The Darkness of Perfection Read Online Free PDF Page B

revert to sounding like a baby. Before she was given to me, I never noticed she had a speech impediment. She actually had a pretty extensive vocabulary for a five-year-old, and could even read a few words. It didn’t help that she’d also lost two front baby teeth recently.
    “Nowtry it again,”he ordered.
    I cringed as I heard her gulping air rapidly, trying to calm herself enough to say the words correctly.
    If she couldn’t gain control of herself, she would soon be vomiting in that tiny space, and then the crate would be moved to another room so the smell didn’t bother my father. I was forced to be a part of these punishments so I could learn howto control her on my own in the future.
    “Please say it right,” I whispered as I pleaded to her with my eyes.
    “I’m s-s- sorry for sp-sp-illing your cho-chochocwat,” she sobbed even as she reached again in vain for the apple still held out of her reach. I closed my eyes in dread as I heard her gag and the sound of her retching inside the crate.
    “That’s it! Maybe another few days added to your punishment will fix that defective tongue of yours,”
    my father snarled at her, kicking the side of the crate again. He threw the apple slices in the garbage can in front of her, making her cry even harder. He picked up his phone, calling for a servant to come move her crate to the room next to his office. He threwthe blanket over the top of it so she would be in darkness until he chose to remove it.
    I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of sirens blaring loudly and spotlights flashing past my windows. Someone had breached our home security. I ran down the stairs in my pajamas, ignoring the guards swarming the house and yard armed with automatic weapons. My only thought was to get to Jayden and make sure she was safe and reassure her. I opened the door to the room where her crate sat in the middle of the floor and ran to it, dropping to my knees, and threw back the blanket.
    “Jayden, it’s okay. I’m here. You’re safe. Don’t be scared.” I didn’t stop to think how ironic those words sounded in my ears. Here I was telling her not to be scared of the sirens or someone breaking into the house, when she was locked in a crate by my own hand.
    It took me a minute to process the sight in front of me. The crate was empty; the jagged, broken slat proof of how she got out. I scrambled to my feet and ran back through the house shouting for her. I didn’t want her to leave me. She was my friend and my life was lonely without her.

    The dogs found her an hour later, hiding in the horse barn beyond the fence. Her feet were cut and bleeding and full of thorns from running across the field, which had slowed her escape. She had scratches and a nasty cut on the back of her neck either from squeezing past the broken slat of the crate or crawling through the barbedwire fence. It needed fifteen stitches, resulting in the scar on her neck.
    My father replaced the wooden crate with a metal cage the next morning, and she spent a month in it for her attempted escape. After she was finally released from her cage, she strived to do everything right and never attempted escape again until her bitch of a mother took her from me.
    She paused on the dock and turned back, some sixth sense alerting her to an unnamed danger. She scanned the crowd above her until she locked eyes with me. She gave me a small, timid smile before quickly turning away again. I noticed she shifted a little closer to the man she called “father,” slipping her hand into the crook of his arm like he would protect her from me. No one could save her now that I’d found her. She belonged to me and she would be mine again, very soon.
    I left the sidewalk and crossed the damp grass, dropping my backpack on the ground before sitting down and leaning my head back against the tree. I closed my eyes and fought back the tears that threatened to overwhelm me, still clutching the evidence of my failure in my