Draakon

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I don't know when it happened, but all I know is that one morning, as the sun rose softly over the skyscrapers ... things were different.

I couldn't shake the disturbed feeling out of my twelve year old body as I shook off the covers and set my feet on the cold, hardwood floor. Even as I stared out the window, the sun slowly brushing orange and pink on the blank canvas of the sky, I hadn't the faintest clue.

It wasn't until I reached out, rested a hand on the transparent glass that trapped me, breath fogging up the windowpane of the hotel room, did the darkness of my reality seep into my young bones.

My parents were gone.

It started when I was nine. My mom was sick. Or so I was told. Just some common flu that everybody got. She went to the hospital a couple of times. No one would go with her.

But obviously she was wrong. Because a couple days later, I found her laying in her bed. Cold. Still. Lifeless.

And that's when I became hollow. And

Then there was my father. Through it all, he wanted me to pour my heart out. If I did, I knew he would let me cry until no tears came out, let me scream until my voice was hoarse and cracked.

But I didn't.

Day after day I went without emotion. I lived lifelessly, hollow. Empty. But then one day, when my dad came home saying he was going to get remarried to his girlfriend Linda, that was the day I finally cracked.

When I was done, whimpering and trembling, he silently wrapped me in his big, suffocating arms, his own lone tear rolling off of his cheek. Only then did he whisper, "That's it boy. One step at a time."

And then, he drifted away too. Though this time it was different. There was no extensive hospital visits. No episodes of screaming torture. Instead, he vanished one night. Drove to the bar, where he had first met my stepmother Linda. And on the way back home, after drinking... he was gone.

I'm honestly surprised at how I took his death so well. You see, after my mom died, he was everything to me. He cared for me when I was sick like a mother would, tenderly wrapping  his giant arms around me, cutting me off from the rest of the world. He gave me a comfort I never knew I could have.

I guess that when my mom was gone, when I was done pouring my itty bitty heart out, I guess I learned something. Learned how to move on.

Learned not to let anyone get too close. Even if that includes my father.

Brinn was the only exception. When you are older, you are expected to help yourself up. No one thinks that the man of the family has a beating heart in his little bare chest. Sure, they may say that they have been trying to reach you, pushing past your protective barrriers, some may even say snooping into business that isn't theirs to begin with. Truth is they don't. They ignore you and focus on themselves and themselves only. They didn't even look at Brinn with her tear stained eyes. They didn't look at her, even when she looked as if she were drowning in her own grief. But I did. So I helped her up. I was the one to take care of her.

Not Linda.

No one asked me to do it. Hell, if the social workers were me, they would understand why I tried to cut myself off from the rest of the world. Why I took up the responsibility of raising my little sister even with a stepmother.

They don't ask you anything. Sometimes you just know that something is the right thing to do. A knowledge of something that resonates deep within you, bones and soul trembling with newfound knowledge.

Knowledge that sparks interest in you. Knowledge that can impact others. I can feel something stirring, something wrong. Sometimes you just know things.