by T. Rudacille
***
The memory I have of us leaving her house for the last time is as clear to me still as it was the day it happened. I remember how she insisted on locking the door and how I knew that she was just trying to preserve the smallest bit of normalcy by doing so. I remember how we walked hand in hand down her driveway to my car that was still parked crookedly next to the curb. I remember how she looked back, tears streaming from her eyes, at the house she had grown up in. I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling but I would be able to feel it in reality with no imagining necessary soon enough when I said goodbye to my parents. Even though Alice was convinced that we could make them believe that the world was ending, I still thought that they wouldn’t. Though they would still be alive when I left them, they wouldn’t be for long. In both cases, our goodbyes to the people who had raised us were equally final, despite her mother already being dead and her father being missing.
“Just give me a minute. Okay? I’ll call you in if I need you.” I told her.
She just stared out the window at the sky that was beginning to darken over our heads. The drastic change in the weather was enough to convince me of the impending end of the world. The sun never broke through the thick, threatening clouds; we were in a state of perpetual night. I wondered if anyone else found the overcast days and pitch black nights as ominous as I did. People who hadn’t had the dream would surely shrug it off as just a nasty bout of depressing weather, but I knew better. I found myself staring up into the sky as I walked to the front door of my house.
I turned the doorknob and pushed, being greeted not by the familiar smells of the many strange concoctions my parents invented for dinner but by the distinct iron-like smell of blood. My heart dropped immediately as the realization gripped me; when I had left the night before, another one of those things had come for me. My parents had awoken, aware of a strange presence in the house. They had been killed mercilessly as they stood between me and the thing that had broken in, completely unaware that I was already gone. Their sacrifice was, to say the very least, completely in vain.
I didn’t stumble back at the sight of their bodies lying side by side in front of my closed bedroom door. I didn’t collapse into a fit of tears. I didn't scream hopeless, desperate questions to no one in particular, demanding a reason for the merciless slaughter of my parents.
I lurched forward suddenly as the few bits of food I had eaten over the past day came tumbling from me like my body was trying to expel some deadly toxin. After I wretched and gagged and wiped the tears the exertion had forced from my eyes, I did start screaming. I screamed like I was staring the devil in the eyes and like I was being cut down the way my parents had been.
It’s amazing how in the face of trauma, we revert back to the neediness we had as children. I was young still, but old enough to know that Mom and Dad couldn’t solve all of my problems for me. Yet as I stared down the darkness that had scared me so much as a child, all I wanted was for my parents to run in and tell me that it was all just a nightmare.
Alice and I were so young, and we needed the people who loved us more than anything in the world to solve the ominous riddle of what to do for us.
But they were gone, and I realized, even through the immediate grief I felt at the loss of my parents, that Alice and I were on our own forever.
Violet
It happened while I was sitting in class, staring out the window as a light snow began to fall from the clouds. My teacher was rambling on about cell mutations and the impacts they have on an organism. I knew that even though I wasn't listening.
“It's snowing!” A girl in my class exclaimed, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes; the sudden change in the weather wasn't exactly worth a disruptive outburst. Plus, that girl was in the clique that I despised: A drama nerd whose second interest was writing emotionally charged prose to describe her trivial high school conundrums and mundane hormonal changes. We had Creative Writing together, and every time she shared a piece she had written (which was every freaking day), I tuned her out completely and doodled in the corner of my spiral notebook.
My sister was the one who recommended that I take that class in the first place. She was smarter than me by a long stretch, but we both shared a love of books and writing. I had wanted to become a novelist one day. Our parents told me that unless I wanted to write an autobiography, my dreams of becoming a famous writer would never come true. My sister told me that I could do anything I set my mind to, though she immediately chastised herself for using such a trite expression to encourage me.
“Thank you for pointing that out to us, Emma.” My best friend and sarcastic partner-in-crime, Miranda replied after looking up from her notes. “I'm sure we would have all walked outside without our coats and in cut-off shorts if you hadn't informed us that it's snowing!”
She mimicked her overly excited tone on the last part and waved her hands in the air like a drunken middle-aged bar hopper trying to dance with her younger counterparts. I covered my mouth as I cracked up hysterically. Miranda was the more outspoken one between the two of us. I tried to keep my scathing sarcasm to myself whereas she wore it on her sleeve for all the world to see. I needed that, my sister said. I needed someone who would say what I was thinking so that I might one day learn to do the same. Yes, my sister did frequently talk like Yoda.
I learned everything I knew about life from my sister. My mother's high-class career left little room for focusing on her children. So my big sister, the second-oldest of us all, had to pick up Mom's slack. I had only just realized that as I began to go through the trials and tribulations of adolescence. When I needed help navigating those stormed-upon, erratic waters, my mother would turn away, clueless as to how to assist me. My sister knew by instinct and from experience exactly what to do and say, always.
I loved her for that.
“Thank you, Miranda.” Our teacher said, in slight exasperation, “Everyone, eyes up front, please.”
Our class, who like ferrets with ADHD had turned abruptly to the windows at Emma's outburst, turned back around, muttering about what a heinous so-and-so Miranda was. I looked at her, expecting to see some indication of discomfort at being discussed negatively by our peers but as usual saw nothing but the deepest apathy. I couldn't shake the smile from my face.
“I don't even care.” Emma shot loudly at her friend who was staring back at us, muttering no doubt about how bitchy Miranda was.
Emma certainly looked like she didn't care, if the way she rolled her eyes and shrugged several times was any indication. She raised her voice and said grandiosely, “'Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.'” She turned back to face Miranda, “That’s Mark Twain, in case you didn’t know.”
Now, I know that Emma must have thought she was quite clever for quoting Mark Twain verbatim. Unfortunately, she underestimated Miranda's own knowledge.
“How long did you have to skim through quotes online to find one that might be applicable to real life?” Miranda asked her, “Is that what you do in your spare time when you're not writing pathetic little essays about your closeted boyfriend and your fake suicide attempts?”
“Ladies, that's enough!” Our teacher snapped, “May I continue now, Miranda?”
“Sure, blame Miranda...” Miranda said as she held up her hands in mock surrender, “Continue.”
I shook my head slightly, still grinning, before returning my gaze to the world outside my window. I marveled at the number of kids who had done that very same thing over the years. They had sat exactly where I was sitting, staring out the window, dreaming of the moment the bell rang and they were free. I don't know where my sudden burst of nostalgia came from. My sister would tell me later that my reminiscence was so strong because somewhere in my subconscious, the deeper, more instinctual perception of foreboding was emerging, and as a result, I knew what was to come.
I don't remember the moment when I drifted off. Biology was my
long period that day, and we still had over an hour left of class. My teacher's voice was droning on, and the snow was falling softly outside; the sight of it was so calming, so picturesque… I didn’t even realize that it was lulling me to sleep...
A high pitched whirring sound that caused an entire city to fall to its knees. Everyone holding their ears and screaming so loud that their faces were turning red from the effort, and I still couldn't hear them over the screeching sound. Then, a silence so deep that it rattled my brain. It lasted for such a long time; a minute and a half felt like an eternity. Then, an explosion that shook the earth beneath my feet. A tidal wave of fire was barreling towards me rapidly, and there was nowhere to run. There was no escape from this fiery death. For a split second, I felt it swallow me, my skin blasting off, every nerve ending screaming in agony...
I was screaming in agony and in terror when I awoke. As soon as my eyes opened, I saw that the entire class had turned to me, their faces betraying shock, and in a few cases, amusement. I jumped up, sweat pouring off of me like a last defense against the burns I had just suffered.
“What?! What is it?!” Miranda asked as she stood up, too.
“I'm...” I started to say as my teacher walked around his desk to approach me. I pointed at the door, unable to speak now.
“You're fine. Go ahead.” He told me, nodding. His brows were furrowed, and his face conveyed something more than just concern. There was recognition in his eyes that I didn't understand.
“I'm going with her.”
“Yeah.” Mr. Barnes nodded, and Miranda came running out of the classroom after me. I was walking as fast as my legs would allow. They felt weak, and I acknowledged briefly that they were trembling worse than the rest of my body. My sister would tell me later that my survival instinct was still working; my body was trying to save itself from the stream of fire.
The stream of fire... What was it? Why had it been so real?
“Hey, crazy!” Miranda grabbed my arm and turned me around to face her. “What happened? Oh my...” My appearance halted her mid-sentence. I was still sweating, and my face had gone far beyond the white of a ghost's skin. “You need to go to the nurse, Vi. You look terrible.”
“I need to go home.” My throat clenched, and tears started to fall from her eyes. “I just want to go home, Manda.”
“Okay. Come on. We'll go. Mr. Barnes will explain what happened if we get in trouble for cutting. Let's just go.” She grasped my hand, and the contact comforted me more than I would ever have said. We passed teachers and administrators without stopping, walking right out the door into the frigid winter air.
It was the cold that snapped me back to my senses. I started telling her about the dream, rambling on and on with all the grim, terrifying details.
“It was just a dream, Vi. You're just freaked out from it. I remember this one time I had a dream that my teeth were falling out and I woke up...”
“This isn't like that!” I snapped at her, raising my voice to a volume that I didn't intend to reach. “This was... It was so real!”
“All dreams feel real like that, Violet.” She sighed, and I remember how grating that arrogant dismissal of my fears was to me. As she turned the key in the ignition, I started to feel my cheeks getting hotter as I became aware of my irritation.
“Miranda…”
“Plus, that wasn't just a dream.” She continued, undaunted, “It was a night terror. Remember in Psych what...”
“You don't understand. It was just...” I shook my head slightly, bringing one trembling hand up to my face to rub my eyes.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Home.” I replied instantly, “Manda, if you knew what I had seen...”
“You just told me what you saw. It sounds like the apocalypse to me.”
“If you knew how it felt to see that...” I corrected myself, “I think...”
“What?”
“I think the end of the world is coming.”
“The end of the world?” She asked me with so much skepticism and sarcasm in her voice now that I could have slapped her. “It was just a dream, dude. I get that it feels real to you still, but you just had it. In a couple of hours, you'll be fine. I told you, I had a dream once about my teeth falling out...”
“This was nothing like the dream where your teeth were falling out! That's a vanity thing, Miranda! This was... catastrophic!” I yelled at her, and luckily, we had pulled into my neighborhood because she slammed on the brakes, angered by my outburst.
“I'm just trying to make you feel better.” She told me bitterly, “But if you want to believe that you just had some sort of psychic vision and now you have to save the world, then go for it. But I'm not going to tell you that I believe it!”
“You don't know how it felt! You don't know how real it was! I know this is something real. I know it! And I don't need you or anyone else to believe me!”
“Yeah? Then what are you going to do?”
“I'm going to...” I stopped because in that moment, when my frustration had built to such a point that I couldn't control it, my purse that I had put up on the dashboard slid onto the floor. The car lurched forward despite the fact that her foot wasn't on the gas pedal. The lights on the dashboard started to flicker on and off, and the radio blared in our ears at full volume.
“Turn it off!” I screamed at her, covering my ears. But as she reached for the dial to turn back the volume, the car stopped by its own will. Everything was silent, including us.
“What was that!?” She screamed before pointing an accusatory finger at me, “It was you!”
“Me?!” I exclaimed, stunned that Miranda, who was always so logical, could believe something so ridiculous.
“You were angry, so you...” She was frantically trying to explain exactly what I had done and when she came up short (a first for her, believe me), she looked back at me in a terrified rage.
“Get out!”
“What?! Miranda...”
“Get out! You're a freak! You're... insane! You're...”
“Manda, I didn't do anything! Your car was just being weird!”
“It's never done that before! It was doing that because you were mad! You're just...” Another frantic search for an explanation or maybe even an insult, “...a freak!”
“I didn't do anything!” I cried again, tears now starting to stream from my eyes. “Manda, please, I need you to help me. I need you to help me figure this out! I can't do it on my own!”
“Well, then, call your freak sister and get her to help you! You've both always been freaks!”
I should have walked away after that. But I kept begging her, quite shamelessly, to help me. We had been best friends for almost four years, and she had always had a solution to every problem we encountered. We had never fought or disagreed. She had become the first source I went to if I needed to be comforted once my sister moved out. During those times when I needed her, she always knew what to say. It was almost stunning how easily she was able to rectify any fear or sadness I felt.
But she insisted that I leave, threatening to call the police if I didn't. Finally, I knew the battle was lost, and I obeyed. She sped away, her tires squealing and slipping on the ice that had covered the road. I stood there on the street, crying and swiping at my eyes, watching her car move further and further away at a hazardous speed.
I have an awful habit that I learned from my sister. When I cry, I feel weakness. She was so good at forcing her sadness away to some deep, dark recess inside of her that our parents worried that she harbored sociopathic tendencies. When she felt any level of despair towards anything, she flipped some switch in her mind to anger, an emotion that, in her not-so-humble opinion, was far more dignified. Everything came back to anger with her. That particular tendency didn't abate my parents' anxieties over her potential for depravity.
I was not nearly as skilled at suppression as she was. But as I watched Miranda's car speed to the end of the street, I felt my sadness
flip abruptly to anger. I was furious that she had abandoned me when I needed her. I was furious that she had called me a freak. But above all else, I couldn't stand that she didn't believe me.
It wasn't her fault that she doubted my story. I wish I had known that then. I'll never be able to express how strongly I wish that.
I don't know exactly what happened, but as that rage gripped me, I heard one loud pop that was actually the sound of four tires exploding simultaneously. I watched Miranda's car veer sideways suddenly. Even from where I was standing, I could hear her feet furiously stomping on the brake pedal. The snow silenced what would have been a deafening bang as the car slammed, head-first, into the lit street lamp. The bulb inside flickered twice before going out.
As quickly as that anger had taken me in its grip, it dissipated. It was a snap of the fingers, a jolt that happened in less than a millisecond. It melted away like the flakes of snow landing gently on my face. My mind went completely blank as though every memory and every bit of knowledge had been wiped away in one swipe. I was running to the car but didn't realize it. My footsteps were being erased by the rapidly falling snow. The snow... I didn't even feel it anymore, nor did I feel the cold air that had made it possible.
When I reached the car, the grief was immediate. I had no way of knowing if Miranda had died, but I was sure that if she was still drawing breath, it would not be for long. I felt around in my pockets for my cell phone before I realized, with a sickening turn of my stomach, that it was back in my purse at the far end of the street.
I know that I felt it. Just as I had turned to run towards where my purse lay in the snow several yards away, I felt her heart stop beating. I felt her life dissipate. It is a sensation that I can’t describe to you, except by saying that it was like a sudden lightness had come over me, as though what had essentially been the heaviness of life-- of a heart filled with blood, lungs filled with air, a brain filled with thoughts and worries and memories—was gone, and it had been abruptly replaced by a heavier fear, a disorienting displacement, and heartbreakingly childish confusion. “Where do I go?” “What happened to me?” I could almost hear her asking me, but I was frantically trying to tell myself that I was imagining it.
My knees buckled, and I was lying with my face in the snow as horrified, frenzied sobs shook not just my physical body but my soul, as well. You could never imagine it, or maybe you can, given the state of things.
I don't know for sure if the accident was my fault. I will never know for sure if I killed Miranda. Most people wouldn't want to know, but honestly, I would give my dying breath for that certainty. If her death was my fault, she deserves for me to suffer for it. She deserves to watch from above as the guilt I feel drives me insane. Even though I couldn’t control it, if in fact it was my burgeoning power that had caused it, I still deserve to suffer, because she did not deserve to die.
I looked up after several long, truly agonizing moments. I wanted to run to the car, pull her out, and give everything I had left in me to revive her. But the thought of her mangled body brought a wave of warmth from the pit of my stomach that came spewing out onto the ground. Once the last of it had fallen from me, I was in the clutches of another bout of tears that sent me falling sideways into the snow.
If there are words for that kind of longing regret and harrowing guilt, I cannot find them, even after all these years have passed.
Brynna
“I realize that you're getting tired, but unless you want to die right now instead of when the end of the world occurs, I would not suggest you letting me drive.” I snapped at James as I furiously cleaned my glasses with a terrycloth.
We were both tired, hungry and cold. We were cold because for some inexplicable reason, the heater in his car had broken. We stopped the heated disagreement we had been having to stare at it in shock. Then, we tried to blame the faulty heating on each other, quite ridiculously.
“We are an hour from your house, you said. I'll grab the wheel in the event of an emergency.” He snapped back at me in a voice dripping with sarcasm.
“No, you will not, because you will be asleep! Is that not why you want me to drive in the first place? Something tells me that while you're dozing peacefully, you will be unable to stop a fatal car crash from occurring. Given that I do not want to die nor do I want to commit vehicular manslaughter, I need you to remain conscious.”
“I wasn't planning on going to sleep. I was just going to rest my eyes. I've told you that now like, seven times. Has it absorbed yet?!”
“You will not be alert either way! If you want to place your life into my hands, then pull over, and I will drive.”
“No. Forget it. You're never going to let me hear the end of it if I make you drive. God, I thought you said you were a genius...”
“What in the name of all deities and Gods does my proven genius have to do with my ability to drive in inclement weather? I don't drive in the snow!” I threw my cigarette out the window in a huff, “Where did the snow even come from?! It was somewhat light this morning!”
“Somewhat being the key term there.”
“I knew you were going to say that! Just focus on the road, please. I do not wish to die today, and the snow is falling heavily...”
“Is that my fault, too?”
I exclaimed loudly in annoyance, my eyes wide.
“God, you are insufferable!” I grabbed the lever on the side of the seat and pulled it, pushing backwards until I was lying flat on my back.
“Don't even go to sleep right now.”
I lowered my sunglasses and closed my eyes.
“No! That is not even fair!
“Okay, it's not fair.” I rolled my eyes, “What are you, twelve?!”
“Just shut up.”
“What?!” I grabbed the lever again and flung myself up, the seat following behind me, “Lest you wish to swallow every last tooth in your mouth, do not tell me to shut up!”
Almost two days without sleep and almost twenty four hours without food turn even the calmest (James) and the smartest (me) people into squabbling, immature children.
I frowned when I brought my hand back from the side of the seat. The lever that moved the seat forward and backwards was in my hand.
“Did you just break something?” He asked, his exasperation evident as his eyes stayed fixed on the road.
I glared at him and reached my hand over. After a moment, I dropped the lever into his lap.
“Damn it, Brynna!”
“I'm sorry that the people who constructed your fancy, high-dollar, electric car were more interested in aesthetics and environmental preservation than quality.”
“Do you always have something to say? Some smart-ass remark?!” He yelled, turning the windshield wipers up to the next speed as the snow began falling even more quickly.
“Turn your lights on.” I said, just to prove that yes, I did always have some derisive comment up my sleeve. I grabbed an issue of Men's Health that was on the floor of his car. On the cover, there was some buff movie star posing in a loincloth for a film that the headline exclaimed was made for well over two hundred and fifty million dollars. Even if the world wasn't ending, the film would probably bomb.
“Is that interesting?” He asked me.
“I thought we were shutting up.” I replied coolly.
“I never said I was shutting up, and since when do you listen to me? I'm interested to know exactly when that started happening.”
“I'm not listening to you. I'm not talking to you because you're irritating me. So I am going to read this very interesting issue of Men's Health.” I was silent for a minute, scanning through an article but absorbing not a single word. The silence between us was raising the hair on the back of my neck.
“Do you find this sexist drivel interesting?” I asked him, and he sighed heavily.
“Just when I was starting to enjoy the quiet...” He muttered, and I took my time rolling up the magazine before I whacked him hard in the arm with it.
“I will make you a deal, James Maxwell.”
“Okey-doke, Brynna Olivier…” He replied sarcastically.
“I am normally quite unskilled at socializing with people from any of the various intellect levels. However, I find your inferior intelligence to be quite engaging, and the bottom line is, I just can't stand the silence right now. So, I propose that we talk like the rational adults I know that we both are.”
“I'm sorry...” He shook his head slightly in disbelief, “Did you just say that I am of inferior intelligence to you?”
I put the magazine on the dashboard delicately, “That question and your random apology prove it.” I lit a cigarette and rolled down the window slightly.
“Are you being humorous?”
“Proven again.” I told him, shaking my head slightly.
“I'm being serious. Are you joking right now?”
“I don't know.” I asked, exhaling smoke at him, “Am I?” But a grin was tugging at the corners of my mouth that he saw when he glanced over at me. I raised my eyebrows and gazed back at him impassively.
He laughed quietly to himself and shook his head, muttering, “You are something else, I'm telling you.”
We were quiet once again, and I could see clearly that he was enjoying the lull in conversation. I turned my head to look outside, blowing smoke rings and watching them quickly evaporate upon meeting the air that whizzed past my open window.
“What I find interesting...” I said, and he exclaimed in only slight irritation, “...is that you've been like a bull for the past hour and I, the red cape. Our arguments have ranged from the sensible to the absolutely ludicrous. It was only when I insulted your intelligence that you were calm. Why?”
“It doesn't carry any of the significance you think it does. I was just humoring you. Now, why do you think Men's Health is sexist drivel?”
“Look at all of these advertisements they run. I mean, it's better than Cosmopolitan, surely.”
“Is that the woman's magazine that's all about how to please men?”
“Indeed, it is. I am surprised you know what it is.”
“I go to the grocery store like every other human being on the planet.”
“I am just surprised you made a note of it.”
“I am also surprised I made a note of it.”
“Our world is strange. Our culture is strange. There is such an emphasis on how we look. These magazines are an example of it. We pride ourselves on our pride, if you will.”
“I will.”
I smiled and chuckled softly.
“Shut up, James.”
He grinned, too.
“Do you think that's why the world is ending?” I asked him, serious now.
“Why? Because magazines make us feel bad about ourselves and force us into believing we have to change our appearance to fit their standards? I think it's a little bigger than that, Brynna.”
“Don't be condescending.”
“Why not? You're condescending.”
“I am trying to make sense of this right now. Catch a bubble.” I replied hurriedly, holding my hand out in his direction but not looking at him.
“What the hell does that mean?”
I took a deep breath and puffed my cheeks out as I held the air to demonstrate. For a moment, I thought he might slap me. Then, his face broke into a smile.
“That's clever.”
“I cannot take credit for it. Please know that what I just showed you was born from a moment of whimsy we cannot afford.”
He drew in a deep breath and exhaled, rolling his eyes.
“You're so weird.”
“Perhaps. Now, be quiet and let me stew over the topic. I should have an answer to my question momentarily.”
“I don't think there's any way to know for sure why this is happening.” He replied instantly, and now I was the one rolling my eyes. “I do understand what you're getting at, though. Is it our vanity, our lust, our depravity as a whole that made some higher power want to snuff us all out? Do we deserve it?”
“Do we, James?” I asked, looking at him now.
He was quiet for a long moment, pondering the question. I thought about it more in depth throughout that silence than I had previously. I was not religious in any sense of the word, but I had studied most religions extensively. I was fascinated by the blind devotion of those who followed a specific creed. I wondered where their resignation came from. I wondered how they could glory in the grace of a Creator whose sole endgame was to smite the earth. In Christianity, there was the notion of the Rapture, as I had been told. The good people would be taken to heaven before the fireworks started. There was the Book of Revelations, the most epically disastrous and depressing ending to a book in the entire history of the written and spoken word. In Hinduism, there was the Kali Age, where the world would cease to exist because it was meant to, and to hell with whoever remained. Some religions, like those followed by the Native Americans and Mayans, had symbols whose meaning told of the impending end for us all.
All religions knew that this was imminent and all had their different take on why it was so. I prided myself on having all the answers when a logical question was posed. But this was beyond logic. This was what those spiritual people would call “faith.” I marveled at it and was beguiled into a silence that was uncommon for me.
“I just don't know, Brynna.”
James's voice struck me down from the philosophical speculation in which I was engaging, and I was quite grateful, though his answer to my earlier question brought no relief.
“We'll never know.”
I nodded but said nothing, reaching for my cigarettes again. I was momentarily confused by the way my body was suddenly trembling when I looked up to see a figure lying in the road.
“Watch out!” I exclaimed, and he slammed the brakes. The force from the sudden stop sent me flying forward, and since I was bent down trying to retrieve my purse, I was going to smash my face against the dashboard. But James's arm jerked out in front of me, stopping the movement before one blink. The car slid forward on the snow but stopped just in front of the person lying. Whoever it was didn't move.
“Oh my God or Gods...” I muttered, seeing a car that had slammed into a light-post. I jumped out, unsure of how to proceed. Anyone inside of the wreck was surely dead, but the girl on the ground could have been alive.
“Brynna!” I heard James yell as he got out of the car. On the cold, abandoned street, with the snow falling around us, I ran to the girl lying down in the road, with only the sound of the windshield wipers moving every few seconds in my ears.
“Oh my...” I muttered as the recognition gripped me. My feet slipped and slid in the snow, but I ran faster until I was right above her. The girl turned over and squinted up at me through the tears that were pouring from her eyes.
“Brynna?” She asked, and I fell to my knees beside my sister. My arms furiously scooped her up into a sitting position.
“What happened to you? Are you okay?” I asked her hurriedly, putting both of my hands on her face, “Violet! Were you in the car?”
She shook her head and pointed at the wreck. I am not the person to turn to when one needs comfort, as my own emotions do not function in a way that could ever be described as normal. I can feel concern for someone down to my core, as I did with Violet then, but that should not suggest that when there is an emotional outpouring, I can remedy it. I did not know why she was pointing to the car or why she was crying. If she hadn't been in the vehicle then she more than likely did not know the person who was.
“I'm going to call 911.” James said from the car, “She's dead, but they still have to come get her and clean up the wreck.”
“No! Don't!” Violet jumped up and ran towards him, taking his cellphone right out of his hand, “I did this!”
“You did what, Violet?” I asked her with one hand rested on her arm.
“I c
aused it! It's my fault!”
“You said you weren't in the car!” I told her, throwing my hands up in frustration, as I always did when a situation was just not making any sense to me. I did not enjoy when my enhanced mental abilities were trumped by mysterious and illogical circumstances.
“I wasn't!” She sobbed, “But I was... I had this dream... and...”
James and I looked at each other as she threw her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder. By then, she was out and out wailing, but the sound was drowned out by my rushing, panicked thoughts. Both James and I knew that there was only one dream of which she could be speaking.
“Well, you were worried about having to convince them.” James told me as he turned us both around and started walking us back to the car. “See? The hard part's over.”
Her grip on me was so tight that I couldn't break free to get back into the front seat. So I maneuvered us both into the backseat and wrapped my other arm around her to pat her head awkwardly. James watched us in the rear-view mirror, and I could tell by the way his eyes were squinted that he was smiling slightly at my discomfort.
“Shut up, James.” I muttered, and he didn't hide it anymore; he laughed softly, despite the situation.
“Who is he?”
“I'm James. I know you're Brynna's sister, but that's about all I know.”
“He's making it sound like I have not talked about you extensively. I have. She's Violet.” I told him.
“I could make a really ridiculous joke right now to lighten the mood.”
“Please don't.” I replied with another eye roll.
“Okay.”
“Vi, who was in the car?” I asked her bluntly, the tenderness that would be most comforting to her completely absent from my voice and demeanor. I didn't try to be so cold. It just happened.
“It was...” She started crying harder again, and I heaved a great sigh of frustration, resigning myself to the fact that I would probably never know. “Can you please put your weird emotional tendencies aside for two seconds and just be my sister!?”
“What are you even talking about? I am embracing you, aren't I?” I snapped at her in offense. I was unsure how she could suggest that I never comforted her. Or perhaps I was just flustered and irritated that she had called me on my strangeness and complete lack of knowledge on empathy.
“You've gotten so weird since you moved out! You used to be able to make me feel better no matter what was wrong! Now you're weird!”
“Alright, you are very upset right now.” I told her, “And you're saying things that would be hurtful if it weren't for the fact that I...”
“...that you're a cyborg!” She exclaimed, pulling away from me, “I just killed Miranda!”
“Miranda who?” I asked.
“Miranda! My best friend Miranda who you've only met like, a hundred times!”
I had seen the girl around the house every day of every summer since Violet had been in seventh grade. The two young friends were inseparable from the moment they had met. Why Violet would resort to murder to dispatch her best friend, I was not sure. A simple “I think it's time we go our separate ways” would have sufficed.
“Stop having weird thoughts! God, they're so loud!” She shrieked as she covered her ears. My heart plummeted several feet, and my stomach churned dangerously. My threshold for tolerating strangeness was beginning to lessen. Violet was telling me now that she could hear the mental dialogue occurring inside of my head. The fact that she could read into my innermost thoughts was upsetting to my mind, which valued its privacy, my heart, which worried for the implications such a power would surely have on our lives, and my stomach, which was finding these rapid succession of surprises utterly intolerable. I ran my fingers through my hair as I tried to keep my breaths steady.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, and when she didn't answer, I grabbed her arm and shouted, “Violet, what are you talking about?!”
“I am well aware that this keeps getting stranger and stranger.” Violet told me, “That's what you just thought. 'This keeps getting stranger and stranger.' I don't know what's happened to you today...” She stopped, looking off at something I couldn't see, “Brynn, what...”
“What are you doing right now?”
Her shaking hand grasped the bandage that was wrapped around my forearm, and her eyes traveled up to gawk at the one on my head.
“What could have bitten you like that?”
The bandages were covering the wound. There was no way she could have seen them and determined that they were bite-marks.
“Violet, stop it!”
I didn't know what I wanted her to stop. Something about the sudden change in her, though, was giving me a feeling of unease that made my mind twirl and drop in a nauseating, indiscernible pattern. James had parked in front of our house and turned around to look at us, his eyes wide with curiosity and concern.
“When you said that...” Violet was looking at me now with her luminous, searching, brown eyes, “They cut off. When you told me to stop, the stream stopped.” She shook her head slightly and whacked herself in the face with both hands. “What is happening to me?!”
She threw her arms around me again, and this time, I squeezed her back as my love for her and my fear for her exploded inside of me; that blast swallowed everything in its path.
The explosion. It was coming.
“Listen to me.” I took her head and lifted it somewhat abruptly, “I want you to go inside and pack a bag. We know what's coming. We know what you saw in your dream.”
“An explosion and everyone...” She stopped to breathe heavily with one hand grasping her chest. I put my hands on her face.
“Violet, I need you to focus. I need you to pull it together just for right now. Later, we'll talk about everything. James and I will explain everything we know, and anything that you need to say, you can say it. But right now, we have to get the hell out of here. Understood?”
I hadn't barked like a drill sergeant rousing his lazy troops but I had certainly come close. A new urgency was consuming me now. It was reminding me that with each passing second, the imminent end moved closer and closer. We were running out of time.
Violet nodded, and in a voice trembling with the same pure, child-like terror that I was beginning to feel but refused to show, whispered: “Brynna... what were those things?”
I shook my head.
“Later.”