Absolutely amazing banner by anjeleca_ ❤️
"Killers do have a heart, it's simply fuelled by rage, domination and a sickening desire to take control."
- Author
TWENTY FOUR
HER EYES HAD DARKNESS inside of them. I knew it was because of what I was saying to her. I knew I was the predator in this moment but I didn't want to stop. I wasn't going to. Not until I filled the gaping holes in my memory with truth. Diana had just let me know that my dreams were mangled, and were revoltingly twisted by guilt and the wrinkled hands of time.
Nothing I believed was really as it seemed and I hadn't been able to see that because I had repressed all my thoughts from that night. I only remembered through nightmares and those, apparently, were terribly warped.
It was my fault though.
Whilst Diana had attended therapy after the incident, I locked myself away from the world because I had a fear of blurting out things that could incriminate us both. I hunched over mounds of books and ripped at the pages when I realised I couldn't escape physically as I could mentally.
Whilst Diana began to heal, and began to love and laugh, I morphed into a vessel for depression to build a home in. Because I felt like my happiness would be blasphemous, I turned away at any opportunity to grow from the traumatic incident.
Naturally, I became deformed mentally and emotionally. The guilt had made a tumor grow within me, one that was malignant. A tumor so bizarre that it was metaphorical. It had tainted my psyche. From guilt came shame came fear came sadness came pain.
Then one night, Diana yanked me from my darkness and forced me to open up because bottling what I felt had slowly began to devour me from the inside.
I agreed to, tried to, until, I snuck a glance into the notepad my therapist held and saw she wrote hopeless underneath my name.
I fled. I began to stutter. I became mute but understood I still needed to let out my feelings. So, I wished with my hands. I wrote agonizing poetry with my fingertips and talked through ink blots. It felt safer, yet more beautiful. Like fireworks, but high up in the skies. Like animals, but tamed.
It made me feel something vaguely similar to happiness. Not happiness in itself. No. At that tender age, I had come to accept that happiness was a myth. I knew that any one who claimed to be happy was a liar. The most powerful person in the world was one who was truly happy. And when they smiled, it cracked the world in half. Split right in the middle.
So as far as the world remained whole, no man was happy.
Yet I felt like I could be.
Until one night, when the nightmares started. And then I began to stutter again. But this time, it was far worse because I stuttered with my hands.
So I bottled up, put on a facade and begun to live as though I were okay.
But in passing thought, I knew that this tiresome journey of self-pity and deprecation is the reason why I applied for this job. Perhaps uderstanding why others did it would open up the truth to why I did it? I didn't know.
All I was aware of was that now Diana's eyes were telling me that my memories of that day were tragically inaccurate. And now, I wanted to know the truth. Too little, too late? yes, but better late than never.
"Aria," Diana muttered, her face was a portrait of despair articulated so vividly. "Do you really not remember?"
I shook my head, solemn.
"God," Dianas voice cracked. She looked down at her shoes momentarily and up at me. Her silhouette against the clean walls of my room trembled. "But you told him yes. Why would you confess to something you don't remember?"
It was strange because I couldn't actually remember. I wasn't sure what had made me nod earlier on, I wasn't even sure who 'he' was. What was wrong with me? Was it me who killed Hugh? What truly happened that night? And what happened afterwards?
I bowed my head in frustration. It was tiresome to try and remember. Perhaps I had PTSD and triggering the memories hurt me. "I don't know...I just know I was afraid. I don't know exactly what scared when he had asked. I don't know what I've done. What I did." My eyes were wide when I opened them again. "Diana...you need to help me."
Her face became crestfallen, and she looked ashen at the thought of reminding me. Her lips parted slightly. "Maybe it's best that you don't remember."
I scowled and stood up, hands balled in fists. "You're not going to sit here and keep things from me like I'm a child. We went through it together, you need to tell me what I did."
Diana closed her eyes tightly. "Aria..."
Seeing her so fearsome shocked me into silence.
She sighed, a heavy one and stood up to match my height. In a second, my spacious room suddenly felt cramped up. She took a deep breath and reached over to grab my hand. "What do you remember when you think of that day?"
My chest constricted. This was going to be the hardest thing of my life. But if I was going to make her relive the incident that put us here in the first place, I should too. I closed my eyes and as soon as I did, the faded memories echoed in my head. Images I was fond of from recurring nightmares.
Hugh's gun, his voice, his eyes, the gunshot, screams, Diana, A gun in my hand? Dad screaming at me, Dad, Dad? Screams, Blood, Screaming. A car? Headlights. Darkness. My heart thudded too hard against my chest. My breathing was erratic and my fingers were cold against the skin of my palm.
My thoughts dissipated with a gasp and my eyes sprung open. What the fuck? I could see my facial expression in Dianas eyes. Despair from grasping at loose threads, Confusion from lack of understanding on how to sew the pieces together and Pain from realising the pieces I thought were right were wrong all along.
"I don't know. It's foggy but I remember fragments of things I don't understand. Dad? There was a car? Headlights?" My heart hurt, and my fingers lifted to my face. I felt wetness. "Why am I crying?"
Her voice was a whisper.. "Because your heart remembers."
There was nothing beautiful about the moment we shared. It was horrifying having to relive the trauma that damaged us so deeply. After we had run away from our hometown to Stockholm, there was an unspoken pact that we wouldn't talk about it ever again. Yet, I was here ripping open that Pandora's box from the hinges and spilling it every where.
"I..." As though the universe was in sync with our emotions, pathetic fallacy created raindrops outside. They pelted the window. I bit my lip. "Fuck."
Diana stilled my trembling hands, forcing me to focus. "What do you think of when you talk about Dad?"
I frowned, momentarily confused. "Nothing. He stopped mattering a long time ago."
Diana shook her head vehemently. "To me, yes, but that's a lie to you. Think Aria, you're not thinking hard enough."
"Diana, I don't know what the fuck you're trying to get me to say! He's irrelevant." I suddenly felt annoyed, she was pressing on things that didn't seem to matter.
Her voice matched mine. She was good at fighting fire with fire. Never a submissive. "For fuck sake, think of your father as a person in itself! Not a memory!"
I did, tried to, but I just saw the same images. I wrenched my hand from her grip and stepped backwards. "If you're not going to help," I marched the few steps to my front door. "You need to leave."
"You're being difficult. As usual." Diana deadpanned, unfazed by my empty threat.
"Maybe because my head hurts and I don't remember anything right and my heart hurts and I'm just.." My voice broke. "And I'm just so scared."
I sagged against the door.
Diana mirrored me in many ways. We were the same physically but differed. Whilst I settled for jumpers and dark colours, she was the sun in vivid yellow. Unlike me, her cheekbones hollowed and her lashes fluttered. Her lips were pursed, stained red from the lipstick she had been wearing earlier on. "Tell me." She came close enough to see through me. "Where was Dad that night?"
"Dead." I hissed.
She shook her head full of brown braids. "No."
"Dian-"
"He wasn't dead!" Her eyes blazed with sudden frustration. "If you're so hellbent on knowing he had died before then how the fuck did he die?!"
Oh.
I was at a loss for words. My thoughts scattered like petals in the wind. My mouth opened and closed. And slowly, like a revelation, I realised that I didn't know that either. I just knew he had died.
That was it.
Diana could read my silence like an open book. Her face twisted. "Exactly. You don't fucking remember."
"Why are you so mad?"
She groaned, hands lifting to push her hair away from her face. "Because you get to forget! I have to live with these memories every fucking day and you just repressed them like it didn't even matter!"
I gasped. Words spoken from anger were always true. I had learnt that quickly. "Of course, it matters. I have nightmares too-"
"I get them both. Do you think I enjoy seeing mom die whenever I go to bed? Do you think it was easy pulling that trigger? Seeing everyone die? And you're making me relive that..." She was loud. Diana didn't falter easily so as she did, I knew I was being ultimately selfish.
I took my words back. "We don't have to do this-"
"Yes, we do." Her voice was a crack of a whip. "When you start something, fucking finish it. We are doing this."
"Then tell me, what happened that night?"
"After you shot.." Her eyes screwed shut tightly and her head lolled to the side. I knew the blackness of grief when I saw it etched on her heart shaped face. "...shot mom, something happened."
My voice was short of a breath.
"Does it have anything to do with Dad?"
Her eyes opened, and for the first time, her tears stained her face. It wasn't from grief this time, it was reddened. Anger. Disgust. Vehemence. She was what anger looked like if it took the form of a human.
"Yeah. Him."
Diana opened her mouth and let her words take me back to the truth.
_____
MY EARS WERE FILLED WITH wails. I didn't want to see or hear Diana's grief but I couldn't move. I felt blood trickle down my nose, I had my brothers blood on my lips and my mothers on my hands. The dotted lines on the ceiling above me spun in circles, dizzying me. The day had started out as normal as it could have, and it ended in ways that were too bizarre to comprehend. I was surrounded by dead bodies like some twisted corpse party.
"What happens next?" I whispered, my thoughts feeling foreign to me. I felt brain dead. Nothing seemed real anymore.
Diana sniffed beside me and a thud informed me that she had let go of my mothers body. "Nothing." I felt her inch closer to me on all fours. Looking up, I saw her eyes were bleak and lifeless. "Nothing happens next. We're screwed, and nothing comes after this."
We had both seen and done things that we couldn't comprehend.
Suddenly, lights passed over our heads. We both sat up instantly, replacing all feeling of emptiness with a rush of blood to the head. We lived far from the main town centre so cars were foreign to this area unless someone was coming to the house.
Someone was coming.
Diana turned to me so quick I feared whiplash. Her eyes were panicked and her breathing picked up. "Who-?"
"I'll go see."
I gestured for her to sit still and I stood up to investigate. If anything was to happen, I wanted to be at the receiving end of it all. I felt responsible. After all, she had killed for me. I had killed. I was the murderer.
I had just looked out the window when the headlights of a car momentarily blinded me. It turned off after a few seconds and the person I saw made my blood turn from cold to boiling hot. I felt rage course through my veins so viciously that I physically trembled. I hadn't known anger this much in my life and I know the ghouls of death that surrounded the atmosphere fuelled the emotion.
Of course, Diana hated him more than I did but in this moment, I was looking at the Devil himself but rather than red scaly skin and heinous horns, he wore a polo shirt and denim jeans. He looked up at the window and caught a glance of my face and looked shameful.
He managed a weak wave.
"Who is it?" Diana whispered.
I turned back to her and she gasped on seeing my face. I must have looked terrifying because I could no longer breathe properly. I was completely overtaken by the violent emotions.
It was all his fault.
He knew mom was already weak and Hugh had begun to torment us all, yet he had left us for another woman. For months. We went through all this alone. He had made Hugh this way, made mom this way, made me this way. He had damaged all of us in ways unimaginable. And rather than fix it, or at least aid the process, he ran away.
Like a bitch in the heat.
He often returned, once a month, but none of us had accepted him. But this was significant because prior to this, I had called him, wrote him letters and asked him to come because Hugh had transformed into a monster. I had done all that because we all knew that Dad was the only one could handle him. I had done all this despite Diana making me promise to never speak to him again.
And for weeks, Dad had ignored me. Now that all the shit had gone through the roof, he appeared like a guardian angel with clipped and deformed wings.
No one wanted him.
Especially now.
I didn't answer Diana. Instead, I pushed past her and grabbed the gun from the ground. The same one that had killed Hugh and Mom. It felt cold against my finger tips.
And I turned to the front door.
This time, Diana didn't say a word.
A life for a life.
AN: dots? currently connecting. Contextual information is in this chapter, I am still updating this weekend but have this while you wait!