It Beats For You

Not A Fairy Tale

 “Rain! I’m glad I found you. Have you seen Raven?”

I saw her tense up. Standing up, I put my arm around her.

“Why? Is Raven here?” She asked.

“Yeah. He came to LA looking for you, and I just figured he might’ve succeeded since your show was a success today. Tammy sent me here to bring him back home…”

“No, I haven’t seen Raven, Devine. I think you should leave. You know how I feel about Tammy. You know how I feel about how she treated us. If he’s here, I’m glad he got away from her.” She closed the door in his face.

“What the hell…Can someone fill me in here?” I asked.

“Yeah…but I need some explanations myself.” She said. “Raven will be able to help with that.”

Raven came out of the shower a few minutes later, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

I could see that he was clearly much skinnier than he appeared, and he appeared pretty thin.

He was also extremely pale, and holding his side as best he could while trying for some reason to hide his arms.

Rain walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table, motioning for us to join her.

Raven sat across from her, and I sat next to her.

“Raven…what are you doing here?”

“I had to find you, Rain. Tammy…Tammy’s gotten worse. Why’d you leave me?”

“Raven…”

“Wait, let’s start from the beginning, can we?” I asked.

“Wait one second,” Rain said as Dante came through the door. He was back early.

“Why are you back so early?” Rain asked.

“Um…nah.” He said.

‘“Come here, sit down, and after we’re done talking, you can explain to us what’s up.” Rain told him.

He nodded and took a seat next to Raven.

“Okay…when I was thirteen, the same age as Raven is now, and he was nine, we both used to live with our parents. Tammy was rather abusive, verbally, emotionally…physically. We went to school with bruises, cuts, burns. I hated it. Her boyfriends were abusive as well. They abused her…they abused us. For the longest time, I though it was only me she hurt…but then I saw the marks on Raven. I knew there were things I had to do. I didn’t want to, but I had to leave that place. My father got custody of me, but it wasn’t much better there. He was emotionally and verbally abusive. Physical, sometimes. But at least it wasn’t as bad. It got to one point, though, where it was fucking terrible. My dad hit me everyday for three weeks. I’d come home from school, take the pain, go cut, and sleep. But as for Raven, I don’t know the complete story. Tammy, our mother, wouldn’t let us talk at all. I always feared the torture continued with him.”

I held her hand tightly.

Raven’s eyes shifted a little, and then he looked back at us.

“I was so pissed when you left. I started feeling like it was my fault, so I let her take her aggression out on me as much as she wanted…I got to some pretty dark points…” I watched Rain’s eyes flick to his arms, which were still tightly crossed across his chest. “I felt like I was completely alone…Tammy was so much worse without you there. She started doing more drugs, and we couldn’t pay for everything, so we had to move, and her boyfriends got more and more abusive. Then we couldn’t pay for that place. So we moved again. She started to not be able to pay for the drugs, so she started…she started selling…me.”

I started to get pissed off. These so called “parents” were fucked up.

I could tell Rain and Dante were getting angry as well.

“I fell into this really dark mindset. These men were so disgusting. There was nothing I could do. I began to fall in love with this new band, Black Veil Brides. I went to the library on a daily basis to listen to them. The librarians were always nice to me. They’d give me food. I guess they could tell Tammy wasn’t feeding me that often. Anyway, I’d go there and listen to the music, watch videos of them speaking to their crowds…it gave me hope. Of course, I still listened to all the bands we used to listen to together. My Chem was a must, so were Linkin Park, The Killers, Motley Crue, Metallica…all the bands we listened to. I never forgot any of them. I’d look at your Facebook pages and Twitters…but they became inactive. Which bugged me. And then, one day a few months ago, I stumbled across a video of Andy inviting someone to come on tour with them. They were at the venue where I know you had gone to one of their concerts, because Devine had told me so. I didn’t really have any friends…but Devine was your best friend and he’d visit me at the library sometimes. So I saw this video, and he said your name. I couldn’t believe it. I had finally found you again. I did some research, saw you in videos on Youtube with the members of Black Veil Brides, and found your new Twitter and Facebook pages. I decided I had to leave Tammy where she was. I couldn’t take it anymore. Later that day, I waited until Tammy was high off her ass, too high to give a fuck what I did, and left. I walked part of the way here, I hitched rides…I did things I regret to get money. But it was worth it. Then I met James. He became like an older brother and we ran into the flyers for your contest. He was the one who spotted them, but he gave me one and we decided we’d come to it. It was my only chance to find you again. Then last night…well…last night…” He trailed off in pain it seemed, clutching his side full on now. I saw there was a really large wet spot where he was holding it, and through his fingers, red began to drip on the floor.

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Hey! I'm so sorry about the wait...I usually update faster. Things have just been getting...hectic with my home life and stuff. But hopefully I'll be updating on a regular basis again. Review, dolls, let me know what you think and how you're all doing! :)