Chapter 2 - -

Chapter 2 Finally I stood in front of my room without really paying attention where I went lost in thoughts. Carefully I pushed the handle and stepped in. The, in comparison to other rooms, sparsely furnished room seems to be more meagre and depressing as usually. I never took care that next to the bed, the wardrobe, the nightstand and the desk things were added, everything stood for years at the same spot and the sand yellow patterned wallpaper was the same for years, too. What could be worse in a cell of the darkest dungeon than that what reminds me constantly, where the worst mistake of my life brought me? Sure in a dungeon cell I would not have a decent bed, a pallet would be all being there, but I can get accustomed to it easily. To conform without contradiction and not making demands that is what I learned during my life at Christine’s side. Living under bad conditions at which the material is missing was better than to live under bad conditions at which the material things does not mean anything more, because you are longing for real freedom. Basically everything would be easier, if Christina accuses me of attempted murder. Even the gallows seems to be a welcoming release out of her wings. What did I have to loose? Nothing, so I could stay in here and wait till she comes to get me. I buckled outstretched on the bed and looked at the ceiling, at which I believed to see the face of my sister again. I was guilty of her death, just because I wanted to break free and my daughter… . Not until yet I realised that my absence whether dead or alive in the dungeon means a life of absolute control of my wife for Scarlett. I could not permit it! Even when my life was not mine since a long time did not mean that Scarlett’s life should be destroyed like mine. I jumped up, burst through the door and sprinted to the room of my wife, hoping that she did not tell anybody and I can avoid something. I was ready to do everything, with her 12 years she is still so defenceless. The pictures of my past overhauled me while I was running lost in thoughts. However once one of the pictures appeared in front of my eyes my own oppressed figure changed into the one of my daughter. Blood-shedding she lay in rain, the entire back ripped open and bloody by whipping, even her screams cannot take away the pain nor the anger of that person, who stood next to her and told her servant with a cold nodding to go on without mercy. An other picture, stigmas adorned her arms and legs, she lay outstretched on her stomach at the floor, while one of the surrounding men hit her again and again and the taunting laughing of Christine was heard, cold an fanatic. I shook my head energetically, wanted these pictures to cast out of my thoughts, still it was for nothing. Without realising I stopped eventually in my tracks and clapped my arm convulsive, as I want to cramp on it just because not to draw of into my awful thought into an even blacker world. I stood there for a few minutes and did not let go, concentrating that this terrible, cruel thoughts go away, however I could not, I knew that this was my actual, my worst torture, this thought caused by her outer torture and her inner effect. The physical violence she did to me, the hitting, the bone fractures, the stigmas all this did not only hurt my body it also hurt me internal, sometimes even so that it was not really visible to me, so that the attached hurt came suddenly and buried me, so that I could not breath anymore and I suffocated on it. But there was also the visible violence she used against my affairs, my soul, it was violence, which came often crabwise against me, she destroyed my relationship to other loved persons. The relationship between me and my father was one of her victims. Because of her I lost the love of my loved father and more that connected me with him. I still saw him before me, my loved father oppressed by his sickness, however the strong will in his eyes, which I treasured at him his will to survive, his will to be there for us, his will not to give up easily. I knew that this will is going to influence me, but since my time at Christine’s side, this will became more and more to fatality, although I appreciate it at me. Again and again I turned myself against her will, experienced sorrow because of it, experienced her anger and still perished on my deep wounds, even when I bleed at the outside and inside. The reason why I never gave up, pulled myself together and did not abdicated my life was just this will, the will to be there for whose, who love me, my father, my sister and later my daughter. Indeed I lost my father because of Christine’s intrigues, but my feelings could not be destroyed by her, they were there and even though my father believed I changed, became another person, who forgot his roots, his home just because he was someone now from a upper class, at least I knew that it was not true and because of that I knew, that my father still loved me, because I was still the one, who I always was, his loved son. Yes, however I suffered under the separation and under the certainty that I was the only one of us both, who knew it, but I made the best out of it, just with all the many other things. But to make up with it, that Scarlett, my loved little daughter, suffer like this, too, no, I could not and would not bear, I had to do something about it, because I knew she was too young and vulnerable to hold out this distresses, she would break at this far from me, who broke not completely and this just because of his will. I still stood in the dark hallway, which looked, despite of the torches, unenlightened and dark, this impression was just one of my weak memories of my early years in this castle, where Christine just castigated me physically and maltreated me downstairs in a the cellar in a dark chamber. That room was still furnished with different instruments of torture, a bar, at which you could chain somebody to torture him on every thinkable way. Myself was beaten, strangled or burnt in extremely high degree, so that I walked out of this smelly room half – dead, they tortured me half – dead than I was a silent shadow or a lifeless moving cover for weeks and months. If with bludgeon, knifes, rapiers, chains, cords, wimbles or other things, which could harm a human being in every thinkable way, she tried to stop my compensating attitude and approach, but with the time, she just took care that it pilled up subliminal in my soul to a huge accumulation of hate and disrespect. The physical castigation stopped slowly, after some guest observed my constant severe injuries, Christine feared the reaction of her fellow men, which was good for me at the beginning, but became a bigger distress than the physical torture before, the physic torture followed, which destroyed me strongly on the inside. A painful pang crossed me at this thought, it was even this inner pain that still burned in me, no matter how long the actual torture was ago, it continued to have an effect and impacted every step of mine, my behaviour and all my thoughts. And again came the picture of my daughter before my eyes, the eyes empty, any spark of hope gone, the spirit of life lapsed and the will to fight drowned. I shook my head again, jerkily I let go of my wrist, which I held enclosed all the time, so that there were red marks of my hand on my white skin just disturbed from the long white areas of my scars, which where nearly everywhere am my body since this time, except for my face. Disgustedly I looked away from my own arm and gathered my long- sleeved robe higher so that it covered my arm with his scars. I went through my hair one last time to get rid of the last piece of my thoughts and went as fast as possible away in hope my thoughts would not follow me .