I. 16TH APRIL 1995
1995 IS A YEAR ALICIA REMINGTON WISHED SHE COULD FORGET. Fourteen years old and unknowing of the anger that would later poison her heart and make her drown in her own head, Alicia doesn't stand out. A kid from Las Vegas, divorced parents and a big sister, she goes to school, has friends and average grades, she's . . . normal. And it isn't until later in life that she realizes how lucky she was to have tasted a life without anything to worry about except for her homework. A life without having to look over her shoulder as she silently pulls the safety off her gun and grips her knife a little tighter, one in which she has more enemies than friends and these enemies are ones with blood on their hands and a knack for killing. A life where she isn't woken up every night by the faces of people with slit throats and bullet holes in their forehead. A life where she isn't a killer.
It is funny really, how she walks down the streets, gripping her father's arm a little tighter and holding an iced tea in her clean hand which will be tainted with blood in the next few minutes. She doesn't have a care in the world, looking up at Ian Remington as he smiles down at her, white teeth glistening and eyes twinkling, looking at her with nothing but pure love and adoration.
She doesn't know, but she will.
Fourteen years old is an early age to see death. No one prepares you for it, your parents lie when you're younger : 'he's looking at you from the sky.' Right. You understand it on your own as you grow up, but you don't fully understand it do you? You never do. The question that everyone asks themselves when it happens is why? That is the true mystery of the universe, isn't it? Why them? Why now? Why not me? Questions that Alicia will constantly ask herself growing up into an adult, until she changes and suddenly, she's the reason why people ask these questions in the first place.
They don't teach you at school how to grieve. They don't teach you at all, and yet, society still expects you to suck it up, figure it out on your own and fucking move on. You can't turn bad, you're just allowed to be sad and angry and even then, you can't do it for too long or you fall into the dark abyss of this world, forgotten and never allowed to go back to the real one. Alicia thinks it's fucked up.
How could they have expect her to do something she was never taught?
She saw it before she heard it.
Her father's grip on her arm loosened and he limply fell to the floor, flat on his stomach, eyes wide open and a growing puddle of blood on the sidewalk. Then she heard it. Three shots fired. It takes about five seconds for everyone to realize what is going on and everything suddenly turns to chaos. Panicked screams, shoes harshly stomping on the ground as they break into a run. Alicia stands there, a frown on her face. It isn't until she's being pushed by someone trying to escape the avenue that she snaps back into reality.
Her cup slips from her fingers, the clear beverage mixing with the crimson liquid coming out of her dad's chest and stomach. She kneels next to him and she doesn't realize that she's crying until she sees her tears falling on her dad's face. Her eyes starts to tingle and she pushes her father on his back to see the damage that has been done to him.
Why him? Why now? Why not me?
Three shots fired, three holes in his shirt, three bullets that pierced through his skin and killed him. She looks down at her watch : 3:33 P.M. She looks up at the sky, three crows fly above her head. She looks around her, gripping her father's hand until her nails sunk in his skin, she tries to look at where the shots came from, she sees commotion on the third floor and when she squint her eyes she can make out one thing. A skull and an octopus. She grabs her father's Nokia from his pocket with trembling, bloody hands and dials three numbers.
Three remaining members of her family.
Three tragic events that happened in 1995, her father's murder being the first.
Three reasons as to why she became an assassin.
II. 29TH JUNE 1995
SHE LEARNED THAT RUNNING AWAY FROM HER PROBLEMS COULD BE A SOLUTION FOR ONLY A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME. Everything always caught up to you in the end. You can't run from your thoughts you tried so desperately to push down in the depths of your mind, it becomes worse and worse until the only thing you're doing is signing your own funeral. She's not the only one using the coping mechanism threatening to take her out. Her mother is only becoming a ghost of herself, a hollow carcass of who she used to be. She's void of any emotions. She managed to block the bad ones, accidentally taking the good ones along with it. Lila is so deep into her space she doesn't even realize that she is completely gone.
Alicia is watching her picking at her food, gaze above the head of her youngest daughter, unfocused and completely unbothered by the world around her. Alicia's older sister Zoe is inside her room, she hasn't come out in a month, and every time the youngest tries to talk to her, her answers are brief and Alicia knows how to take a hint so she simply leaves after gently placing her sister's plate on her bedside table.
Alicia rolls her eyes at the older woman, she feels pure rage tingling her insides. Lila didn't see him getting shot, she doesn't constantly wonder what the fuck was that symbol that she saw, sleepless nights in which she searched and searched and searched only to end up without an answer, she doesn't know what feeling helpless is like. At fourteen, she's had her father's blood on her hands and her mother can't take fucking responsibility for her two daughters, she rather drown in her own self-pity, remaining silent and unmoving. She can't even take care of herself anymore and Alicia has to do everything in her power to not launch at her mother and shake some sense into her.
"You finished?" Alicia finally asks. She stopped eating twenty minutes ago and for that time she was just glaring at her mother through her thick eyelashes. "No answer? Shocking." Alicia rolled her eyes, chuckling sarcastically, suddenly feeling irritated. She tapped her fingers on the table, one, two, three. "Okay woman, if you're hungry you can make your own food, you're pissing me off." Alicia grabbed the plate and moved to the kitchen to throw away what was left, leaving the fork and the knife in her mother's hands.
Mistake.
Alicia heard a choking sound, hoping that her mother finally came to her senses, she quickly moved to the dining room again. But her eyes widened in horror once she saw the spectacle offered in front of her eyes.
She has seen enough movies to know not to remove the knife from her mother's neck. Unfortunately for her, the woman still has some strength left and she does it on her own.
"Shit." She stands there for a few seconds, until everything suddenly kicks in, it's faster than the time she lost her dad, but still not fast enough. She grabs the napkins on the table and forcefully push them against the open wound. It's not enough, it never is. The napkins weren't enough, they took the blood in like a sponge but they were too soaked to take any more so Alicia did the first thing she could think of, she pushed her hands against it.
Too little too late, she could almost hear her mother say.
Alicia doesn't know if she's dead or if she's just being her self from the past month, but she pushes her body towards the kitchen, still holding the wound as she made her way towards the telephone.
And she did what she did a month ago. She dialed three very familiar numbers.
Her father's death was the first domino taking all the others down with him. And when the last one will fall on the floor, the only thing that'll remain, will be complete silence.
III. 9TH AUGUST 1995
SHE STILL HASN'T GOTTEN OVER IT. Neither has her sister, she's plagued with nightmares of those days, waking up drenched in sweat, heart pounding in her ears and screams echoing in the household as her mother's glossy eyes keep popping inside of her head. She can't go out in the streets anymore without having to look everywhere around her, paranoia has taken over her mind and prevents her from doing something as simple as the groceries.
Her sister began isolating herself, inside of her room all by herself, not getting up to eat or to take a shower and Alicia would lie if she said she didn't worry. She's been so focused on herself, dropping out of school, looking for a job and going to the shooting range near her home with a fake I.D to let her frustration out, that she didn't even notice the world around her was still spinning. It seemed as if time stopped. Do you know this feeling when you're underwater and suddenly everything turns bland? You're left alone with your intrusive thoughts, you can't hear anyone or anything and you feel completely alone. Alicia feels it everyday and she suddenly realized that she needed to go up to the surface to get a breath of fresh air or her lungs would fill with dirty water.
Her knuckles hit the door three times, she didn't wait for a response and came inside her sister's room. The smell made her nose crunch up but she remained silent, the blinds were closed and the light was turned off. It took the teenager a couple of minutes to get accustomed with the dark, but once she did she walked closer to the bed where her sister was lying. She lit up the small lamp near the bed, it wasn't bright, far from it, but it was enough for Zoe Remington to turn her head on the other side and put the sheets over it.
"You okay?" Stupid question, she knows. And she hates it when people ask it to her, she doesn't know why it comes out of her mouth really, she knows the answer that'll follow it.
"M'fine." She simply answered. "Get out and let me sleep."
"You've been sleeping for months." Zoe chuckled sarcastically, the sheets were removed from her head and Alicia finally saw the state she was in. Small traces of dried mascara on her cheeks which seemed to have been there for quite a long time, cracked lips like a painting lost in time and greasy hair.
"And you haven't cared for months. Get. Out."
"You haven't either, at least I'm making an effort. With everything that happened with Mom and Dad I . . ." Alicia frowned when she saw the lack of emotions of her sister's face.
"Sh! Did you hear that?" Alicia frowned, remaining silent to see if anything could be heard, but only her sister's ragged breathing filled her ears. She glanced up at Zoe who sat up and looked around her frantically. "Tell me you heard that."
"Heard what?" The youngest of the two whispered softly, not wanting to shake her sister more than she already was. Zoe suddenly turned to her sister and just shrugged lying back on the bed as if nothing happened. "Zoe? What is going on?"
"What do you mean?" Something was wrong. So, so wrong. Zoe just turned her back to her sister, not waiting for a response and laid flat on her stomach, head buried in her pillow.
"Never mind. Do you feel . . . fine?"
"Yeah." She whispered briefly.
She wasn't.
Alicia glanced around the room, she looked at the desk in front of her and frowned when she saw a needle on the edge of it. She stood up, moved around the bed and grabbed it to examine it. Is this why she was acting so weird? Was she high? Did she voluntarily put this poison in her veins to forget? Alicia doesn't know much, but she knows that this isn't the answer.
"Don't touch that!" Alicia jumped when she saw her sister sitting behind her, she stood up and removed it from her sister's hands harshly, carefully placing it in one of the drawers.
"Are you high? How much did you take?" She widened her eyes when she saw white powder in the drawer before her sister closed it violently. Alicia felt anger flaring inside of her, it consumed her slowly, she clenched her fists at her sister's state, gritting her teeth as she pointed a finger at her. "Answer me!"
"Enough." She said, stumbling a little bit as she tried to move closer to her bed.
"I'm dialing 911, you're not fine."
"Could you be any more dramatic? You're gonna call 911 cause I'm high?" She chuckled until she didn't. She coughed, putting her hand over her mouth, eyes dropping as she finally reached her bed. Her eyes finally closed and she took a deep breath before completely passing out.
Alicia moved quickly, putting her sister on her side before exiting the room and calling 911. Again.
Her sister wasn't fine. As much as she claimed she was, she was admitted into the hospital and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, that day. It was no one's fault. But it was Alicia's fault for not noticing it sooner and letting her sister suffer without the proper medications. She blamed herself for not noticing the signs.
This was the first time she felt such powerful anger surging through her veins, it made her want to kill God himself. She felt the need to light everything on fire, grab a couple of matches and blow up the house she grew up into.
So she did.