Three years were an eternity for a mortal creature. For a frail girl, it was enough time for flesh to rot while the heart continued to beat.
I watched Aurora's light diminish, flickering like a dying candle in the damp, windowless belly of St. Jude's Juvenile Correctional Center. It was a bleak, monolithic prison designed to break the human spirit, but for Aurora, it was a tailored hell. Manson's father, the revered judge, ensured she was placed in the highest security wing, a desolate place reserved for the violent and the forgotten.
She arrived in heavy chains, her wrists raw and her eyes wide with a desperate, naive hope. She truly believed that Manson would come. Every visiting hour, for the first six months, she sat by the scratched plexiglass window, her hollow eyes fixed on the empty metal chair across from her.
He never came.
Instead, the letters arrived. Not from her fiancé, but from her stepsister, Emma.
Aurora's hands trembled as she unfolded the crisp, scented stationery that smelled faintly of expensive lavender, a stark, nauseating contrast to the stench of bleach and rusted iron that hung in the air.
"Dear Aurora," the handwriting was elegant, looped with delicate perfection. "Manson took me to the winter gala last night. He bought me the diamond necklace you always wanted. He told me he never loved you, that you were just a boring, timid charity case his family forced him to tolerate. The brothers say hi. Theodore made varsity captain, and Owen got into Yale. Everyone is so happy without your pathetic dark cloud hanging over us. Stay where you belong."
Tears bled into the ink, smudging the words. Aurora folded the paper with shaking fingers and pressed her face into her knees, her silent sobs swallowed by the oppressive darkness of her cell.
She did not know that Emma's cruelty extended far beyond ink and paper. Emma's money, stolen from the family trust funds that should have belonged to Aurora, found its way into the deep pockets of the head guard, a ruthless brute named Miller.
"Special delivery from outside, princess," Miller growled one rainy Tuesday night, sliding the heavy iron bolt of her cell back with a deafening clack.
He didn't enter alone. Behind him stood three older, hardened inmates, girls built like brick walls, their faces scarred and eyes dead. Miller stepped back into the hallway, pulling out a thick silver pocket watch.
"You have ten minutes," Miller told the inmates, his voice completely void of humanity. "Make sure it doesn't leave marks on her face. Her family paid extra for her to look intact if the inspectors come."
"No... please," Aurora whimpered, backing into the corner of her tiny concrete cell until her spine hit the icy wall. She held her bruised hands out, her voice cracking into a shrill, desperate plea. "I didn't do anything! Please, I have money... my family..."
"Your family paid us to break you, bitch," the largest girl sneered, cracking her knuckles.
What followed was a symphony of agony that echoed uselessly down the silent hallway.
They were precise. Ruthless. They kicked her ribs until the cartilage cracked. They stamped on her legs, twisted her fingers until her joints popped out of alignment, and dragged her by her long, fine hair across the filth ridden concrete floor. Aurora didn't scream after the first minute. The air had been violently forced from her lungs, leaving her gasping, choking on her own blood.
When the ten minutes were up, Miller returned, tossing a single bucket of freezing water over her broken, trembling body to wash away the red stains on the floor.
"Get up, trash," Miller spat, kicking her fractured ribs one last time before slamming the iron door shut.
That was the pattern of her existence. Week after week. Month after month.
Theodore and Owen visited precisely once, a year into her sentence. They stood on the other side of the glass, immaculate in their tailored designer suits, looking down at the creature she had become. Her hair was thin and matted, her skin a sickly, translucent grey, her uniform hanging loosely over a frame that was little more than skin and bones.
"You look disgusting, Aurora," Theodore said, his voice flat through the crackling intercom. "You're bringing shame to our name even from inside here."
"Theodore... Owen..." Aurora's voice was a dry, raspy whisper. She pressed her scarred palm against the glass. "Please... talk to Manson. Tell him to check the security camera near the intersection. The truth is out there. I'm dying in here. My chest hurts so bad... I can't breathe at night..."
Owen scoffed, adjusting his silk tie with utter disdain. "Still clinging to that pathetic lie? Manson is engaged to Emma now, Aurora. They're getting married the moment she turns twenty. You're a convicted felon. You are nothing to us. We only came to tell you that Dad officially removed you from the family estate. You get zero. Not a single cent."
"You framed me..." she whispered, the horrifying realization finally drowning out the last embers of her denial. "You knew it was Emma. You all knew."
Owen leaned closer to the glass, his eyes cold and devoid of remorse. "Of course we knew. But Emma is useful. You were always useless, Aurora. Soft. Docile. Weak. A girl like you was born to be sacrificed."
They walked away, their polished leather shoes clicking rhythmically against the tile, never looking back.
That night, something inside the fragile girl snapped, but it was not enough to save her. The physical damage inflicted by the guards and the inmates had taken its toll. Her internal organs were bleeding slowly, her lungs had filled with fluid, and her heart, battered by years of relentless trauma, was stuttering.
By the final month of her third year, just weeks before her scheduled parole hearing, Miller dragged her bruised, feverish body down to the solitary block. The cell was called "The Icebox." It was a tiny, windowless tomb carved into the basement bedrock, dripping with moisture, where the temperature hovered near freezing.
"Emma wants you to have a quiet week to reflect," Miller sneered, throwing her onto the bare concrete floor. He locked the heavy steel door, plunging her into absolute, suffocating darkness.
No blanket. No shoes. No medicine.
Aurora lay on the cold stone, her body shivering violently. Pain shot through her chest with every agonizing, ragged breath. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, painting her cracked lips a deep crimson.
She reached out into the empty, pitch black air, her fingers clawing at the dark, looking for a hand to hold, a brother, a fiancé, a savior. There was no one. Just the dripping of water and the freezing draft creeping across her bare skin.
They all betrayed me, she thought, her mind spiraling into the abyss. They broke my trust. They stole my life. They gave my life to their favorite sister.
Her breathing slowed. Rattle. Gasp. Pause.
Her vision faded entirely as her heart gave its final, weak flutter. Her body stiffened, the last bit of warmth evaporating from her skin, leaving her as cold as the concrete beneath her.
The soft, docile girl named Aurora was dead.
And from the deepest, blackest depths of the void, I stepped forward to collect what was mine.