Pain...

Pain ... Pain ... and more pain. Pain was something that she had felt so many times before and in such varying degrees that it ought to have become a part of her by now. However, the people who were torturing her never ceased to dream up more ways in which she could be tortured afresh, so that each time the pain started, she began to wish that she was dead, and not alive.

"Please ... it hurts so badly. Please, I beg of you. Stop doing that." Sophia begged, trying to squirm away, but her pleas fell on deaf ears and there was no respite. If anything, the torture increased in its intensity, until she was sure that she would pass out from the pain. Actually, at this point, she would have gladly welcomed death than continue to feel this horrid pain that seemed to wrack all the cells in her body, down to the very last and tiniest one of them.

"Keep your dirty mouth shut!" A voice that sounded deranged yelled, or rather, screamed at her, causing her to look up through hazy, pain-filled eyes in the hopes of getting to him, but there was no such thing as getting to the hate-filled monster who was tormenting her as she lay helplessly on the ground with the rest of her family watching, a few with pity while the majority watched gleefully. Her uncle, her major torturer yelled something else at her, but she was too weak to say anything else, at least not for that moment, while her mother looked on dully, not saying a word. In his rage, her uncle looked exactly like what he was ... a horrible monster and did not look like anyone she recognized, even a bit. His eyes were crazy with rage and bloodlust, and he looked to be only seconds away from shifting. This was not somebody she could reason with at all ... no, not in this state. Even when he was 'calm,' it was difficult to reason with him, not to talk about when he was like this. So, she shifted her tear-filled and pain-ravaged eyes to her mother, where she stood in the corner, wringing her hands fearfully and sadly, and lacing and unlacing them with unshed tears in her eyes.

"Mom, please make him stop. He's going to kill me." She whispered feebly, but she was sure that her mother heard it, after all, she was a werewolf, and their hearing senses were enhanced. Sophia was not sure what she herself was, but now was not the time to dwell on that.

Sophia's mother jerked, almost as if she had been in a trance all this while, and raised sorrowful and fear-filled eyes to hers before looking away in shame at her inability to protect her only daughter from this horrible fate. She was scared, scared of her brother, scared of her father, and scared of her awful family.

"Mom, please," Sophia called again, becoming really scared now. Before the words were even out of her mouth, her uncle picked her up, raised her as high as was possible, and slammed her against the ground, causing all the breath in her to escape in a whoosh of air. Sophia was not sure, but she thought that she heard one or more of her ribs crack. She began to cough up blood and realized that she was finding it really difficult to breathe. Her uncle showed no signs of letting up with the torture, as though he was not aware that Sophia did not possess any traits of the werewolves and that she would not be able to withstand even a quarter of the torture that werewolves withstood without even batting an eyelash. She was just like a regular human, exactly like her father, God rest his soul, which was why her family members hated her with so much passion.

"Jonas, please. You're going to kill her. That is enough torture for one day, please. We can try again tomorrow." Her mother said, at last, gulping when her brother turned to face her, the anger that he had been directing towards Sophia now directed towards her mother. What would have been more feasible was for them to try again on the night of the full moon, but Jonas was not having any of it.

"Who the fuck do you think you are to talk to me?" He asked angrily, advancing on Sophia's mother and ignoring the way she seemed to cower at his approach.

"You were already killing her." Sophia's mother insisted, glancing at where her daughter lay with her eyes closed and blood pouring from more than one orifice from the beating that she had been given.

"Whose fault is that I ask you? Who was the crazy little bitch who was willing to open her legs for every whiny, weak, little human male with something dangling in between his legs? Whose fault is it that utter shame is to be the lot of this family? I ask you." Jonas spat with hatred, disgust, and condescension, still advancing slowly on his younger sister, where she stood alone, some distance away from the rest of the family. They all looked on, not bothering to interfere. No one ever bothered to interfere when Jonas was in one of his moods, except that person was looking for trouble. He was the strongest of them all, except for their father, who was the alpha of the pack.

"That's enough now, Jonas." Jonas's father, also Sophia's grandfather ordered, emerging in that silent way he had from the bushes. Jonas looked like he was about to defy his father, but thought better of it, and stood down, muttering under his voice, bloodlust still clearly evident in his eyes.

"It's just so annoying, dad. I told you that we should have killed her as a baby since we were not sure how she would turn out in the end. Now, look at her, pretty much useless. I mean, she's already past her eighteenth birthday, yet she can't shift. She can't even produce a single whisker, for chrissakes. I've never seen a more useless half-blood. This one is clearly a human." Jonas said. He said the word 'human' with such contempt that Sophia cringed on the ground where she lay, her whole body aching and her head pounding.

"I said that's enough." Sophia's grandfather thundered with more authority this time around so that Jonas and every other person fell silent immediately. Even Sophia who was moaning on the ground in pain became silent at that thunderous voice, her whimpers dying off as she lay quietly on the ground and listened to what her grandfather was going to say.