Page 3 of His Hell Girl

"Please, anything but my hair," I whisper, hoping to appeal to some humane side of her. But as she rummages the altar for a knife, I realize there's none.

"Pretty thing," she notes, "for someone like you."

She wraps her hands around the length of my hair, tugging it downwards until my scalp burns in pain.

"Don't worry," she whispers in my ear, "I'll give you what you deserve."

Holding tightly onto my hair, she uses the blade to cut through it.

I try to struggle against my holds, tears at the corner of my eyes as I will everything to be nothing but a bad dream.

But it's not. And as I feel the blade increasingly closer to my head, I know that the battle is already lost.

I still, my eyes blank, my tears spent.

Why? Why me?

There's no one to answer my questions, or even my deepest wish to be left alone.

No, the torment continues when Cressida gets up, smugly holding on to my long hair in one hand and waving it in front of me.

I stare bleakly at my most prized possession, now not mine anymore.

And to continue the disrespect, she flings it to the ground as if it were trash.

A sob catches in my throat as I look at my precious hair now lying on the cold floor, and suddenly I'm resigned. What can be worse than that?

What can they do that will hurt me more than having my only thing of value viciously ripped from me?

But as I watch Cressida move around with her band of girls, I realize I may have gotten ahead of myself.

It's late afternoon, already dark outside, and the church's only source of light are the candles placed around the altar and down the aisles.

Each girl grabs a candle, and they surround me again, whispering some sort of prayer in tandem.

I'm confused as I watch them, but soon it's clear what Cressida has in mind.

"There's one way to make sure the devil stays away from your body." She smiles down at me, tilting one candle until the hot wax makes contact with my skin.

The other girls do the same thing, and they drop hot wax all over my body. Each time the wax touches my skin, I feel a burning sensation until it cools down and hardens. But time after time, the pain becomes increasingly unbearable.

"Now, girls," Cressida finally speaks, lifting a silver cross necklace and holding it by the chain, "let's make sure her body is properly cleansed of evil," she continues, the evil she so speaks of staring me right in the face.

My head hurts from prolonged exposure to pain, but as I see all the girls holding their candles under the cross, the fire heating the metal, I start shaking my head, willing my limbs to move.

Cressida's grin intensifies, and she moves the little cross up my chest until it's over my heart.

"Please don't," I beseech her, imploring her with my eyes. She just laughs.

Smugly, she presses the cross to my skin, the burning sensation unlike the one from before. My mouth opens on a low moan, my eyes tearing up from the intense pain.

She pushes the cross into my skin until it melts, giving way to the design to be forever embedded in my flesh.

I'm shivering, on the verge of fainting as she keeps on applying pressure, the hot metal wrecking me.

I don't even realize when she takes it off. I don't even feel when the bounds on my legs and wrists are unfastened.

I sit there, naked, in pain and alone.

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