Ungrateful Bitch

Elara was asleep when she heard pounding, loud, relentless knocking on her door.

It was as if the person behind the knocking didn’t care whether the person inside was resting, crying, or even dead.

The knocking was the kind that carried irritation, authority, and ugly impatience all at once.

Except Elara wasn’t truly asleep.

She hadn’t slept even a wink. She had only closed her eyes because they burned.

After all, her bones were screaming and the bruises along her skin felt like dark galaxies spreading and pulsing beneath her fragile flesh that wasn’t sure it could keep containing so much pain.

Her whole body ached. The bruise, everything. The throbbing pain was like a slow drumbeat under her skin.

For a moment she just lay there, breathing carefully, afraid that even inhaling too deeply would rip something open.

She could still feel memories of last night, hands, feet, blows, the way her body had refused to move, the way her voice had been stolen from her by the drug, leaving only a trapped mind inside a punished body.

The knocking came again. Louder, sharper, and impatient.

“Elara!” Marjorie’s voice snapped through the door like a whip. “Open this damn door.”

Of course, it was her.

Slowly, because everything hurt, because the simple act of sitting up made her ribs scream, and because the world tilted for a second, she got out of bed after her dizziness faded.

Every step to the door felt heavier than the last, as if gravity itself had decided to punish her too.

She unlocked it and pulled it open.

It was Marjorie and Evelyn, standing there in the dim hallway light.

The contrast between them and her felt almost insulting. They were neatly dressed, fresh, composed, like the early morning didn’t dare touch them, while she stood there in oversized pajamas, hair tangled, eyes swollen from exhaustion and unshed tears.

They both looked at her with disgust and disdain, not even trying to hide it, as if contempt was their natural expression, though Evelyn, ever the pretender, tucked hers away beneath the pretense of being a good and sweet sister, with that soft, fake smile she had perfected over years of manipulation and performance.

Elara sighed, her voice hoarse and tired, too exhausted to pretend anything anymore. “What is it again?”

Marjorie didn’t answer with words at first.

She scoffed, eyes narrowing, then shoved her harshly.

The sudden force caused Elara to stumble backward.

Pain shot up her side, and she had to bite down on her tongue to stop the sound of pain escaping.

For one second she swayed, feeling the room spin, but she caught herself on the edge of the door.

Marjorie walked into the room like she owned the very air in it, which, technically, she believed she did, and then a maid followed them inside, carefully carrying something large and white draped over her arms.

There it was. A fucking wedding dress.

Layers of white fabric, lace, and silk, shimmering under the weak early morning light creeping in from the window.

Something so beautiful yet so cruel. A symbol of celebration, love, and union, being forced onto someone who felt more like a prisoner being marched to execution.

Marjorie turned to look at her with cold eyes.

“Since you were busy doing God knows what yesterday,” she said, her tone filled with disdain, “I got this dress for you myself. You’d better wear it and try getting ready.”

Getting ready?

The words echoed in Elara’s foggy mind. She turned slowly toward the nightstand where her alarm clock was.

5:00 a.m.

It was still dark outside. The wedding was probably around nine or ten, she wasn’t even sure anymore, so why, why must she get ready now, why must this day already be dragging her forward before the sun even decided to rise?

“Getting ready?” she muttered under her breath, barely recognizing her own voice.

Evelyn stepped forward then, her eyes shining with that irritating, practiced sweetness, her lips forming a gentle smile that had fooled so many people and broken so many more.

She tilted her head slightly, as if genuinely concerned.

“Sis, don’t be angry,” she said, in that soft tone that wrapped evil in honey. “Mom was afraid that you wouldn’t have time to get ready, so we decided to wake you up early. You need to have a lot of makeup done. You don’t want people to see the bruises on your body, right? So it would take a much longer time to hide it with makeup. Mom is doing this for your own sake.”

The nerve of that bitch.

That sweet tone. That fake compassion. That ability to speak about the bruises, the evidence of what they had done to her, like they were minor inconveniences, like smudges on fabric instead of pain carved into skin.

Elara scoffed, the sound low and bitter. “For my own sake?” Her voice shook, not with fear but with fury trying to claw its way out. “You mean after you drugged me and then you beat me up, making my whole body bruise purple as well? That is for my own sake?”

For a moment, the mask slipped from Evelyn’s face, a flicker of annoyance flashing in her eyes before she quickly fixed the sweet expression again.

Marjorie’s reaction was immediate.

“You ungrateful bitch,” she shouted, her voice echoing off the room. “At least we left your face untouched.”

Elara laughed, loud, broken, disbelieving laughter that didn’t sound like it belonged to someone sane anymore.

“Yes,” she said, her voice rising, anger finally spilling free. “Because my face can’t be covered with clothes. That’s why you people left my face untouched, because you want people at the wedding to see me all good, all beautiful, all perfect. What about my body? The one that you burned last night, the one that you hit, the one that you tortured? Are you all even humans? How could you?”

Her chest heaved as she spoke, not from weakness but from rage.

She tried her best not to cry, because she refused to give them the satisfaction, refused to let them see tears and claim victory over her emotions, but her throat burned with everything she swallowed down.

"You bitch!" Marjorie raised her hand to slap her.

It rose fast, out of habit, she had always believed Elara’s existence came with the privilege of being struck, but before the hand could land, Elara’s voice cut through the space between them coldly.

“What? Are you gonna slap me?” she said sharply. “I swear to God, if you slap me, I’m gonna leave your handprint on my face to the wedding. And if people ask me what happened, I will tell them exactly what you people do to me.”

She didn’t flinch this time. Her eyes didn’t lower. Her gaze was blazing with fury and defiance, and something unbreakable burning inside, something they hadn’t managed to beat out of her yet. Not in this lifetime.

For the first time in a long while, Marjorie hesitated.

Her hand hovered mid-air, her fingers stiff, then slowly came down.

She scoffed, covering the hesitation with arrogance. “You ungrateful child,” she spat. “Wait until you marry Aaron, and then you will see all happen.”

With that, she turned sharply and left, Evelyn following behind her, the maid trailing silently after them with the wedding dress now hanging in Elara’s room like a ghost.

When the door finally shut, silence wrapped itself around the space again.

Elara didn’t feel relief.

She felt empty, heavy, and exhausted down to her soul.

She fell back onto her bed, not gracefully but like her body simply couldn’t bear to stand any longer.

The night before replayed in her mind like a film she hadn’t consented to watch.