Cracked Wings

One’s heart can only endure so much ache. When it reaches its breaking point, the emotions buried for far too long rise like a tsunami, drowning everything that stands in their path.

That’s who Skylar was. A ticking bomb, waiting patiently for the moment it would finally explode.

The devil couldn’t reach her. So instead, he sent her a masked angel.

One meant to win her heart, only to shatter it like fragile glass. And just when the broken pieces began to gather themselves again, that’s when the knife struck again. Leaving a stain so deep, nothing could ever truly mend it.

She was born and raised in a battleground, doomed from the very start.

A fallen angel, always searching for the good in everything.

She lost her mother before she could even meet her. She died giving birth. Sky rose above, but her mother had to fall.

Her mother held her miracle against her bare chest, taking her last breath, in the few seconds she had left.

“You’re meant for greater good,” she breathed against her daughter’s ear, closing her eyes for the final time.

The room fell silent. Even the baby wouldn’t make a sound, as if grieving for the piece of herself that followed her mother into the clouds.

From that moment on, it was her father and her against a world that felt unwelcoming.

Daniel, her father, raised her the best he could. He worked two jobs and therefore was absent most hours of the day. When he returned home, it was late and he was exhausted. Some nights he could barely find his bed through the weight of the exhaustion suffocating him.

Skylar was young, but old enough to know when something is wrong. Something rotten lingered in the air, and inside them.

She felt it.

She carried it.

Each day was an inner battle.

Her insides felt hollow.

She faintly remembered her mother. Not as a face, but as a feeling. When she closed her eyes, she could almost feel her mother’s touch. Sometimes she could even hear her whisper:

“You’re meant for greater good”.

Tears would fall from her eyes, yet she couldn’t quite explain why. She knew this woman had brought her into the world, but it didn’t change the fact she never truly got to know her.

To love her.

A couple of years passed, and Daniel grew more exhausted every time he came home. At first, he only stumbled. Later, he had to drag his legs just to reach his room.

The final blow came the night he couldn’t make it past the door.

Skylar rushed to help him get on his feet, but there was no strength left in them. The muscles had abandoned him, leaving his legs numb like lifeless puppets.

“Dad,” she cried, kneeling beside his motionless body.

The doctors said there was no cure. His body was slowly surrendering to the exhaustion that had consumed him for years.

First, it was his legs.

Then it spread upward – to his pelvis, his upper body, his hands – until it began taking everything from him.

Even the muscles in his jaw started to fail.

Little by little, he was saying goodbye to a life that had already begun to fade long before the illness… back when his wife, Mira, left us.

“Make your mama proud,” were his last words to Skylar.

By the age of eight, Skylar had to close the curtain on another life. Her father’s.

More funerals than celebrations defined her childhood.

She was alone in the world.

No mother.

No father.

No siblings.

Only a name that seemed to follow her everywhere.

People looked at her with pity.

To them, she was nothing more than a broken burden. Something easier to push aside than understand.

However, since she was still a minor, she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle. They were not fond of having her around.

Patricia and Eldon were unlucky with children. Patricia couldn’t have any of her own children. At one point she got pregnant, but her body couldn’t carry the child. They lost it four months into the pregnancy.

The loss tore them apart.

When they learned Mira was expecting a child, bitterness filled their hearts. They cursed the unborn baby and swore they would never lay eyes on it.

But life had different plans. And soon that very child appeared on their doorstep.

As her legal guardians, they were supposed to care for her.

Instead, they locked her in the attic and treated her like a prisoner.

Skylar had only one goal: survive until she turned eighteen and could escape that house.

Ten long years stood between her and freedom.

They treated her like a dog.

They gave her food and water, but when anger took over, they forced her to eat from the floor. The lace of a belt became their favorite weapon. Bruises replaced the warmth a child should have known.

Eldon was the worst of them.

His cruelty crossed every line a human being should never cross. The smallest mistake, such as forgetting to iron his blazer or speaking when she wasn’t allowed, was enough to unleash the monster he hid from the world.

Yet they allowed her to attend school and participate in a few activities outside the house. To everyone else, they were respectable. Wealthy. Generous.

Their cruelty lived behind closed doors.

A three-story house with a gleaming pool outside concealed the darkest acts within its walls.

Her life had become a twisted Cinderella story. One that the fairy tale never arrived. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, only darkness stretching endlessly ahead.

Freedom existed only at eighteen.

Until then, obedience was survival.

Time seemed to freeze around her. She was forced to grow up before she should have. Her body carried the marks of a life lived in cold isolation, like a fragile figure trapped inside a snow globe.

Exposed. Unprotected.

Her wounds weren’t only on the surface. They were carved deep into her spirit by a reality she should never have had to face.

Stillness became her shield.

Sometimes staying still felt safer than stepping into the unknown.

Life turned her into a fighter when she should have been allowed to remain a child.

She had to cut her wings off just to stop the bleeding. To keep this unbearable disease from spreading through the rest of her body.

Her heart was wounded so deeply, stabbed by the same twisting knife for so many years, that it finally had to stop beating for hope and turned black.

Sky had to survive as a different version of herself now. A colder, lonelier, shattered version.

One whose heart beat only for sadness and misery.

Her eyes, worn down by endless tears, turned red. And her gaze became harsh. Unsettling to anyone who dared to look into it.

Where there once was a halo, now there were horns.

Where there once was a smile, there was now a frozen mouth that only laughed when it witnessed pain.

The little angel she once was no longer existed.

Every trace of her had vanished.

Gone into thin air. Never to be found again.

Something darker rose from within her.

A devil she had never known was there.

And it seemed he had come to stay.

Perhaps he was not her enemy.

Perhaps he was her savior.

Hell had become her home.

A home filled with burning fires, with her standing in the middle of them unafraid.

A place where being “too good for the world” could no longer hurt her.