Lilith

3

I give my gun away when it's loaded. Is that alright, yeah? If you don't shoot it, how am I supposed to hold it?

"I'm homeschooled." Is Lilith's automatic reply when the older cashier questions why she isn't in school. "I have been all my life."

"It's safer to stay away from the world..." She recalls her mother's words. "...so that no one can find us."

It's incredibly boring, staying home all day, doing absolutely nothing. Luckily, she does like to read, so Lilith spends her days reading whatever she can find. It distracts her from the painful reality.

"...and you're sixteen?" The curious cashier asks with a kind voice. Lilith can't force herself to act rudely towards the old woman, but she knows that if she doesn't return home soon, then her mother will be angry.

"I'm seventeen, ma'am." Lilith smiles a smile that she hopes comes across as kind. "...but if you would please excuse me, I really have to get home now." She doesn't wait for a reply, but she hopes that her statement is dismissive enough.

She hates it. She absolutely hates it, the hiding and the lies. All Lilith would love to do is talk to the kind cashier on aisle five, tell the lady her problems, confide in her, but she knows that the situation is too risky.

Lilith and Eva could be discovered.

As she stays concealed by the awnings of the downtown shops, Lilith pulls the black hood of her sweater further over her head. Her dark bangs lay dramatically over her right eye, shielding a scar with a story.

If anything, Lilith feels like it's getting harder to hide the truth from everyone.

"I did it!" She wants to scream out to the world. "I killed my father! I did!" Of course, if she did tell, then she would be taken away from her mother, and her mother would never be able to survive on her own.

Lilith does what she must for family.

It's only a short walk to the market, so within less than five minutes, Lilith is opening the door to her home. It smells slightly better after using hundreds of bottles of air fresheners and Clorox, but the mist of alcohol and smoke is evident.

"I'm home!" Lilith shouts, alerting her mother of her presence. She carries the small bags to the kitchen and places them on the counter before walking to locate her mother. "Mom?"

Lilith checks the living room, where her mother usually is, and finds no sign of her. Fear immediately racks through Lilith's body at the notice of Eva's disappearance. Her heart races as she searches the rooms and the kitchen once more.

"Mom!"

"Mom!"

"Where are you?" No response.

Frantically running around the home, Lilith nears the restroom and hears no running water nor footsteps indicating that someone could be in there, but she decides to look inside.

"Mom?" The door opens easily without a sound. Her breath hitches for a moment as she notices a roach scurrying inside the discolored bathtub. "Mo- oh, mom."

Finally, after minutes of panic, Lilith finds her mother pathetically curled up on the bathroom floor. Tears stream down Eva's mascara painted face and splash onto the ripped laminate flooring. Her calloused hands are intertwined around her head as if to protect herself from an oncoming blow, and her legs are tucked underneath her shaking body.

Lilith, in an attempt to soothe the whimpers coming from Eva, kneels down and wraps her arms around her mother's body.

"Shh..." Lilith exhaustedly rests her head against Eva's back. "It's alright."

As if a trigger is sent off, Eva springs up from her fetal position and sends Lilith flying against the bathroom counter. A sound of discomfort makes it's way out from Lilith's lips as she bangs her head against the sink. Her legs instinctively coil up against her body, and her hands raise to shield herself from her mother's attempted slaps.

It's natural for Lilith to defend herself. 

"Damn you!" She receives a kick to her stomach.

"You did this!" A punch in the face.

"You killed him!" A scratch on her arm.

Then, a moment of nothing but the pitter patter of the mice in the walls goes by.

"...I..."

Lilith slightly peeks her head out from her arms, struggling to catch a deep breath. Her limbs ache, and her stomach convulses, but the look in her mother's eyes is one she's seen every night since the death of her father.

Guilt.

"I-I... I killed him." A shriek of anger erupts from Eva. "I killed Samuel!" Eva doesn't notice her daughter writhing in pain below her. She just stomps around the bathroom yelling nonsense.

"Nobody knows."

"Nobody knows..."

"...it's a secret!" Lilith watches the emotions painted on her mother's face.

Anger. Surprise. Happiness.

It's a flash of colors and multiple personalities, something she's grown accustomed to ever since childhood.

Bipolar.

Eva is Bipolar.

"It's a secret. It's a secret." Eva twirls around singing the phrase repeatedly. "It's a secret, and I-I killed him." Then, Eva is back to her tears. If Lilith wasn't almost unconscious on the ground, then she would have done something about her mother's rapid mood swings.

Eva needed medication, anything, to calm her down, but since the death of her husband, the panic attacks had grown worse.

"I did it, mom." Lilith's croaky voice beckons for Eva's attention. She glares down at her daughter with hatred painted in her fiery eyes, but Lilith ignores it. "I k-killed dad. Y-you told me I did." Lilith harshly swallows down the bile escalating in her throat at her words. "...remember?"

It's as if a light flickers over Eva's head at the mention of the blame falling upon someone else. "Oh." Her features become more childish as she begins happily skipping out of the room. "Oh, yeah, you did."

Lilith may have said that she killed her father, but it was Eva who held the gun.