AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My father's face scrunches up as realization seems to hit him.
What does he mean?
He shakes his head and goes to speak when a bullet to the head silences him.
His eyes don’t close as his body jolts in surprise. It takes my brain a minute to understand what’s happening. Then he falls, his muscular arms that used to spin me in circles until I was dizzy drops like they are no longer capable of holding his weight. His bright blue eyes seem to turn gray on the screen in front of me as he lies on the ground, blood pooling around his head.
I look at the screen in horror, every memory of playing games and learning to dance, every laugh and sweet moment becomes tainted with the stream of crimson soiling the floor of my childhood home.
My stomach turns, and I feel like I’m going to faint. I move back to vomit all over the floor in front of me. My chest heaves and I struggle to pull in a breath. It’s like my lungs no longer want to breathe with just the thought that the man who gave me life is no longer living in this world.
I try to steady my breathing, just like my father taught me. When I look up, I see the same man who killed my father now looking at Mama. She doesn't look afraid, or even bothered by his presence, and I know she knows I’m watching.
“Where is the girl, Liv? Tell me and I can make sure you see her again,” he says looking at her like she’s something to be devoured. I internally cringe as I realize just how much worse this night can get.
“We both know that's a lie,” she says calmly. “Evenifsomeone of your power could manage to pull that off, it would not be a life I would want to live.”
The man's fists clench and I can see he is holding himself back, but I don't understand why.
He draws his gun, pointing it at her, and asks, “Any last words you want me to deliver to your daughter when I find her?”
My mother's face goes pale, the only reaction she gives him at all. Then she looks right at the cameras, right at me and her face softens.
“Never be afraid of the dark baby girl. Darkness can be a friend to those who learn to harness its power.” She smiles and looks the man right in the eyes as her final words pass through her lips. “I'm quite confident you will never find her. But don't worry, maybe one day you’ll be worth something more than an errand boy.”
He sneers at her, anger contorting his face before he leans back and spits in her face. She hardly flinches, only to close her eyes to keep the vile venom out. Slowly and gracefully, she wipes a hand over it and smiles back at him.
“You never could control your anger, it will be the death of you.”
“At least I’ll be the death of you.” The man pulls the trigger just as he finishes the sentence, and I watch as my mother's lifeless body falls to the ground right next to my father's.
The sound echoes through my skull, lighting a fire in its path. I fall to the ground and scream. I scream until my voice no longer works. I scream until the tears are gone. I scream until there’s nothing left.
My body shakes and the tears no longer come to my eyes, no matter how much I beg for them to pull out the pain. But they refuse and I’m forced to feel every moment my heart breaks as I endure this process of grief. Over the next eleven years, I’m forced to endure a roller coaster of emotions while my control is slowly stripped away from me.
Denial hits me first like the force of a hurricane. I convince myself this is all just a dream, that any moment now, I'll wake up wrapped tightly in my little cocoon, inside our safe room, with my parents asleep in their cots.
When that doesn't happen, and instead I wake up every day now under my uncle's care, the ache in my stomach refuses to dull. Instead of lying around and denying reality, I’m forced to move on and live in a world where pieces of me are broken beyond repair and will never be whole again.
Anger washes over me like a tsunami, pumping fury through my limbs, leaving nothing but a fire in my soul as I begin to train with my uncle. I stand up and slam my fists into everyone and everything I can, relishing in the burn as my skin busts around my knuckles. When the fire is gone, leaving nothing but ash in its wake, I decide to set my sights on my real enemy. I put all of the good memories aside, closing them up in a tiny box in the back of my mind so no one can touch them. So that no one can use them to make me feel as helpless and as useless as I do now. I won’t let myself be weak ever again.
Bargaining with the devil and all the demons that do his bidding is something I thought only happened in movies. But over time, I beg, knowing no god could come to save me if this is what happens to children in his world. I offer my soul as a sacrifice in exchange for them to be back at my side as I lay in this prison camp and begin to accept my fate. When the king of hell ignores my cries and turns his back to me, I fall into myself again and wrap up all of these thoughts and ideas of them ever coming back to me and giving me no choice but to move on.
Depression clouds my mind as I lay there feeling numb and hopeless after my uncle found me. I let the evil it brings eat away at every part of me, morphing me into someone darker, something monstrous. I beg it to just take me so the pain will subside. When it doesn’t listen, I work against it. I wrap the darkness around my heart until it’s as if we are standing side by side like old childhood friends. I mix it into my mind, forcing me to be stronger. I use it all to fuel the monster buried deep inside me until it obeys and comes to sit right at the surface. I take a deep breath in, acknowledging and allowing all the hate and hurt I feel in my heart to have its moment. When I exhale, I release it all in order to move on to the next phase of my grief.
I command my brain to accept that there are people in this world capable of making someone an orphan. Capable of killing their parents in cold blood in their childhood home. I make myself realize that evil exists and it’s surrounded me every single day of my life, I was just too blind to see it. Evil lives in the blackened hearts of these murderous monsters and I believe that, in order to ever feel safe again, I will have to become one of them. Then, and only then, can I move on to the final stage.
This is the stage psychologists won't talk to you about because it's not pretty. It's the stage that ignites a fire in the darkness that I now control. The stage that won't bring them back, but will eventually help me move on.
Revenge.
Chapter 1
“They were found dead in their home. Bullet to the head. Execution style,” my secretary reports to me.
Panic like I’ve never known before grips me. “Where is their daughter? Where is Eydis? Is she hurt?” I have loved that girl like she was my own since the moment she was born. I was one of the first people to hold her other than her parents, and the thought of her dealing with this alone or being hurt makes me physically ill.
“She was nowhere to be found.”
