The following chapters is not Arias direct memory. It is a recollection of the events that happened on that fateful night.
THIRTY FIVE (I)
MY DINNER TASTED PARTICULARLY OF ASHES, and I was becoming a little too tired of eating like the dead. Placing my fork down beside my bowl of ashy noodles, I looked around the sordid table. The tension was thick enough to cut, take a slice out of, and eat it. I was certain it'd taste better than whatever everyone was chewing on.
"Do you not like the food?" My mom queried. I noticed her eye bags were the only noticeable thing in her face. Everything else was ghostly, and indecipherable. Her hands shook as she pushed a braid back into the hair band. "I could get you something else."
Diana's voice pierced through my mother's. "No need. She'll eat."
Diana knew that I had been meaning to address this for days. She had told me several times that if I opened this up, it would lead to things that were out of my control. She had said she would hate me forever. But each time, I had told her that she didn't understand what she was saying, and she would thank me on the day I finally did. Looking at the disgusted glare she was giving me, I decided that this was the day.
I cleared my throat. "Actually, I'm not going to pretend like this doesn't taste like depression. In fact, I'm not going to pretend again at all."
"Aria.." Diana's voice was warning.
I stared into her widening eyes in challenge. I could see behind her fury was where her pleas hid. She didn't want me to do this. She wanted to keep living a deranged fantasy where we all pretend we're happy and Mom isn't sinking deeper into depression. She wanted to pretend like we didn't see the scars across my Moms wrist. She wanted to keep playing lead actress.
Not anymore.
I pushed away from the wooden table and moved to stand up. But just as I did, the back door blew open behind me and Hugh stormed in.
It was as though he were on fire.
His eyes were reddened and his body language was stiff. He dressed in all-black, and his six foot frame juxtaposed the floral decor of our home kitchen. Hugh was a giant of a boy, and it was ironic because what he lacked in smarts, he made up for in physical strength. Yet, he couldn't play sports. He reminded me of Goliath, but a little more disappointing. It was why he had never fit in. Not since he could talk.
My mom stood first, wiping her hands against her floral skirt. Her sickening empathy for Hugh shone through her. "Honey, are you okay?"
Hugh didn't speak. Instead, he shot her a glare as if to say — who the fuck asked you to speak? He plopped into the chair beside me and placed his legs on the table.
Awkwardly, I watched my mom fiddle with the gold cross pendant on her neck and lower back into her chair. She was too defeated to even protest. My blood boiled with rage for her, for Diana, for Hugh, for myself. For my god-forsaken father.
"So the bastards finally left, huh."
"Hugh." Diana hissed. "Not today."
He chuckled in a manner that leaned towards sadism than humour. "Oh, it's going to be today." He shot an amused glance at our mother and at the scars on her wrist. "You seem to be taking it particularly badly, Mother."
My mother winced. "Excuse me." She was on her feet in a matter of seconds. "I'm going to start washi—"
Hugh's fists connected with the hardwood of the dining table so hard that every item on the wall shook. The table might as well have cracked open and spilled years of secret onto the linoleum floor. "No. You're going to sit the fuck down and we're going to have a nice family chat."
His threat was evident within his words, and we all knew he meant it. We had bruises to prove that Hugh had no problems laying a hand on his own mother.
I spat at him. "What the hell do you want to talk about? The fact that Dad left us? That he's been cheating on mom for years? Or how disgusting you are to be happy about all of this?"
Hugh grinned, like I had told him that he owned the world. His brows were slashed into a menacing frown, yet his teeth flared through a smile. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear the last part so I don't spin your jaw." He turned to our mother. "Years, Huh? I got to give it to the old man, he's nasty."
When I looked at my mother, I noticed her face was white as sheet. Her grip on her cross had tightened so severely that every knuckle on her finger was pallid. She wasn't even looking at me anymore, it was like she was looking through me.
I gasped. She didn't know.
Diana was on the verge of tears. "Aria, I hope you're fucking happy."
I couldn't take my eyes away from my mother. If she hadn't known, then why had she been so depressed all these months? I was in shock so I whispered. "I'm just happy the truths finally out..."
"Oh, we're spilling truths, huh?" Diana retorted.
I shook my head. Please, no.
"I hate you." She confessed. "God, I really do."
As if she had burrowed her hands through my chest cavity, pulled out my beating heart, threw it on the ground and stomped on it, pain shot through my entire body.
Hugh guffawed. "Oh, thats something."
Diana's eyes were reddened with fresh waves of angee as she spun to face Hugh. She pushed her spaghetti to the side and hissed. "You're one to talk..."
"Hugh, I can't even hold back. Ever since you came into this family, all you've ever been is a sad sack of disappointment — and no one, not even God, could love you."
The smile on Hugh's face had vanished.
Her voice levels were decibels low. "Not even your own mother could stand you."
As if snapping out of her surprised funk, my mother gasped. "Diana!"
But Diana had already shifted her world on its axis.
Hatred contorted her features. "If she loved you, you wouldn't be sat here fuming at everyone because you can't live with yourself. You wouldn't even be here because you'd be with her. Yet, here you are, under our roof, tormenting us, because you're the bastard child that Dad couldn't even look at." She was the embodiment of fury. "Hugh. You were a disappointment, from the moment you were conceived."
It was like she had dropped a time bomb on the dinner table and we were watching it tick. My entire head vibrated with shock. What the fuck was she saying?
For the first time in Hugh's life, he had been completely and utterly shut up.
He didn't say much. He had never needed to. All he did was mutter — "What the fuck are you saying?"
"I'm saying Dad was right." Diana's voice was serpentine. "You're God's mistake."
Crack.
I screamed. Mom screamed. Diana went down like a sack of potatoes. Hugh had reached for our mothers empty plate and dashed it across her head so hard that the shards of ceramic went flying in different directions around the room. I watched the blood seep from her head injury and stain the flooring.
Bile shifted in my throat. I screeched. "WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
Hugh got up, heaving as though he couldn't stand being in the room. As though he couldn't breathe. I noticed his eyes were wet with tears, using his anger as a way to shield his pain. He spun to me and within his eyes, he had asked me — Is it true?
Too bad I didn't know either. Diana had spilled the saddest revelation out to us, and Hugh couldn't stand it so he had stopped the words from hurting him, by hurting her.
As my mother crawled over to Diana's body, yelling, sobbing — "Why would you do that?!" and calling her name over and over again, he scrunched his eyes in the midst of the chaos and a tear drop escaped.
Christ.
I was still frozen on the spot when he whispered, eyes boring holes into the back of our mother's head. "Did you know?"
My mother paused. She took a moment to speak, eyes falling as she lowered her head. This was her shame too. "It doesn't matter. I always loved you like you were mine."
I watched the rage engulf him.
"You piece of shit!" He exclaimed, but as his beefy hands lifted, my body had decided to respond.
"Don't you dare touch her!" I screeched, pushing so I was in front of my mother. "Don't even think about it." I was heaving, and I hadn't realised that tears were spilling down my eyes until I tasted the salt.
He wasted no time in getting rid of me. Hugh's fingers dug into my shoulder as he threw me to the side. "Get the fuck out the way!" I slammed against the edge of the kitchen counter so hard that it knocked the wind out of me.
He quickly spun to my hysterical mother who was realising that this was spinning out of proportion. His hands immediately tightened around her throat and he hissed. "You fucking knew all this while. You knew, and you let him treat me like shit! You all treated me like shit!"
"Treated you like shit?!" I gripped the side of my stomach and used the legs of the table to pull myself up. "You're saying all the things you need to say to Dad. But you'll never do it cause you're a coward so you let it out on us! You know Mom loved you, despite it all. Let her fucking go!"
I willed Diana to wake up. I willed my aching ribs to toughen up. I willed my mother to fight back. And for the first time in my life, I willed Hugh to just get the fuck out of the house and leave us alone. But I had opened up a door to this.
My mother was choking on air, she scratched at Hugh's hand around her neck so violently that I could see he was bleeding.
"Why?" He didn't care though because he didn't stop. His eyes seeped with tears and he was sobbing. "She's not even my mother."
My father had two guns, one he kept strategically close to the back door in case of intruders, and one in his bedroom. I remembered where the first one was and limped closer to the cabinet. This was becoming insane.
My eyes were blurry from tears and I couldn't breathe because my heaving was blocking my throat. "Hugh, she's going to die!"
As if snapping to reality, Hugh let go of her and she dropped to the floor in exasperating pain. You have never seen suffering until you see your mother and sister dying at your feet and you are helpless to it all. I pulled the cabinet open and retrieved the gun without knowing if it was loaded with bullets.
"Do anything and I'll shoot." I hissed.
My mother glanced up from where she had been coughing and screamed. "Aria, no!" — he had nearly killed her but she still protected him. She was either blinded by motherly love or incredibly stupid. It hurt my heart. "Baby, don't do this."
Hugh turned to me and on seeing the gun, he froze. And then, unexpectedly, he let out a deafening laugh. "You wouldn't."
Boom.
I shot at his feet. The sound resonated through the entire house and the force of the gun shoved me back against the wall. It took me a moment to catch my breath. "I'm serious, Hugh, I don't want to hurt you."
He stared at the gaping hole in the ground that the bullet had passed through right between his feet. He looked down at it and up at me, disbelief shining in his hazel eyes. He didn't understand. My love for my mother conquered everything.
"You bitch." He took one step closer. "You motherfucking bitch."
"Hugh, please don't make me do this." I begged.
He shook his head, and pushed his curls away from his face. I noticed the scratches on his hands were oozing blood. It was like he hadn't even noticed the pain. "Don't make me hurt you in ways you'd never recover from. Drop the fucking gun."
I stilled at his words. He wasn't afraid of me. "I—"
Before I had spoken, Hugh barrelled at me with the force of a thousand men. I released the trigger but his hands were already on mine and he had upturned the gun to the ceiling. Immediately, he twisted my arm so hard that I heard my wrist crack. I screeched in the kind of pain that I had never felt and the gun toppled to the ground.
Then, he picked it up and jammed it at the side of my head. "You don't fucking listen." The last word had been accentuated with a relentless shove at my ribs.
Just like that, I dropped to the ground like a fallen soldier. Instead, there would be no memoir, no love, and no memory of me. He kicked at me relentlessly, breaking what I thought was my heart but really was my rib cage. My ears were deafened by ringing pain and I was wailing in unbearable pain. My wrist, my ribs and my head were in agony.
My body no longer felt like mine.
I watched in a daze as he crouched down beside me and hissed. "Don't make me hurt you." He whispered. "Not you."
He moved to stand up, leaving the gun on the floor beside my foetal form. From the corner of my eyes, I noticed Diana stir and on seeing the state I was in, her eyes widened momentarily. Then, she slowly began to sit up, crawling as discreetly as she could to the landline that was on the wall next to her.
I tried to tell her not to move but I couldn't speak. My entire head was ablaze with pain. One of her hands gripped her blood-stained head, and the other scraped at the wall, blindly reaching for the telephone.
When she realised that Hugh had noticed her, a jolt of energy must have shot through her because she flew to her feet and grabbed the phone.
It didn't take long for Hugh to step over me, circle the table, and hiss. "Don't." By this time, he looked stark-raving mad. If there had been a chain that had held back his emotions and years of anger from bursting out, it had definitely disintegrated. "Don't you fucking dare."
Ignoring his threats, Diana's fingers were flying across the machine. Her voice was barely audible as she croaked into it. "911–"
She couldn't have finished her message because Hugh's hands had wrapped around the machine and he had violently ripped it from the walls. Diana let out a shriek and stumbled away from the wall. The depravity of the fear in her eyes terrified me.
Whoever this monster was, it wasn't my brother.
With sickening quickness, he cracked it against her skull. And this time, when she fell to the ground in a fit of pain, I feared he had killed her.
There was a certain silence that overcame Hugh after that. Like the calm before a storm. He shook out his bruised hands and took a deep breath. His lips moved and I could tell he was counting down.
A little too late for that.
Just then, my mother let out a whimper.
It must have been involuntary because she was shaking, and her hands were mashed over her lips to keep her from making a sound. I noticed her chest was rising and falling a little too hard. Her eyes were stained with tears and she looked like she died with every breath.
At the sound of her whimper, whatever Hugh had been counting for cut short.
He sauntered over to our mother, gently grabbed her by the hair and then tugged her out of the room.
I mumbled my protest. I screamed it. I cried. I nearly died for it. I fought desperately to overcome the pain, but it was only seconds before darkness came and I had passed out.
The last thought that ran through my head was one of tremendous regret — I should've listened to Diana.
____
AN:
Now, I know what you might be thinking but it is what it is. Hugh is deprived, depraved and mentally unstable. Don't flood my DMs about how unrealistic it is. Everyone's abuse is different. Everyone's reaction is different.