"My people died because I loved them."
- George Emil Banks
SEVENTEEN
AS DIANA RAN TOWARDS my mothers voice, I stood frozen still in the one place I had wished my entire adolescent life to escape from. I was suddenly unable to take my eyes away from Hugh's paling corpse. His skin had shifted from almond to a sickly pallid.
All of a sudden, the freedom from Hugh I had craved for for years looked and tasted vile.
All I kept thinking was the fact that he didn't have to die. I didn't have to watch the life drain from his eyes. None of this needed to happen. Despite the fact that he was willing and eager to blow my brains out from my skull, I felt a gaping hole tunnel through the tendrils of my heart as I watched my baby brother die out in front of me.
You never know the exact moment that the blackness of grief begins to consume you, but understand that it would gradually begin at the time you least expect it. I was mentally mourning the man that had broken me in all aspects. That had broken Diana. That had nearly killed my mother.
But just as I reminisced over the bad he had done to us, the bad that had been done to him surfaced.
Instantly, I felt like I had exploded out of my body and was transported back to the past where I would watch my dad remind Hugh of how much he was a dissapointment. I could remember the crying, the sobs, the way he'd punch his bedroom walls because he couldn't find one way to please my parents. Was Hugh just misunderstood? Was that why he physically and emotionally abused my mother, Diana and I?
Revenge.
And then there was the one word he had said before he died. Just before Diana had shot the gun through his head. He had seen her lift the gun towards him and he had said - "Thank you."
I didn't know what that meant to him but hearing it felt like a blow to the chest.
But all in all, Hugh was dead.
I should have been thankful. But when I realised that we'd - she'd completely and utterly obliterated a human being from existence, it was absolute mental torture; I couldn't bring myself to be grateful for anything.
I heard Diana's voice sneak past the ringing in my ear. The gunshot still echoed in my heart like I was the one who had been shot. "Aria! Mom is here, she's..." Her voice broke, the sadness seeping through. "She's not okay..."
I snapped out of my mental detaintment and spun around, leaving behind the biggest mistake of my life, and running towards the light of my life. "Mom!"
Because of the support I and Diana got from the local government for being prodigies, the house was fairly big. Not big enough to hide the painful truth about my life since my father passed though. At least, not to me.
Just as I reached her bedroom door, where Diana's frantic voice led me, I felt like the world had stopped spinning and had decided to let go off me. First thing I noticed was that the pink cotton sheets of my mothers bed was now stained a ghastly red. It was almost as though Hugh had wanted to take all my memories and taint them in front of me because this bed had provided me a haven. I had often crawled into it with my mom whenever Hugh threatened to kill me while I slept in my room.
The bed was now splattered and stained with the blood and tears of my mom.
On the floor beside the mangled sheets, my mothers hand gripped her stomach wound. It was a violent wound had dug itself into her skin. Hugh hadn't killed her, no, he had made her suffer the lengthy pain of a gunshot wound to the stomach.
The lengthy pain similar to the one he had received in his own lifetime.
Her eyes were bleak, barely focusing as she found me. She lifted her other bloody hand from Diana's face and weakly beckoned me over. But I couldn't move. Diana was sobbing loudly, cradling my mothers head in her trembling arms.
I stood statuesque still and tried to cease the incessant pain I felt. I'd been broken for months and my mother was the one who had pieced me back together. And now she was breaking me again, more violently than before. Through no fault of her own.
"I...I'm sor...." She tried to speak but I could tell that the blood had begun clogging her throat.
I looked away immediately, momentarily blinded by the violence I had experienced and seen all day. My heart was beating, my chest felt concaved, my throat was sandpaper dry and my eyes were an endless stream of bleakness.
I wanted to end her pain.
"Aria where are you going?! Let's take her to a hospital! She needs you!" Diana cried as I spun around and began to walk away from the grievous scene.
The hospital couldn't save her. She wouldn't make it there in time. None of us could drive. Hugh had cut the telephone lines. The next house was miles away. The police would arrest Diana for killing Hugh, we would end up worsening the situation.
The only thing I wanted to do, the only thing I thought of, was putting an end to the deep, sunken, pit of pain I had seen in my mothers eyes.
All of a sudden, as though I were possessed, I wanted her gone.
Perhaps I was forming excuses, perhaps I wasn't thinking rationally. Perhaps I did want her to die. Perhaps I just wanted to have a life where I wasn't living in constant fear of Hugh, or constant fear that my mom would suffer the consequences of every action I took. I violently wanted freedom.
I leaned down beside Hughs corpse and kissed his mangled cheek. My final goodbye to the darkest part of my life. I knew that killing him was truly the opposite of what Diana thought would be best. Because killing him meant unnerving guilt, it meant that the image of the gun splitting his face would be seared in my brain, it meant nightmares, it meant criminal charges, it meant running away from him forever.
I picked up the gun Diana had used and stiffly walked back to the room where they were. My sobs had begun to cause my entire body to shake. "I..I'll help you, mom. I'll stop the pain."
"What the hell are you doing?!" Diana screeched as I lifted the gun shakily.
I couldn't hear over my own sobs. I could only notice that my mom's eyes were closed and she was lolling her head from side to side. She was becoming demented from the maddening pain. "Let me help you, mom. You're suffering."
"Stop!" Diana was screaming.
"She's suffering." — was all I could manage. I was repeating it like a litany, nothing else crossed my brain.
In that moment, my thoughts were void.
"Do it and you'd be just like him!" Diana cried, snot mixing with tears and saliva. A disgusting imagery that perfectly portrayed what each of us felt in varying degrees.
"He made us suffer." I whispered, cocking the gun with no expertise whatsoever. "I'm ending it."
I didn't want to think about what I was about to do. Her pain had become my pain.
My hand gripped my stomach, as though the gaping wound was etched on my skin. I mentally willed my mom to open her eyes and see me, see that I was the one doing this. My fingers wouldn't let go if not.
I had tuned out Diana's crying and screaming and gagging and choking and sniffing.
And just as I thought I was sinking back to sanity, one word finally left my mothers lips. "End it."
She knew what I was doing.
That was all I needed.
So like a fuse had exploded and busted a light bulb, I let go off the trigger and darkness settled.
Darkness and stone cold silence.
A/N:
Big reveals! So she killed her own mother as well?
Double update so keep reading guys!