Wraith ; Semblance

by Riley Mason

  I couldn’t open my eyes without adding a bleeding dose of pain to the excruciating pain I was already in. But I saw it. I saw exactly what she wanted me to see. With my eyes closed, forced there not to make the pain manageable but to keep the pain from driving me to insanity, I had to watch.

  There was a knock at the door, I barely noticed it. There were cartoons on television. Bugs Bunny was eating a carrot, there was a smile on my face as I sat there Indian style in front of the screen, my older brother behind me, a fresh new teenager having celebrated his thirteenth birthday not a few days before, watched with me. He didn't want to, it was my dad's idea to have him do it, to keep us close, to keep us connected despite the age gap that wedged in between family during teenage years.

  I could remember being happy, ignoring the door knock even when I looked back to see my parents look at one another and then my father checked the time on his wrist, confirming it was early. “Who is that?” my mother asked, a question I knew my father had no answer to, he was just as curious as she was.

  I watched Daffy Duck explode and a burst of laughter fell out of me, a smile spread across my face so big that my eyes closed and I slapped at my knee.

  Never once did I see my dad go to the door, heard his voice when he asked who was on the other side of it, nor saw the knob turn as he let in a change of fortune that would take me years to understand.

  I froze when I heard my dad scream. I looked over to see a long knife sticking out of his shoulder and blood vomiting from where it was pushed into him. I let out a scream, it was the only one I ever heard, when I got up and ran to a closet on the far side of the house and hid inside of it.

  The pain was horrendous in my head. It was someone with a needle on a string and was dragging it around the soft tissues of my mind. Threading this memory for me to not only see and be a part of but to relive it for every memory that it gave me.

  From inside the closet, I heard screams, commotion, and mumbled anger. None of the words were clear to me but the shouts came through with precision. I maneuvered my hands to my ears, clasping them there to not have to hear what came to them.

  I remembered the memory I was seeing now, one of the only ones that survived what I had learned to repress and bury, one that I couldn't quite forget.

  The sound of someone getting up, even with my small, tiny hands on my ears, I heard it. I heard that sound of my mom, her voice squealing in horror. There was a small tremor in the ground, someone running toward me.

  The closet door opened and I saw my mother there, her face covered in so much red that I could barely recognize her until I hear her voice. Until her hands drew down to me asking for mine in return. I was terrified but I knew my mother wouldn't hurt me, I was safe if she was there. That nothing could go wrong once my hand met hers. But it never did.

  A hole was drilled through her forehead, an explosion so loud it felt like it had ripped the inside of my ears out of me. Everything around me went quiet while the sound of ringing played slow and steady. My mother's blood spattered onto my face. I looked up to see her face had gone still, trapped in that moment of panic while her hand reached out for mine. Until she fell over and never moved again.

  CHAPTER 57

  I screamed. A sound that had no business soaring out of a child and I froze. Tears were sliding down my eyes and I had no idea where they had come from. It was like my body was congested, clogged from all the different emotions trying to move on their particular highways through my body. Traveling on roads that didn't quite exist for an eight-year-old.

  I remembered how hard my heart had beat in my chest. Even at that age, I thought it was bound to explode.

  That's when I saw the rest of what was happening. How the scene on the other end of the closet door had unfolded as my mother's dead body lay there next to me. From behind her, I could see the man in thick black clothes and a hood standing there with a gun in his hand.

  I saw my brother and my dad on the ground, blood leaking from my dad, the knife sticking out of my brother’s back, both of their eyes stared off to nowhere because even though their eyes were open, I knew they couldn't see anymore. They couldn't see because nothing worked, this man had stopped them, stopped everything.

  I froze when he looked at me, realizing there was still someone in the house, someone who was still breathing. All the memories I took in on this day were so advanced it took years for me to make sense of them and in those years I’d learned how to cope and maneuver them to parts of my mind I felt were expendable. That I could leave something this sinister there and not mind what it decays.

  The man who changed my life pulled the knife out of my brother and began to walk toward me. I backed up, burrowing myself in the closet, behind the clothes and the shoes that occupied the small room. I pushed my dad’s old jackets and some of my mother’s scarves and sweaters in front of me.

  "Get the hell out here," a rough voice said as I closed all the clothing that surrounded me into my face as if it was going to hide me better, as if it could save my life.

  I saw hands reaching through the shadows, sliding through the folds of the fabric, one hand with a glove on it, the other with a glove and a knife. I struggled, and when I did, the tip of one the blades steps into my shoulder and a scream rockets from my mouth.

  I felt him try to put his hand over my mouth, to stop the siren that I’d just let off. When he did, the blade slid against my arm, tearing at the skin just below my shoulder, just underneath where he’d pierced me with the tip of his blade.

  Pain aside, I fought. I squirmed and I thrashed to make sure he couldn’t get ahold of me, it didn’t matter that there was nowhere to go in that closet. My small mind and immature hands knew that I had to do this in order to protect myself. To keep me from being dragged out. To keep me alive.

  Finally, his hands were on me. They were too big to fight off once he’d got them around me. He was strong, even with me hitting his forearms it was almost like hitting bricks. As he dragged me out of the closet, I wanted to scream but his hand was sealing my voice inside of my mouth, trapping it in my throat where it couldn’t come out and help me.

  That’s when the man was jerked around, some force spins him and, in the process, he dropped me hard against the floor. Hard enough to hit my head, hard enough to have blood start to seep out of me.

  I wiped it away, the struggling hand of a tired child wiping their hands on their face awkwardly. “DAD!” I screamed when I see what had happened in front of me.

  CHAPTER 58

  I watched as the man who raised me, a man I loved with all the love a child’s heart could hold, was stabbed in the stomach with the knife that this bad man used to quiet everyone in the house. To kill everyone I’d ever loved, the only family that I would ever know to be mine.

  As my dad fell to his knees, the knife stuck out of his stomach and the stranger stood over him, watching him on his knees, waiting for him to die.

  I stared at his face, an image that will forever be burned into some part of my memory I couldn’t always gather but I was sure was always there. The same memory I had of my mother’s face with a hole burned through the center of her forehead. The last image I had before I was showered in her blood.

  My dad looked at me, blood and spit spill like a string from his lower lip, his hands hovered next to the handle of the blade like he wanted to pull it out but he wasn’t sure if he could handle the pain that would come along with it. The man who had changed my life waited there for a man that he’d never met to die, waiting to take the last love of a little girl away from her.

  Low moans were falling out of my father just as fast as blood was now. It was dripping down his body, oozing onto the rug that he was kneeling on. The man stood there in his work boots like a tower over what was left of my dad.

  Then he bent down, at first I didn't know what to make of it, my first definitions of murder were the ones that I actually saw rather than one I'd read in a book. He spoke to my dad but I never was able to ma
ke out the words that he’d said. My heart was racing too hard in my chest, the sounds of those beats inside of me were like symbols colliding.

  I saw my dad had something in his hand. I recognized it as a gun. I watched, I waited, as he pulled it up to the man who’s bent down in front of him, the man who changed his life as much as he’d changed mine, and my dad fires right in his face.

  I ignored the blood that’s come out of him and instead I crawl back to my dad who’d fallen down on his side, the blade still in his belly, his face still in an enormous amount of pain.

  When I crawled to him, he grabbed my arm and I could see that he wanted to move me away not wanting me to see what I’d seen but I thought then he realized there was no changing what I’d seen. There was nothing that he could do to turn off what was already in my head, what my young eyes had had to endure.

  His breaths were shallow, weak, there was a strain for every one of them he tried to pull into himself and his whole body shook as he lets it back out. "Aly," he said to me, his voice a whisper of what I was used to, now it was so faint, so weak.

  I nodded my head, ready to listen to him.

  “I love you,” he said as his lips went dry, his hands went cold, his body froze exactly where he was.

  I pushed him, gently in the shoulder. Then a little harder to make sure that he felt it. His eyes were open, he couldn’t be sleeping, adults didn't sleep with their eyes open, neither do kids, no one does that I’d ever seen.

  "Daddy," I said again, my voice was stronger than his was, it was also tangled in panic and fear that I was all alone. "Daddy," I repeated again, louder, this time I shoved him at the same time that I called out his name.

  He didn’t respond, he didn't move. I knew that he was gone but I was holding onto some reality that no longer existed. One that he’d made it through tonight. That someone who loved me survived this one single night that had changed everything.

  Tears rolled down my eyes, my lip trembled, my heart collapsed. Again, even at my age, despite my legs working, I crawled to the wall that overlooked the massacre in a place that I felt safe no more than an hour ago. I cried until I was found. Until a concerned neighbor decided to call the police, until he decided to investigate the noises himself. Until he walked in the door and found a little girl surrounded by the homicide of four people with her at the center of the carnage.

  CHAPTER 59

  The pain softens in my head. Not enough to feel its bite but enough for me to open my eyes, to see that room around me is no longer my parent’s home, at least not the living room. Not the night they were all killed.

  Instead, I'm in my parent's bathroom, I'm no longer seeing these memories from the girl I was but rather the woman that I am now.

  I manage to get myself up to my feet, stabilizing myself on the bathroom sink. The cold of the tile still presses into my skin when I’m up and off it, it sends goosebumps all over my exposed flesh and a shudder up my spine.

  My breath is low and hard to catch and there is a sensation in the pit of my stomach that calls everything in there to come sweeping up to the surface as I wretch into the sink.

  Violent turns of my stomach send the lack of food up through my throat and out through my mouth. The back of my throat is burning, my eyes are inflamed and tearing as my body rejects everything inside of it.

  The sounds my throat makes, the gagging, the constricting of the tubing in my body almost makes me sicker than the sight of what falls out of me. Absently, I twist the water tap on to get it running, to dilute what came out of me so it can get down the plumbing and out of my sight once and for all.

  I cup my hand under the water, splash some on the inside of my lips, carefully swallowing only the tiniest bit so that I don’t upset my stomach further.

  When I'm done, I turn the water turned off, I look up at the dirty mirror. Scuff marks and fingerprints cover the milky surface of and distorts the image I'm trying to pull from it. Of the girl who's looking back at it, studying her image exactly how it is.

  I know I’m not in the lab anymore, there is no single bathroom in the hospital that matches this design, that is this neglected, that is this broken.

  My eyes are inflamed, almost a shimmering red as the crimson mixes with tears that have swelled between my eyelids but haven't quite fallen just yet.

  With the back of my wet hand, I set my palm on the mirror and start to brush away some of the scum that’s accumulated. The water on my skin clearing at least some of it until there is enough exposed for me to see my face.

  I study the image that reflects back to me. See the flaws that have grown inside of her, mock her in whispers in my own mind, because I’ve learned there is no person in life I can judge as hard as this woman looking back at me.

  I know I should be kinder to her, affectionate, even sympathetic. I know what she’s been through. There is no one who knows the intimacy of her story like I do. But I can’t be exactly sure what version of myself I’m looking at. What Aly in what timeline is this?

  Closing the tap, rubbing the last of the scum that’s collected on my palm into the sink, and using the old, olive-green towel that hangs from the wall to dry my hands, I look around the dark, forgotten room. The frosted window that shares a wall with the shower is covered in rust and mold. Rust has eaten away the porcelain white basin of the tub and where the drain is evolved into some form of black and green from water that was never really drained all the way.

  I hear something, the whisper of metal touching down on porcelain like something was just placed down gently on the sink. I turn to look and it dulls everything inside of me.

  CHAPTER 60

  I grew up in this house, in this bathroom my mother used to give me baths when I was too big for the sink to do the job. She’d run the water, checking it insistently until she was satisfied with the temperature pouring out of the spout.

  When I turned back to the sink, the small song of metal dropping down into the basin was for me. Laying there, open and stained was my father’s straight edge. The razor inside of the holder was fresh but bloody, blood from whatever it had pierced was strolling down into the sink, sliding down under the drain with no water on.

  I stare at the design on the back, the black and silver that always reminded me of some hot rod I’ve seen in the movies. Two cars drag racing to a cliff to see which one of them not only wins but swerves before the car goes toppling over the edge. Down into the ravine that waits.

  My fingers slide across the blade, something I've spent hours watching my father do. Pouring his shaving cream into a bowl, one that my brother and I had made him, that told him we loved him, covered in hearts and balloons and smiley faces. Slathering up the brush he always used with the foam and then slowly brushing it along his face. I'd say nothing while he did it, not wanting to break his concentration. As a child the rules of coloring are the most important thing in the world, watching my dad color in his face with menthol shaving cream was worth the sacrifice of my patience.

  I’d watch as he slipped the blade into the piece, careful not to catch his fingers on the sharp edge and then go to work. Stretching his skin out at different angles, maneuvering the blade to get clear and clean cuts on his face.

  Years after the murder, coming back into this house, I thought I was stronger. That I had grown defenses for what had happened here. That I was a survivor, that’s what they had told me in those group sessions that had insisted none of this was my fault. That I was just a child and there was no way in the world I could’ve altered fate that night.

  They said I was trained to handle this grief, evolved to be able to live with it, if not completely forget it. I, on the other hand, was desperately trying to sink these feelings, bury these emotions in any soft land I could find.

  I did it to test myself. I hadn’t visited the cemetery for a long time, only a handful of times in the years I was old enough to go without foster supervision. I didn't want someone to come with me, babysit me while I scour through emotions, e
xpose me as I cry. I was told I was stronger than that, that emotions can run free and I should never be ashamed of the judgment that follows them.

  I found out my family was killed because my dad had filled a prescription for a painkiller at a pharmacy that had a junkie scout waiting there and followed him home, they knew there would be a full bottle of pain meds in the house. Twenty pills killed everyone I would ever love.

  I had wandered up to this bathroom, reminiscing throughout the house. Inheriting old feelings and emotions, stirring up the evil ones, and I found it. Most of what the police had swallowed into evidence was on the first floor, almost nothing from up here was touched except for the neglect. I was taken out of the house, there was no one here to tend to it, to care for it in the same way my mother did. Its woman's touch had dissolved, instead leaving a wary, gloomy feeling in the air, one that made me sick to my stomach.

  When I had discovered that blade, it was set and ready for my daddy the next morning. He had started doing that because he said he was too tired to do it in the morning. His eyesight was on its way out, and he wasn’t sure he could trust it with angling a razor sharp blade.

  I hated the idea of my parents aging, it scared me—my mind traveling to the next logical thought after aging.

  I remember holding the blade, thinking of him at that moment, an abyss swallowing me into all those memories I was trained to handle, like some type of soldier to nightmares and grief and tragedy. I was an infantrywoman, on the front lines, one of the expendables, one of the many necessary and understood casualties that would come out of this. I knew they were feeding me shit and I let them because I wanted it over. I wanted to grieve and console myself in my own way on my own time, not by their schedules or rule books.