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"Isn't a tattoo, so stop trying to convince yourself otherwise," Travis suggested.
"He'll ruin her."
"She's as good as dead anyway." Travis was back to laughing, the sound beginning to make my head hurt, but I began to feel something else.
A weird, heavy feeling.
This wasn't good because the prickling emotion of dread always happened when my life would be turned upside down: when our father disappeared, when Kyle was kidnapped and murdered, when my mother went missing and was assumed dead just like my father, and this morning before I went to my shift.
Each time, I'd ignored the warnings my body fought desperately for me to feel and obey - to cancel whatever I was doing and take the safest route versus what was destined for me. I wanted to listen to its plea for once in my life, but I couldn't move my frail body.
I felt like I'd gone frozen, my body numb to the point that I wasn't sure if I was breathing. The pounding of my heart was loud enough to ring in my ears, but something bad was happening to me and I couldn't decipher it with my whirlwind mind.
"Now, let's be on our way, shall..."
I waited for the rest of Travis's words, but instead, a string of curses left his lips.
"Fuck, fuck! Move the car!"
"What?" Hendrick's question was filled with enough panic to frighten me further, as goosebumps crawled upon my flesh and I sought every thread of strength within me to try to open my eyes.
"Shit!" Travis cursed, and I heard the door open.
"Fuck! Are you running away? Help us!" Hendrick screamed in haste as it felt like he was fumbling with the ignition to turn it off and on again. But compared to before where he left the car running, the ignition wouldn't start at all. "Shit, shit, shit! No. I can't fuck this up...fuck! Why do I have such shitty luck?"
That humming warning within me began to burn stronger, the heat spreading from the core of my chest outward. It moved to my arms, all the way to my fingertips before it began its journey down my waist to my hips, but the warmth was only escalating just how much shit I was about to be in.
I fought to open my eyes, begged for them to cooperate for a single moment, and thankfully, they shot right open - as my body was filled with a bolt of charged adrenaline.
The seatbelt prevented me from jerking forward. My panicked eyes that could barely stay half-open suddenly met those of my older brother.
One look and it felt like the world came to a striking halt.
I thought after years of not seeing him, the pain wouldn't be as sharp as it was. The memories in the depths of the dark, those chilling eyes viewing me in an imaginative world that only pleased him consumed me.
My muffled cries, my whispered pleas, the realization that no matter how hard I tried, he'd always get his way.
It was all back and shot me right in the chest like a bullet - only that pain would haunt me for days, months, years on end, and he'd simply continue to live on the run, hiding because of the true deeds he committed out of selfishness.
The deeds that made our family crumble into a lost legacy.
I knew from the click of his seatbelt that he'd be gone from my view, and I'd most likely never see him again. He'd get to, once again, run from his problems and leave them upon my burdened shoulders.
Unless I died right here and now.
There was that voice begging me to say the words that I'd kept within the pit of my chest for years. It begged me to reveal how much pain this individual, who should have been my family member I could lean on, had contributed and changed me to satisfy his own desires and impatient tendencies.
My life, the consequences, the pain I experienced at the expense of his actions, and the continued situations I fell for because I was still traumatized from our tangled past should have been enough to let it all out.
Let the rage inside me reign and deliver the onslaught of pain this man deserved.
But there were those strings that felt like they were wrapping around my neck - invisible strings that were sharp as ever, cutting through my flesh and making it feel like the entire world was caving in on me.
The thoughts of ridicule from my fellow peers, the words of the public that would degrade me because of all the flaws I carried, while the culprit of my agony received sympathy and support from those in power.
The voices that chanted that I should be quiet because I deserved to carry this pain.
For a split second, all of it came to a dramatic silence, and that was my moment.
