Blood Crown

This book contest is not for everybody

⚠️Trigger warning for:

*physical, emotional, sexual abuse

*violence *suicide *mental illness *blood *drugs *guns *rape

*Probably something else I’m forgetting.

Disclaimer: if you are sensitive and can’t or don’t want to read about traumatic childhood and abuse, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. SKIP IT. It’s okay. ⚠️

But if you are still here, welcome. 🖤

I’m a father, a son, a husband and a killer.

I’m a boss, commander. I’m the owner and a giver.

I hold the ground that you shell live on, yet I was not always an overachiever.

I knew hunger and pain. I’ve been a slave before I become the man I’m today - a dead man along the living.

25 years ago

The first memory I have is - pain.

The very first thing I can remember is the feeling of my father’s leather belt digging into my skin like a knife. Sharp and stinging—the ache of my flesh separating from my bones.

I don’t remember what I did to deserve it, but he made me believe I earned it every hit.

He showed no mercy in his strike while he screamed and shouted words - five year old me did not understand. I did, however, should have known better than to cry.

It must be at least a hundred scars that mark my skin that day. Some healed, some of them never did, but my tears eventually dried out, and there was not even a sound left in me when he was done, and there was no longer room on my back for him to pierce.

He told me to be a man and that men don’t cry - whatever that even meant.

He told me I would be the King, but he left a part where I would be his slave.

That’s the first memory I had of what it means to be me. Emotionless and cold, but apparently the King.

The only shame was that I didn’t want to be the King. I wished to be a child. Careless and free, like the rest of them.

But they would only be a piece of my chessboard, so they were allowed to be weak. But not me, never me - he said.

I only had a few days to spend alone locked up in my room to let my skin heal before I was dragged out to train with men who would rip my scars open again and again.

That’s how days, weeks and years passed—trying to be the best soldier my father wanted me to be—fighting for my right to survive. Because punishment followed soon after every time I failed. It added marks of pain that would stay with me forever - from in and out.

Unlike other kids my age, I loved to be in school and drained the time when I would be picked up by my father’s drivers in a black limo where I felt alone—sitting in the immense vehicle, on the cold leather set where my feet won’t even reach the ground.

But even that was better.

I would have rather been alone in the darkest clouded by my father’s brandy smell that made me want to vomit than go home.

To that cold, echoey place where my mother was scared to touch me, to look at me, or even talk to me, without his approval. Not sure for her safety or mine.

And the father, who would have this creepy smile on his face every time he seemed me. As if he had just come up with a new way to hurt me, to harm me, to break another bone in my body while he said that somehow that would make me better.

***

20 years ago

Ten - that’s how old I was when I walked in behind my father to the cold dark building, almost tasting the smell of blood and dampness on my tongue. I heard the screams of a man I had never known.

It wasn’t the first time I stood beside him, watched and learned how to treat the traitors. There was no mercy in this kingdom. He proved that as he made blood pour out to the man hanging on chains from the ceiling. But it was the first time I wasn’t only there to watch life disappearing from his eyes.

Ten - that’s how old I was when my father put a gun in my hand and aimed it at the man that name I did not know.

“Kill him, son.” He said with his breath on my neck. “Shoot the traitor, show him who the boss is.” He said, and I tool up at him.

“But-” I started to speak, but he didn’t let me.

“You know better than to argue with me, Sebastian, am I right?” I only nodded, barely able to swallow the sickness in my throat and looked back at the man as tears covered his cheeks, and endless please to spear him rolled off his lips.

“He deserves it. Kill him, son.” He told me again as he leaned over my shoulder, like a devil that only knows the command.

“I only shot the target before.” Somehow I felt ashamed to admit it.

“I know.” He sinisterly smirked as he stood up straight again. He walked up to a man, took a marker from his trusted lad and drew targets X between a man’s eyes.

He looked back at me and smiled before he strolled to stand behind me once again. And patience started to leave his tone. “There is always that first kill, son. It will make you better, stronger. It will make you the King. So kill him, Sebastian, or there will be consequences, and you will wish you would have done it sooner.”

I knew there was no way out. If today wasn’t the day and I would survive punishment, he would do it again the next time.

My hand shook more than it ever did before as I held a gun, and my father pushed me closer to the crying man. “Fucking, do it, you wimp!”

So I did. I pull the trigger. Ten- that’s how old I was.

I still hear the sound of a bullet piercing his skull in my nightmares and see his open eyes staring right back at me as I first took a life.

“Well done, my boy. Don’t worry; next time, it will be easier, and the next and the next until you will feel nothing at all.” My father laughed as I turned around and rushed out of the building to throw up.

Sinister, but he was right. Ultimately, I felt nothing.

AN: So there it is. The first chapter of Sebastian’s very dark story and where did he came from.

You can love it, or you can hate it, but I need to let this out of my chest.

Love you all,

-Dy x