kidneys right now.

It doesn't help that my other living senses are also intensified tenfold what my soul was accustomed to — like coming back from some twisted, severe sensory deprivation.

My newly revived ear drums pick up everything, and the screams of the tortured souls are, well, torture to me. That rotten egg stench hits my olfactory system, the sulfur so pungent that I could vomit if I had anything in my stomach. Then, there's my nerve endings, which pick up everything that touches me, even the searing heat that makes the Netherrealm so recognizable. I clamp my mouth shut and refuse to look through my eyelids. I don't think I can handle any more stimuli.

That's when the pain finally reaches the apex. I squeeze my eyes closed as the roaring lava covers me. My mouth opens in a voiceless scream as I reach the precipice…

And then I fall over, released into darkness. For the first time, reaching a comfortable, punishment-free darkness.