Twenty-years earlier
Amelia
The heat of the fire whispered to me that I hadn't done anything wrong. The matchbox in my hand wasn't just a simple box it was a weapon.
A weapon of destruction just like he has been for me.
The smell of burning wood didn't soothe the agony I suffered in. It didn't do anything to help but I wanted to think that it was helping me. That it was helping me erase the pain I suffered.
Tears rolled down my cheeks, desperation, and anger flowing with them but never-ending. I had done this.
It couldn't be undone now. A sob broke out of me as I watched the house burn. The matchbox slipping away from my hands holding on to the earth as my tears mixed with the earth. I beat the soft mud under me with my hands as another sob broke out of me. The pain inside of me intensifying. The realization of what I had done in the name of love and war hitting me hard.
I had stood there as I heard the first screams. I didn't try to help. No, I hadn't been able to. It was too late. Nothing could be done. I was so wrong, so crazy and so desperate.
I had slipped. I had promised not to see them again but those green eyes looking at me each day made me slip but more than that she had made me slip.
It wasn't my intention to do this. I just wanted to meet him. I just wanted us to have a talk to know the answers to my whys. I had been civil. There were no cries of desperation from me but then she had to come down and ruin it all. Screaming at me to get out while I begged for having just talk. She was the one who had pushed me, threatened me. She was the one who had cried and he had just stood there looking away from me.
Calling me names but she was the one who had wrecked it all. She had come between us. He was mine. I had called him mine and he had said I was his. We were so happy. I cried for all those happy times that we had until he realized the truth. Until she decided to come home.
The way he had stepped away from me when he saw her. I could see the confusion in his eyes and only when she saw me, she realized. It was like looking into the mirror. Her eyes and hair just a copy of me. We both were copies of each other. It was just I had loved him but it was her whom he loved.
He had just wanted my sister but he had never known of me. The first time I met him when I came to meet Celia, my twin sister who had severed every link with the family and me all because she opposed to getting married to my father's friend for our own financial safety. I had seen him then. The guy with those beautiful green eyes and a dazzling smile in the bar. There was this pull I had felt towards him that I couldn't break out anything. He didn't see me that day no one but only my sister did.
I wanted her to come back to be a part of the family but she declined. I left with a last plead but she said she was happy where she was and was getting married too. Only when she showed me his picture, I felt something form inside of me. It was jealousy.
I had Joel, a beautiful baby girl, and everything but still, I wasn't happy. She was with him. I watched from the edge as my obsession with him grew. Every time he touched her, I wanted it to be me. So, when my sister decided to go on a trip with her friends on hiking, I stepped in as her. I studied my own sister and became her. It was hard to make believe that it was me but all I wanted to feel was the love that he had for her.
For a week I pretended and each night we made love. It was on a fateful evening she came back and saw me.
Neil didn't know what was going on. He knew something was a miss but I dazed him with drugs just to feel loved. But when Celia came in I knew it all was over there was crying and so much anger in her voice. Screaming on top of her lungs. Her hands hitting me but my eyes were on him. He made me felt loved more and more and ever and ever.
I left that day but I didn't leave him. I knew his financial beings. Love has no limits and mine didn't. My sister forgave him and then I lured him in. A night a week of him loving me and me helping me. I Detroiter his business until he had to come to me. I paid him and he paid me with love all behind my sisters back. It went on for a whole year. A year of happiness for me and that was all I had ever wanted.
Until Serilda came along and I wanted him more. We were going to have a baby. I wanted a lot of Neil with me but taking the trip over another town to the countryside. Neil said we couldn't take the risk. We could be penniless. Joel would leave me. How would we raise Serena and the baby? He made me stay telling it wasn't the right time.
Celia came to know about the fortune Neil's had been making. I didn't feel threatened when she called me to spur out her anger. It was when she came to know about the baby that she burst out through my house in the middle of the day heavily pregnant. It was the first time I had seen anger burst into those eyes. She had held a knife against my throat and told me to stay away from her family and him. I felt the fear struck into me as I felt the trickle of blood flow down my neck.
The next day I knew she started sending away threatening letters in name of Serena, me, and my husband. Neil no longer picked my phone so when I visited this time to put an end to all this, they were all already gone. Neil left behind nothing. Their house was sold, the bar was gone. They just vanished.
Nothing left behind but this hatred inside of me for her. I wanted her to suffer but how could I do that when I even didn't know where she was.
That is why I hated Serilda when she was born with the eyes of her father but she looked so much like her. She was my daughter, my own blood made out of love but it made me want to hurt her. She was innocent, right? But then how could she bring pain to my heart every day. Why did seeing her hurt so much? She had those golden curls, that same smile everything was bearable but why did she have to have those eyes. I hated her all so ever because it felt like she was their's and not mine.
Did it make sense? For five years I had looked at her and all I saw was Neil and Celia. It was so hard to see myself in her. All I saw was them.
I decided to stop looking because nothing mattered now. Joel was suspecting things so I decided to play nice and become the pretty wife and mother even it hurt.
I cried out my heart as I watched the fire rage on higher and higher. This house was our escape once. Far into the woods, hidden from the outer world with no one to hear us for miles and miles. It was where he brought me and I had fallen in love more and more. He might have found this place but together we made it home. It was such a small cabin then but now he had built everything here.
His home, her home and their home
I had looked for him here but got nothing in return. This house wasn't here. This home wasn't here. He wasn't and neither was she.
But now it was. He had built his and their home upon ours.
He had ruined this but she was the one who ruined everything. Celia had ruined it and now I have ruined their family. I never wanted to do it but I had slipped.
They had come back here. She had come back here.
It was all her fault.
How dare she made that call? Who gave her the fucking courage to call Joel? She pretended to be me on the phone.
I could never forget how she had threatened me the last time.
Only if she hadn't done that everyone would have been alive. I had come to talk but the way she treated me, how he treated me I wanted to rip everything apart. When I showed him the photo of Serilda I didn't see the excitement in those eyes. I expected something. Some happiness. Some love but nothing. It was as if he disgusted me and her both.
Celia tore it away and slapped me. She told me that I took away her life and everything now she was going to take mine. She would tell Joel about everything. She would do the same I did with her.
The disgust burning in those eyes was nothing compared to how betrayed I felt as Neil just stood there and looked at me with nothing but shame and anger within his eyes.
However, I didn't understand why she was doing all this. Five years had passed. I hadn't looked for them.
I just wanted to talk to them and walk away for the last time but she didn't. So, when she had thrown me out of that house, I had walked away to come back silently into the night with cans of gasoline.
Pouring all around the house I had waited and waited until all I could see was red before I lit the match stick and let it drop. Now I stood here as I watched it burn to ashes. The burning red flames in the middle of not a house near for another mile.
The hearing of breaking glass drew me towards it as I watched Neil trying to climb out with a kid in his arms. A small baby boy with those same eyes. They both were coughing. Neil once again turned around as he reached for my sister who stood there.
"Come one, Celia give me your hand," Neil shouted. She coughed as the fumes rose. Her shouts and screams were all I could hear.
"Come on, baby, we need to get out. Taking off his shirt he broke another window.
"I promise, we would do everything you want just climb the hell out," she cried and coughed all the while Neil tried to pull her out. She was scared and bleeding.
"I love you, Celia please just try," the cry of his was heart touching. "Think about Kyle please try to jump out. I know you can do this,"
I watched how Neil saved Celia. I saw him climbing down the window and coming out with Celia. The love that they shared was nothing that I had. She had everything and still, she wanted to hurt me. She stole away my love and she still wanted to hurt me.
Jealousy is a sin. It is evil.
Jealousy made me filled with nothing but hatred. It left the bitter taste inside of me how I was betrayed by Neil.
It brought out the evilness from inside of me that I never knew. It grew and grew until all I wanted was their blood, wanted them gone.
While they were hugging each other, kissing each other I looked around. A heavy rock was what I found. Something I never would have been able to lift but then I did.
I got this great courage as jealousy rode over all the feelings.
Celia saw me first but before she could say something, I struck Neil with that heavy rock over the back of his head. Celia tried to run with the kid as Neil groaned but I picked the same rock again and threw it at her making her fall. I heard her screams as her baby boy tumbled out of her arms and fell down from her arms. She fought and screamed. She tried to save herself but I didn't let her.
"Let me go," she screamed at the top of her lungs as her fingers dig in the earth to let herself up. I didn't let her go and pushed her down with all my weight over her back. I did it as the anger burned inside of me in a way of jealousy.
All I wanted was, him and love but she took it all away from me. She messed everything up. She took even my child away from me. Serilda was her and him. She took away the happiness of being a mother from me because all I saw was them in her.
Celia's hand lose free from my hold and hit me over the head and eyes hard. It hurt widely giving her an opportunity to turn herself and hit me. There were punches and slaps at my head and face. Wherever she gets her hand on. I felt my head throbbing under her attack.
My face was scratched and I could hear my own agony as she thrashed under me trying to hurt me wherever she could.
It made me cry in agony. The pain radiated in my head making everything seem hurting is a million ways.
"Amelia, stop," I could hear Neil yelling, the baby screaming and Celia screaming. My head just didn't hurt from where Celia's hand struck me it wanted to explode.
The intense screaming made my head hurt. It made everything so much unbearable I just wanted all the screaming to stop. I wanted everything to come to halt. All I wanted was silence. Stop the pain that I felt from where Celia hit me. All I wanted was a little peace to alleviate my pain.
Something came over me and I was up reaching for the rock. I raised it up high. Anger and adrenaline running inside of me and I hit her.
Again and again. Until she stopped thrashing. Until there were no screams from her.
I wanted to stop all the noise.
"Celia!" the high-pitched scream from Neil as he tried to get up hurt my eardrums. I hated that name.
No, I wasn't me. I was someone else.
Moving towards Neil with the same heavy rock in my hand I heard his begging.
"Stop Amelia, Stop it!" he yelled. "Please don't do this," he begged but I wasn't just me. Nothing could break me out of the craziness that overrode everything inside of me.
In mere seconds I was hurling the rock against his head. I did it again and again until there was nothing out from me. I was covered in red but it didn't faze me.
All that I knew was that I was hurting.
The baby cried at the top of his lungs. It hurt my ears too. All I wanted was silence and he was my last victim. My hand worked on their own. It wasn't me but it was me. It took three hits before he stopped. I sat surrounded by my own crimes but I wasn't there.
When silence came in only then I realized what I had done.
The horror of seeing a dead child in front of me made me vomit everything out. There was silence and the silence was sickening. It made me want to puke my guts out. It hurt more than before. The buzzing in my head shook me violently from the inside. It told me what a gruesome monster I had turned into.
Tears leaked through my eyes as the pain of guilt rushed through into me.
What had I done? How could I have done this? This wasn't me.
I took away three lives.
I had killed my sister. I had killed my lover and I had killed an innocent child.
I wept and cried so hard that everything hurt. I was growing numb.
A hand over my hand made me jump and scream. As I turned around, I saw Serena standing there.
"Are you okay, Momma?" she asked but the horror of seeing her there made me push myself away from her. I looked at myself and all I saw was blood. Looking up in the eyes of my daughter who was all me I saw the fear in them but she still stood straight. That was when I used her to get rid of the crime I had committed. I colored her in the same color as me. She had her hands dirty with the same blood as mine were.
The blood of the people I had killed.
Her mistake was her curiosity.
Her curiosity to see where Momma was going ruined her.
But her being there helped me.
It was where it all began.
How I made her part of my crime.
How she learned all the truths?
And how she became my own demise.
......................................................
The End