TO LIE WITH MIDNIGHT ROSES

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RENESSA

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I remember the police finding my parent's phones, thrown outside in our backyard. Checking through my house and finding the living room torn apart, which they assumed was domestic violence. 

They found their bodies a day later, a suicide pact they said. A wife kills her husband and then slits her own wrists. It made the paper, it was a small, rural town in British Columbia. 

Everyone knew. 

Everyone knew the story that wasn't true and I wondered if anyone would ever know the truth, or if they ever should. 

I didn't return home for a while after that. The days turned into weeks, into months and then blurs of darkness. I felt numb and that's when I decided to go back. 

I entered through the back door of my home, surprisingly it was still unlocked as I entered the boot room. Making my way now through the living area, pillows scattered across the floor with broken glass from lights that had been knocked over, picture frames scattered off the walls lay amongst the floor. Blankets and ripped papers, a vase of dead flowers lay upon the carpet in a dry stain from where the water once soaked through; a sea of misery.

I make my way upstairs. They squeak beneath me and it's too loud in such a quiet home. 

My bedroom door is still open, untouched from that night. I flip the light switch on. Entering the room, I see the dent of the door handle is still freshly indented in the plaster of the wall. 

It was silent but I could hear the screaming. My comforter still has the indentations from where my mother and I once sat, where our eyes last met before all of it.

I could feel the pulsing of my veins again, I hadn't felt it since that night. They were aching and throbbing, a pressure building beneath my skin and up my forearms reaching the tips of my elbows. 

Tingling fingers and a rush of adrenaline as a burning sensation ripples through me and I can feel the scream that bellows out from deep within my core but I cannot hear it. It's silent in my head but my body is releasing a sound I've never heard before, something so unnatural. 

I feel the tidal waves of my own tears pulling me under, drowning me in their sorrows.

My breathing is quick and heavy now and I find myself gasping for air between my sobs. I focus on finding five things I can see around me. Trying to find a way to calm myself.

One, I can see the telescope, left the same way it was that night.

Two, I see the closet door, open, left from where I was supposed to hide.

Three, I see the comforter, the one my mother had switched out after I had gotten blood on it the night before.

Four, I see the window. It's shut and locked, both the curtains were drawn open, exposing the trees that lead into the forest.

Five, I see my reflection in the glass. I see my eyes, glossed over and puffy and my flustered face and mess of brown hair.

I drag my fingertips now along the nightstand, tracing them through the thin layer of dust that had collected, feeling it beneath my hand as I try to ground myself. Using a technique my mother had taught me. 

Find four things you can touch, she always said, so I did.

I touched the nightstand, and then the lamp, letting my hands lead me to the window frame and I traced my hands along the wood of it and then I brought it over to the curtain, gripping its fabric in my hand then bringing my other one up now too and collecting it in both of them. 

Then without thinking, I find myself ripping them down hard and fast to the ground. The metal pole falls from the wall, clunking against the wooden floor and through my tears, I let out another scream. 

The lights flicker.

I think I can hear my mother's voice.

"That's it darling," she says, "Now find three things you can hear." So I do. 

I hear my heart pounding in my chest, then I can hear the howling of the wind outside as it rustles the branches and the fall leaves whip across the window and I can hear a clock and it's ticking, I can't see it but I can hear it and now, I can't seem to focus on anything else.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

With each tick I found a wave of anger washing around inside me, sloshing up against a shore and sucking me in its hungry waves. 

I needed to find it, I needed it to stop. 

Everything needed to stop.

 I can't stop myself from what I do next. Tearing apart everything that lays before me, anything that stands in my way and my throat is burning, searing from the ferocious screams that rip their way through me as my blood boils. 

My fingertips are growing hotter and hotter and I can feel the wind outside like it's in my veins. The howling of it stirring in my own stomach as it bellows through my body and out my throat. 

I'm ripping apart the bed, knocking over picture frames, kicking piles of clothes that were left sprawled across the floor and then I find it, hiding in the corner under a couple of old blankets, pillows and books sits an old yellow clock. One I used to keep on my nightstand, and I remember now the ticking before that kept me up at night.

 I remember now the time I woke and ripped it off my nightstand, stomping over to the other side of my room and shoving it beneath the blankets and pillows as I muffled the sound.

I hold it now in my hands and I'm angry.

 Angry because it's loud and all I want is quiet or maybe because it has been quiet for too long. But mostly I find myself angry because I never took the batteries out, angry because it's still here and they're not. 

It's still alive, ticking away the time with each passing day while their bodies rot in a casket six feet underground.

Then, I feel my hands grip tighter around the round yellow clock. 

My eyes glazed over from the storm of my own emotions and that's when I feel the lightning and the next thing I know I'm screaming, falling to my knees and smashing it. 

Over and over bringing it up and down, in the air above my head and down again - connecting it against the hardwood floors, over and over until it stops. 

The ticking stops like a heart that was once beating and my screams turn into wails.

I grip the floor beneath me to steady myself and let out one last blow, taking the clock and smashing it one last time and as I do the lights start rattling, the wind outside picks up and then it's dark. 

The silence is cut through by sharp glass shattering around the room. The light on the ceiling, the lamp and the window exploding all together, all at once as the final wail escapes me I feel the tingling escape through my fingers and into the floorboards like electricity.

I'm brought out of the memory, my hands gripping the floor just like I had done that day in my room and my heart was pounding in my chest. I can feel a wetness on my cheeks from where tears had escaped my eyes but before I can open them a body is met with mine, a chest colliding with my back as thick tattooed arms wrap their way around me and shelter me from the blow. 

An explosion of glass fragments flew around us scattering upon the ground as I cry out and I hadn't realized but the heat in my body was seeping down into the floor, rumbling beneath my fingertips and I knew I had done it again.