RED ROOM [H.S]

30.

Harry.

Beautiful things were meant to be destroyed.

My step-father said those words to me, after he saw my tear stained face in the greenhouse. I had watched him, helplessly crying as he caught the butterflies, destroying the freedom they had to fly by cutting their wings.

"That's why we rip out flowers, only to have them die at our hands," he had said. "That is why we hurt the ones we love. All beautiful things were meant to be destroyed. Nothing lasts forever, and nothing is meant to be cherished. Remember that."

I didn't agree with him. Beautiful things were suppose to be cherished, I had thought as a naïve child. My mother always told me my wisdom was beyond my years. Even in my manic states, she told me the world had blessed me with a mindset that would allow me to see the beauty in everything, that was why I had loved the greenhouse and loved the simple things such as bubble baths. I wished she had been right. I wished I soaked in her words and believed the lies she told me. Maybe I wouldn't of ended up like this. Maybe I would of been what society considered normal.

I cried and pleaded for him to stop that day, that the butterflies weren't meant to be destroyed. I wanted them to live, to fly, to enjoy the greenhouse as much as I did. It was their home.

He had only laughed, his dark eyes, that looked like nothing but black holes staring into my soul. He had shook his head at me, almost as if he pitied me.

"You think they're living?" He had asked me. His whole body shook with a demonic laugh. Something that had always made me feel uneasy. He didn't have a great sense of humor. He laughed at broken things, things that caused other people misery. "You've trapped them in a greenhouse, little one. They aren't living. You're destroying them."

My ten year old mind didn't understand. I shook my head fiercely, refusing to believe that I was the one destroying them when he sat there, cutting the wings of such delicate creatures.

"You're crazy!" I had bellowed, wiping my wet cheeks with the back of my hand. I had wished my mother was here, but she had gone to the farmers market, and let me alone with the devil himself. "I'm not destroying them. I was letting them be free!"

My step-dad was never kind to me, at least not when we were by ourselves. I always wondered how he was such a good actor, how he could look like such a great person around my mother, but changed into something hellish around me. It always frightened me. I always made sure to go with my mother, but unfortunately, that day, I had slept in and my mother decided to go by herself.

"Oh Harry," he had sighed. He focused on the beautiful black butterfly that he held by one wing. The powder, that I had found out was actually their scales, rubbing off on his fingers. I whimpered at the sight. If too much of their scales rubbed off, they wouldn't be able to fly at all. "If I'm crazy, than so are you, because you and I are very alike."

"No we're not," I whispered, wincing as he brought down his knife towards the butterfly. It scared me how content he looked while he did it. "I am not crazy like you."

"Oh, but we are. You and I are the exact same." The grin on his face would be something that haunted me for the rest of my miserable life. "Crazy. One hundred percent crazy. Sometimes I wonder how you aren't actually my son."

Sometimes I think back to that day, and wonder if my tiny brain didn't fully comprehend how similar we actually were. Other days, I think that day was what changed me forever.

Maybe that was why I was so determined to destroy the sanity of Sophia. She was such a beautiful thing, and yet, as I stared down at her sleeping body, my thoughts ran wild with all the ways I could destroy her.