With a Pull of a Trigger

Chapter Twenty

Eunice was still her sister, no matter what. No matter what happened, no matter what they faced, and what they would still have to face, Eunice was her sister. Nothing was ever going to change that.

Eunice awkwardly pat her sister on the back, one arm stiffly put beside her slim body as the other tried to pat Tiffany’s back comfortingly. After a few seconds, Tiffany finally let go of her sister and looked at that woman she had not seen in four years.

“Good morning,” said Eunice, her tone of voice light and bubbly, a slightly high-pitched voice in the otherwise silent room.

Tiffany frowned. Her sister’s way of wording was awfully formal, and it was all she could do to prevent herself from shaking her sister up and down and demanding her to just be the Eunice she used to know. Tiffany was, to be honest, used to the way her sister talked; all formality and lost innocence in newfound pseudo-blindness to the evils of the world. She didn’t really know why she had been surprised that her sister still talked that way. Sure, a lot changed in four years, but her sister was that way, and nothing was ever going to change her.

That was the way it was, and nothing Tiffany had ever tried changed it.

“Good morning,” Tiffany said with dulled happiness, her cheerful demeanor lessening with every moment spent in uncomfortable silence.

“Why are you here?” Eunice asked, her head tilted to the side in confusion as if she honestly couldn’t comprehend the situation. Tiffany felt like tilting her head to the side too, because up until that moment, she didn’t know why she had decided to visit her sister that very day.

Instead, Tiffany replied with a fake smile on her face, and sad eyes brimming with unshed tears. “To see you, dummy!” said Tiffany with fake cheer.

Eunice righted her head. “Oh,” she said, like she honestly hadn’t thought about that until that very moment. A soft smile slowly spread across her face, making her look more human and less ethereal. “That’s nice.”

“It is,” Tiffany said with assurance, as if she had to convince her sister that it was nice. She had to convince her sister that the reason why she hadn’t visited Eunice in four years was because it wasn’t nice, but because she hated the feeling of guilt that seemed to fill her entire being whenever she even had a single glimpse of the sanitarium. Tiffany then took hold of her sister’s hand, gasping in surprise when she felt the icy-cold skin. She entwined their fingers like they used to do when they were younger, and tried to warm her sister up through body heat. “Come on,” said Tiffany with a smile she wished was genuinely happy, “you must be hungry.”

Eunice wordlessly nodded her head.

Tiffany smiled. “Come on. Let’s head downstairs.”

Greg could, with the help of his amazing memory and spy training, remember the best moments of his life.

Unfortunately, that meant his amazing memory and spy training made him remember the bad parts too.

He remembered being aged twelve and coming out to his parents as gay, remembered the way his mom dropped the plate she had been holding, remembered the tense silence that followed. Sometimes, at night, he would hear the sound of his dad’s shouts, and the sobs of his sorrowful mother, mourning about what they had done wrong, what they had done to deserve such a disappointing son.

He remembered nights of lying awake, listening to his mom pray the rosary by his bedside, wishing they would just understand. He knew, even at such an early age, that there was nothing wrong with him, but his parents didn’t care. His mom was such a devout Catholic, but at the same time, such a narrow-minded person, that she couldn’t accept the idea of her son committing such a sin. She had prayed and prayed, had even gotten a priest to perform an exorcism on him because she thought the devil was residing in the body of her good son, because there was no way her son, Greggory, could be such a sinner.