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I made my way downstairs, toward the kitchen where I’d heard the noise. And my limbs tightened, an eerie feeling creeping over me as I turned left at the base of the steps. I stepped through our living room, no longer aware of any clanking. Now, I heard the tile flooring as if someone paced rapidly back and forth.
“Mom?” I asked again. Though a pit in my stomach told me otherwise. The scene screamed with a familiarity I longed to forget.
I rounded the final corner.
Dad hunched in the far corner. The gun pressed to his temple, trembling beneath the weapon’s hold over him. He faced away with his back toward me. His eyes directed to the oval window which hung above our sink.
“I never meant for you to be the one to find me,” Dad said. His voice hissed, floating to me as though underwater. The objects in the room wavered. I clenched my jaw, stomach full of anxiety. I suddenly had the urge to throw up. My throat grew as tight as metal bound together with a press. No words could escape my lips.
“You have to know that… right Jemma?” he asked. “I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking at all. That you would be the one to wake up.”
Dad cocked the gun, letting out a guttural cry as he dug the barrel into his scalp.
Don’t do it…
I longed to say the words. Though the words did not come.
“You weren’t supposed to go off and become a writer,” Dad said. “All the pressure. Deadlines. It isn’t good for people like us. No good at all.”
Then, he started laughing, gazing wildly around the room, at everything else but me.
“You want to know something though?” he asked. “If I could, I would do it all the same way. Blow my brains out. Right into the next world.”
With that, he pulled the trigger. The blast shot through the night, erupting into a giant pulsating wave that crawled over me. I sunk to my knees, digging my nails into the floorboard. The tears rushed to my eyes as I pointed my gaze downward.
I tried to scream, but I couldn’t.
Dad’s body slumped over in a heap, gun slamming against the ground. The noise from the metal hitting the floor hung in the air, growing louder. Stinging my ears, sending a pinch to my eardrums.
A pool of blood rushed from his dead body over to me. Surrounding my hands. Dying them red. Rushing beneath my fingernails.
The blood swooshed upward, crawling all over my body. I gagged in disgust as the liquid flowed over my bare skin—my clothes now completely gone, replaced with the blood which covered me in a thick layer. It felt cool against my skin, tying me down. I lifted my head once more, back to where Dad’s body should have been.
He had vanished.
The blood continued to flow all over my exposed body. Oozing into my hair, dripping into my mouth. Unable to breathe, I coughed as the blood worked its way down my mouth.
I let out a loud gasp, attempting to bring more air into my lungs. As I failed to grab ahold of anything, I sank down onto the floor, everything started to fade.
The tile floor against my back sent a chill down my spine.
“Somebody… please help me,” I croaked, as the blood spat out from my mouth.
But nobody was here.
Nobody was here to stop the blood.
Nobody was here to stop my own death.
As the world around me blackened, nothing had ever felt clearer.
The night Dad pulled the trigger, I’d started choking on his goddamn blood.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Awakening
A screech left my mouth. My eyes shot open, and I kicked the covers off. As I looked around the room, noticing I was back in my bedroom—my bedroom in my own house with no posters and barely any furniture in the room and no signs of a father who had shot himself.
