Haunted by a Nightmare: A Story of Family Abuse and Trauma

Sweating, He awoke from this nightmare. Breathing in frantic, panicked breaths.

He often woke up like this. Always the same nightmare. No matter how he tried he could never get back to sleep. Those eyes he saw, they haunted him, no matter how he hated to admit it, they completely controlled his life.

Ever since that night three years ago when his life was ripped to pieces... just like his parents.

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He'd grown up in a small town called Raggs on the east coast of Germany with his Mother, Father and twin sister. To their neighbours and friends, they were a normal family, but He knew different, he knew of his father brutality and abuse towards his sister and mother. His sister would come into his room late at night, covered in bruises and shaking. She hated their father; she'd always talk about how she wished he was dead, that one day she was the one who'd kill him. That she'd kill our mother too for not protecting them, for letting him beat her. He always agreed. He thought they were just words that helped her release the pain inside herself. Until he saw it.

He was walking home from football practice late at night, it was cold and there was a heavy fog. His friends had all gone home before him and he was alone. He walked as fast as he could; these streets were dangerous after 8pm. It was cloudy and the moon was hardly visible. There was something wrong about that night. It was too quiet.

As he approached his front door, he could smell an awful scent, it reeked of blood. He rushed inside, the smell was overwhelming, he felt faint. All the lights were off, but he could tell someone was home, the house always smelt of fresh flowers, his mother loved flowers. It was too odd. He heard a shuffling noise in the back room, almost as though someone was dragging something. He tiptoed along the hallway, trying to be as quiet as he could, feeling along the cold walls to keep himself from tripping up.

He felt something wet on his fingers; in the dim light it looked black on his fingertips. It was blood. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could see it. Blood everywhere, all over the carpet and the walls, drag marks going into every room. His heart was thumping inside his chest, his throat was dry. What had happened? Had his father gone mad? Was there a murderer in the house? What had happened to his sister? His mother?

He crept into the back room, holding his breath, what would he do if they noticed him? He didn't know how to fight. He scanned the room with his strained eyes; the curtains were pulled; only a little moonlight lit the room. There was someone sitting there, on the sofa. Staring at him, so it seemed, though he couldn't see the persons face. The mysterious stranger stood up and started walking towards him, he could feel himself hyperventilating. From the silhouette, the stranger seemed quite short, about his height with a feminine figure and short hair.

"I told you I'd do it, Ien." The stranger whispered, getting closer.

That voice. It was familiar, soft and girly, but it sounded wrong. It was too harsh sounding. Too menacing.

The light filtered in through the gap in the curtains. His eyes were drawn to the figures on the floor around his feet. A stifled scream escaped his lips as he realised who they were. It was his mother and father; they were white as snow, apart from the blood painted on their skin.

He looked back up at the stranger, tears spilling from his eyes. His green eyes met deep blue ones staring back at him.

He knew those eyes.

He knew that same green cross-shaped scar that he himself wore under his left eye.

It was his sister.

They weren't their real parents, but they'd adopted them when they were 6 and treated them with nothing but love and affection, until the beating started. But it was a family, and that was more than enough for Ien.

He couldn't remember much of his real parents, his mother died in childbirth and his father was violent. But he couldn't remember how he got this scar, and why Lena had it too. It was a strange scar, his was a cross, like you get at a gravestone, it was tinted blue and stained under his left eye. Lena had the same, but hers was upside down, and green.

It would be logical if they were born with them, but they weren't. He couldn't even remember where his dad went. Neither could Lena. They both blacked out one night, and woke up in a hospital; apparently they were comatose for 2 years.

The frustration of not knowing things was too much to bear, Ien liked having answers, Lena always told him that sometimes the answers were best left to the imagination.

That the answers weren't always the answers you wanted.

"Lena?" He whispered. His heart was racing, what was happening? Why was she looking at him with such dreadful eyes?

His father's eyes.

"Lena, what did you do?"

"Sometimes the answers aren't always what you want to hear." She giggled. She started walking towards him, the weak, rotted floorboards beneath her creaking as she moved. He saw a flash of light from her hand, she was holding something. A knife.

He heard the drip-drop of blood as it ran off the blade, filling the cracks in the floorboards, slowly getting closer.

"And my name is not Lena. Lena wouldn't hurt a fly. She's so weak. But I'm stronger than Lena. I've seen the things she's gone through, I feel her pain. She's crying inside me. But this time I'll take over, she can't hold me back anymore."

Ien drew a long, shaky breath. He could feel the tears filling his eyes. Who was this monster? Dirtying Lena's hands with the blood of the people she loved the most? He couldn't let Lena be destroyed by this thing that is controlling her mind, but she's getting closer. He was so confused. What did she mean by 'She won't hold me back anymore'? Were there two Lena's?

Before Ien had time to figure everything out, she had the blade at his throat. The cold metal cutting into his skin and making his hair stand on end. She brought her mouth close to his ear, her cold breath chilling him to the bone, she whispered

"And now it's your turn."

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