TRAGIC
/ˈtradʒɪk/
1.
causing or characterized by extreme distress or sorrow.
Jacob's POV
My father had always hated me for as long as I could remember but I never understood why. It was only later on when I discovered the reason but even then I wasn't old enough to grasp the depth of his hatred.
But my mother loved me enough for the both of them, Eric was never around to begin with, he buried himself in work in order to see less of his family and the few times I saw him he always seemed like a cold individual it frightened me so I used to always keep my distance even as a small kid I knew better than to cross paths with him. He was an individual who hated everything and everyone but of course that didn't include Thalia and my mother his cold persona was always directed towards me. It was as if every time he saw me it pained him but just like me my father isn't good with emotions as such pain, sadness and regret it all was engineered to take the form of anger and hatred instead.
My parents rarely fought unless it involved me. At times they looked happy but as I grew older my father would pick on the littlest of things just to start an argument with my mother. And she hated it. She didn't want my sister and I to grow up with parents who fought so she tried her hardest to shield us from it all.
I remember one day I was running around the house. I think I was about five with a water balloon in my hands. My mother had told me to play with it outside and my excitement was beyond imagination. I just had to rush outside. Without looking where I was headed I bumped into Eric just as he was about to leave for work and the balloon splashed all over his expensive suit. The flash of anger I saw in his eyes when he looked down at his ruined attire but when he looked at me his eyes softened. He looked as if he had seen someone who wasn't me because he had never looked at me with such a loving expression. "I-I- I I'm sowy d-dad." I said with so much fear and the word dad sounded so foreign because I barely said it. But as soon as I spoke it was as if whoever he had been seeing was gone and the cold stare I was used to came back, he lifted his hand and hit me, the impact forced me to fall down and the ringing in my ears began my throat began to hurt and I heard screaming it took me a while to realize that it was coming from me.
"Cucciolo, quello che è successo?" I could faintly hear my speaking Italian, cucciolo was a nickname she had for me. It meant cub she usually called me when I was being clumsy or misbehaving. She had just asked me what had happened whilst descending from the stairs but nothing had prepared her for what she was going to see. Me crying on the floor with my father towering over me. As soon as she discovered what he had done she rushed towards me and gathered me in her arms.
"Eric what the hell." She screamed "Cucciolo, are you ok?"
"Teach that damn brat some damn manners, look at what he fucking did!"
"That's your reason to hit him? Eric he is your figlio, your child." (figlio- son)
I don't remember exactly what they said next but they kept yelling and I remember Eric saying "I told you Rebecca not to have this child, I never wanted another child I never wanted to replace....." he didn't finish his sentence he couldn't say the name. In an attempt to shield me from what my father was saying my mother covered my ears but I had already heard everything.
Now I had an idea of why he hated me, he never wanted me to begin with. Thalia walked in from school and when she saw me she took me from my mothers arms and carried me away from our fighting parents. I couldn't stop crying not from the pain my father had inflicted but because of his words. Why did he hate me so much? Was I the reason my family couldn't be happy? Maybe if I wasn't there, the three of them would be happy Eric, mamma and Thalia.
Thalia wasn't like most big sisters, she was very overprotective of me, and she tried her hardest to make sure no pain was inflicted on me. She was like a third parent while my mother was soft spoken and hardly scolded me even when I was being a brat. Thalia was hard on me but never in a cruel way, with the big age difference between us I guess she felt she was obligated to scold me when I did wrong to make life easier for my mother who never did scold me.
Thalia was twelve years older than I was but we got along. Age was nothing but a number. She was truly my best friend and I was hers. After taking me away from our parents she drove me to the park close to mum's gallery and sat on a bench with me in her arms and she just held me as I cried as she continuously whispered "sorry, Jackey." After I had calmed down a bit I asked her a question that had been bothering me for most of my life.
"Lia, why does he hate me?" I couldn't even call him my father cause somehow I knew he hated it when I called him that. She sighed and tears began to form within her eyes.
"He doesn't hate you." She replied. "You just look an awful lot like someone he misses a lot."
"Who?" If I was being hated because of someone else I had the right to know who it was right? She looked at me as if she was contemplating whether she should tell me or not.
"Jackey, you and I had an....." she stopped mid way with her mouth wide open.
"Never mind forget I said anything." She gave me a tight smile and a kiss on my forehead. She distracted me by taking me to my mothers gallery and buying ice cream and attending to the wounds Eric had given me. I didn't need Eric. I had my mother and I had a big sister who loved me with all their hearts. I would be fine, so I thought.
But two years after that incident my mother fell sick and just when I thought Eric couldn't get any worse than he was he became a whole different person. She was diagnosed with stage four leukemia. I was only eight years old. How was anyone going to explain to me that the person I loved most in this world was going to leave me sooner than she should have.
All they could do was tell me that mommy was very sick and even that wasn't going to be enough to prepare me for the heartbreak that awaited me six months after her diagnosis.
When the cancer took my mother she was skin and bones, pale as a ghost, face masking the ordeal inside. Most days she asked Lia to read her a story, something pretty to help her mind escape. But there were times she screamed in pain and there was no doubting the agony. Lia would call Dr. Bernard and the morphine would be increased, sliding her into a long dream, her body so still that everyone wondered if she had passed on even before it had happened.
I remember my mother's face when she found out she was ill. The doctor had told her that there will be no more walks in the park, no more birthdays with Lia and me at the bowling alley or travel to an exotic island. He had told her that she won't see another snow season or do the work she loved so dearly. Her life from then on would be within four walls and pain medication until she dies. I was sure as hell she didn't want it, she didn't want any of it because her greatest concern was what would happen to Lia and her "Cucciolo"?
One of my last memories of her was when her ghost-like figure had been laying here in bed with a cord running from her arm to a machine. With no hair but a bright colored head wrapped around her head.
"Cucciolo vieni qui." She had called for me to come to her. My tiny frame crawled onto the bed and snuggled close to her, she wrapped her frail hands around me although she was cold it felt warm having her embrace around.
"You know mamma loves you so much cucciolo."
"Lo so." I told her that I know.
"Never forget that, because I won't be able to tell you that for a while. Mamma has to go."
"Where I wanna come with you."
"No you can't, you have to stay here and look after Link, Lia and papà for me." I could feel her tear drops slowly trickle from her face onto my forehead. I don't know why but I began to cry too.
"I love all three of you so much it hurts. I'm glad you chose me to be your mamma. I wish I could stay cucciolo. I really wish I could. I wish I could watch my sons grow up and be fine young men and I wish I could walk Lia down the aisle. All three of my babies ti amo così tanto." (ti amo così tanto- I love you so much)
Back then I thought my mother was hallucinating. What was she talking about? She only had two children. I didn't have a brother who was Link?
"Mamma, who is Link?" There was shallow breathing and she had fallen asleep. She was exhausted so my question remained unanswered. How was I supposed to know that would be the last thing I would ever hear her voice.
The sadness drained through me rather than skating over my skin. It travelled through every cell of my being. But not knowing how to handle such a degree of loss I became angry, an emotion I was familiar with.
I became angry that why couldn't it be Eric instead why did it have to be a human being who was so beautiful, in and out full of life and love why, why why? Why my mother, I was angry at her for leaving me so blinded with anger an eight year old couldn't comprehend I made life hard for Thalia. After finding out that mum was sick she took a gap year before going to college to spend time with her and to watch over me. That was the kind of person she was one who took care of others and put them before herself.
Months after my mother died I didn't go to school, I barely ate, I threw tantrums and to make it worse Eric didn't even bother coming to her funeral. What kind of sick twisted human being doesn't go to his wife's funeral. Even before her death I saw less and less of him at home until he stopped coming all together just hiding behind his work like the fucking coward he is. His kids had lost their mother but he didn't seem to care for us enough to be there for us.
In my anger I forgot Thalia was still here, someone who loved me was still alive and soon enough my stupidity was soon to kill her.
That fateful night, I had bugged her to take me with her wherever she was going, I had screamed, cried and just being a nuisance. There we were in the car with me in the backseat crying cause I just felt so angry all the time and I was taking out my anger on her. She didn't scold me because she knew my behavior was the aftermath of losing mum. But I wish she had maybe she would still be here if she had shouted at me and told me to stop. Why didn't I realize sooner that I wasn't the only one who lost her, she had lost her mother too.
I should have stayed in my seat. I should have never unbuckled my seat belt and moved to the front seat.
"Jackey, what are you doing to get back to your seat."
"No, I want to sit here." I argued as squeezed in between her seat and the passenger seat.
"No get back, this instant, what do you want, me to get arrested?" She looked at me and went back to the road.
"Why are you always bossing me around, you're not mamma." After the words left my mouth she kept quiet.
"Jacob Christoper Lincoln Knight I'm only going to say this once I get back to your seat." I ignored her and I sat in front. She kept taking her eyes off the road to look at me. She used to always call me by my full name when she got mad at me, a trait my mother and her shared.
Why didn't I go back like she had asked? All this would have been avoided, still mad at but couldn't even scold me. Thalia took her eyes off the road to buckle me in because my safety was still important. I wish she hadn't, maybe I would have died with her, maybe I would be happier if I had gone where mum and her went.
The truck came out of nowhere and the moment she realized it was too late, it all happened in a blink of an eye as she swerved out of the road in order to avoid impact but the car went into uncontrollable speed and went tumbling down into a valley. I hit my head and I don't know how long I had blacked out for.
I remember my eyes swiveling towards the back of my head in a distressed sense of a headache. With blurry vision and someone continuously calling my name as my vision got clear so did my hearing.
"Jackey, oh gosh Jacob please wake up." I heard Thalia cry. This was a scene which was to haunt me for the rest of my life. My hands were drenched in a warm substance. I could barely make out the color. The faint ringing in my ear and my hammering headache the car was upside down.
"Jackey." I turned my head to look at my sister. Her white shirt had turned completely red. I couldn't see anything from the waist down. It was completely crushed.
"Lia, where are we? What happened Lia." Tears had already begun to fall.
"I'm scared Lia, I don't want to die."
"Shh it's ok Jackey, I'm here." She held on to my hand and held on to hers for dear life. Neither of us could move. My seatbelt wouldn't budge and her legs had been crushed. No phone, no idea where we were, we had no idea how long we were going to be down there until someone found us lying in pools of blood.
I could feel her grip slowly lose strength but I held her hand for dear life. I kept thinking not her too, I could lose her too she was all I had left. God wouldn't do that to me he wouldn't rip all I had left away from me right?
"No Thalia don't go stay with me, stay with me stay with me!" I wept not her too.
"I don't want to be alone, don't let me be alone." I began restlessly trying to pull the seat belt. I didn't care for the pain as long as I could get out and call someone to save her. But it wouldn't budge the creaking sound of the unstable car was all I could hear. It had to work. I had to get out or I would have killed her. I kept thinking if I don't get help now and save her, Thalia's death would be all on me and my hands will forever be tainted by her blood.
"Jacob stop, listen to me." She weakly said.
"NO! No no no no, you aren't leaving me too Thalia not you too. I-I- I have to get out I h-have to look for h-h-help I-I- I- I -."
"Shhhh." Softly said as she slowly lifted her hand and placed it on my cheek as she looked me in the eye her soft green eyes filled with tears, blood and tears trickled down her cheeks.
"Jacob, listen to me."
"No." I slowly cried because I knew what was to come next was to ruin me.
"You and I had an older brother whose name was Lincoln papà doesn't hate you okay he just misses Link cause he looks like you. He died too. I am sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I just couldn't-." She didn't finish that sentence as she began to cough blood. I began screaming, someone had to come if I kept screaming someone would eventually have to come right? I don't even know if I was forming words at that point. I just screamed. I thought someone was to follow the sound and save us. So I can feel Thalia's warm hand on me once again.
"Don't be afraid Jacky everything is going to be just fine. I'm going where mamma and Lincoln are now."
"Lia don't go." I yelled but her eyes slowly fluttered as she closed them. "No." I yelled and her hand fell from my cheek and I caught it and held it tight. I just kept screaming "no" over and over again. I just watched her come from being a human alive with a beating heart to a cadaver in an instant. I kept yelling no till my voice became nonexistent tears fell till they couldn't anymore. And not once did I let my eyes wander away from her. Maybe I would die too with her. I hoped no one would find me and I could just rot away like a rat and just die in the wilderness.
Six hours.
I held on to my sister's lifeless body for six hours before someone discovered the car and called for help. They ripped me away from the corpse and I didn't say or do anything but follow where they were taking her. Her body had been mutilated in half, her lower half had been crushed till it was unrecognizable; the fact that she didn't die instantly had been a miracle.
I remember sitting by the ambulance with a thermal blanket wrapped around an undeserving human like me. I watched as they took her out of the car. I saw her insides splattered all over and that image drilled into my brain for years to come every moment I closed my eyes that image would appear.
My heart died in my chest cavity that day, I had become a murderer. And my emptiness was to become my madness.
Death isn't designed for the dead.
It doesn't pain them but it is programmed to pain the ones they left behind, the loved ones of the deceased. They say death isn't the opposite of life but it is a part of it. But I couldn't understand why taking them could ever be a part of their life.
What I once treasured is now a memory, a shadow lingering in the depths of my mind. It's a strange thing to lose something which you once had, like a limb torn from your body without the chance to save it.
I just kept staring in mid air all the way to the hospital. I didn't answer any questions they had asked. I couldn't hear them, they all seemed to be muted. Honestly I didn't care what they had to say. I had just watched my sister die. I had caused her death and I held her dead corpse for six hours refusing to believe she was truly gone. Worst of all I never got to apologize for the way I had been behaving and causing her so much pain before she died.
Later on I learned the driver was a drunk bastard who had slept behind the wheel and came into our lane. He lived while she was gone. He had crashed into a tree but didn't sustain any damage but he had lived whilst she was dead. How could he live? I was no better with the state the car was in I walked away with a fucking scratch on my forehead and a slight concussion that was it. How could she be torn in half and I didn't even get hurt. Why couldn't it have been me, not her.
When the news got to my father that one of his kids had died it took him two days to get back from wherever the hell he had been. But the utter disappointment when he found out the living child was me, not Thalia was evident.
"What the hell did you do to my child?" He yelled. I hadn't spoken to anyone about what had really happened. They knew a drunk driver had moved into our lane but the reason she had slowly reacted to it was still a mystery. They all knew it but no one said anything. The reason had to be me. "I'm sorry." I kept muttering as Eric yelled at me.
I had caused her death she was only 19 I had cut her life short hadn't turned 20 she hadn't gone to college she didn't get to live her life, no heartbreaks, no fighting with me over stupid things like all siblings do. She wasn't able to ever get married, no career. She hadn't lived, she hadn't seen all the world to offer and I had taken that away from her.
My life was a living hell. I never slept because every time I closed my eyes I would see her lifeless body. It was no secret my father blamed me for her death and he didn't even try to hide it. In two months I had lost the two most important in my life and had died not only that but I had just learned that I had yet another dead relative. One no one had bothered to tell me about until they were on their deathbeds. But I had no interest in knowing who he was because for some reason I knew he had to be the reason my father was who he is.
Just when I thought my life would be meaningless they were there at the funeral they came. Even when I would yell at them and tell them to leave me alone because a person like was meant to rot away with no one around I deserved to be alone. But Cameron, Ryan and Zeke wouldn't listen. They came every single day after school. They would sit in my room and play games while I laid on my bed not facing them and not talking to them. I figured they would quit seeing that they weren't wanted but they kept coming so I wouldn't be alone. And that was all I needed to hang on to this meaningless life of mine.
Three years after they had died my father came home this on time drunk out of his mind. It was foreign to see him in this home, he would work all over just not to return to this house and face me. It never bothered me because I had never experienced anything other than cold and hatred from him. In fact whenever he wasn't around I felt like I could breathe. I never knew how a father's love and affection was supposed to feel like I wasn't any different from a person without one. He used to beat the living hell out of me whenever I got in trouble at school while he scolded me telling me I would never amount to nothing in life. At first I would cry and wonder why me. But when he told me he wished I had died instead of Thalia I just stopped crying. I would take his abuse cause I felt like I deserved it. Was mamma watching me? I thought, was she seeing what Eric was doing to me how fucked up my life was.
Drunk out of his mind Eric came home and that day was when I was to learn of the brother I knew anything about, he came and when he looked at me I didn't see any hate or anger. He looked at me with an expression he had years ago like he loved me like he actually cared.
"My boy." He said with tears in his eyes it's like he hadn't seen me in forever. He kneeled down in front of me and held me. My father never touched me and now he was hugging me while crying.
"I'm sorry." He kept saying in between his cries. This was so foreign to me I did nothing but stand there while staring at the door behind him.
"Papà is so very sorry, forgive me." My heart stopped. Was this unloving creature actually showing me affection, what exactly was he sorry for? It didn't matter, maybe this time he was actually ready to be my father who cared what he was sorry for. As long as he wanted me it's all that mattered. My hands slowly began to move so I would hug him until he continued his sentence.
"Forgive me my boy, forgive me Lincoln I'm sorry I love you." With my arms up in the air and my drunk father telling the wrong son he loved him. When you have felt the difference between a real loving bond and a parasitic clasp, you will always remember how wide the gap is.
What was so special about Lincoln, why did he deserve Eric's love and not me? I didn't know him but I already hated him for dying and leaving my parents as they were. The following morning I rummaged through the house looking for any clues and anything that he existed. And in my mother's old closet which had remained untouched for years there was a box full of memories. There he was in the small picture I held.
It was like looking in a mirror. He looked just like me and in the photo I held it, him and Eric the both of them smiling with fish on their hooks. He had never taken me fishing. Hell, I had never seen him look so happy. The pictures of Link stopped at ten after that they were no more. But there is where my mother hid her diaries and I learned the truth of what had happened to my older brother.
My brother was an active kid unlike he actually listened to my parents. He was five years older than Thalia and to say he looked like me would be an understatement. I guess my parents only wanted two kids and from the words my mother wrote they were all happy. Until Lincoln passed out at school right about when he was ten and when he was taken to the hospital there he was diagnosed with Type 1 Gaucher disease. A rare disease, genetic disorder. Which breaks down enzymes till one reduces to nothing while it eats away at the bones and organs.
Gaucher disease is progressive. And he was unlikely enough to have it found late.
Growing up I was taken for check ups twice a month sometimes three times I visited the doctors more than most kids. My mother hated seeing me hurt or bleeding and for the tiniest things such as a cold I would go to the doctor. To me I thought all kids had it like this but now it was just her paranoia of losing a kid that she thought I could be next.
Even though it broke my mum and made her live in constant fear, Eric blamed himself for letting him die. Link had told my dad he hadn't been feeling well months before his diagnosis, how he felt tired at soccer and Eric had told him to shake it off, that big boys don't squirm because they're tired. So when he experienced more symptoms he never said anything he just brushed it off like his beloved father had told him to. Until his body gave out but by then it was too late. Eric had been living for that guilt even till now, he didn't know what caused his tiredness and quite frankly he couldn't have known it was that serious but still if he believed if had taken Link seriously he probably would still be here.
Seven years after his death my mother accidentally fell pregnant with me and although I wasn't planned she was happy. Eric not so much but she refused to get rid of me, he didn't want another child he didn't want to replace the one he had lost. My mother explained it as if he had seen a ghost when he first saw me. He felt as if the gods were mocking him and bringing him an incarnation of his dead son to remind him of his ignorance. So my father's hatred for me wasn't because of me or Link but it was of his own guilt and since I was an easy target he turned guilt into anger and anger into hate. My mother named me Jacob after her father Christoper after my father and Lincoln after my brother which didn't quite sit well with Eric, but then again my very existence was an inconvenience to him.
I didn't want to hate Lincoln. I shouldn't have but he was loved. He got a father and I didn't and as an eleven year old I believed it was because of him I didn't. It wasn't his fault but I'm human after all. At times I wonder if he were alive would we have been close or we wouldn't have gotten along at all after all he would have been seventeen years older than I. But as I grew older I resented myself for even feeling that way he hadn't done anything so why did I hate him? I had already told Carter and the rest I shouldn't have said it out loud. I couldn't even look at myself without seeing him. Maybe I did deserve all the hate I received from my father. I deserved it for hating my brother, for killing my sister and being angry at my mother for leaving me even though she never meant to.
It was eating at me having to be forced to relive my life but it was a reminder that no matter how hard I try to forget the fact still remains this all happened. I had to tell her even if it's not how I planned to do it, I had to, she needed to know me even the ugly bits. How would I be able to love Heaven if I continue lying or rather omitting the truth from her. She doesn't know it but she is far much braver than I am and it pains to know that at one point she felt so weak she almost killed herself and I could have done something about it but instead I did nothing. I watched as my friends hurt her and so many more which was a sin added to my never ending list of sins.
I felt tears fall onto my head as I held on to her. She was crying for me, for what I had been through. I had never said all of this out loud let alone at once I hadn't realized the magnitude of what I had been through up till now