Murder at Wayne Manor

Chapter 16

Wayne Manor; July 14th, 05:16 EST

I find myself standing in the very same alley that I find myself in every single night, dark and alone and filled with utter dread. Lightning flashes and thunder growls in the distance, the air is filled with the fresh scent of rain. I shudder because I know what's coming next.

My legs grow weak as I spot a couple and an eight-year-old boy coming around the corner. I open my mouth to yell at them, to warn them about what is about to happen, but no sound comes out. Panic seizes my throat and steals my breath as the wind begins to whip all around me.

I try to run towards them in order to stop what is coming, but my legs are heavy and wooden, refusing to cooperate. I break out in a cold sweat, my body drenched and my head spinning. Nausea churns in my gut as I watch the three of them draw ever closer, so happy and carefree and together—the perfect family in every way.

And it's all about to be completely destroyed.

There's nothing I can do as I watch them, the boy swinging a sword he'd made out of a piece of paper, the husband and wife walking hand-in-hand with smiles adorning their faces. They look so in love as they gaze at one another, leaning in close to share a lover's secret that the boy isn't privy to.

Paralyzed, I watch as a shadow with a gun suddenly appears out of nowhere, moving unseen in the darkness. I stare at the boy as the man draws closer, knowing how his whole world is about to come crashing down all around him. His happiness, his sense of security is about to be obliterated and there's nothing I can do to prevent it or change it.

I can feel droplets of rain so cool against my face and I can't stop the shiver racing up my spine as I stare at the scene slowly playing out before me, just like it has countless times before. I know each and every move, each reaction and minute detail down to the sound of my mother's shrieking, the way my father crumples to the ground, the almost indecipherable sound of the pearls bouncing and rolling along the asphalt.

I drop to my knees along with the boy, tears streaming down both of our faces as the rain begins to fall harder. His pleading sobs mingle with my own as we try to find a way to fix all of this, to make what was so very wrong right again.

Blood covers his hands as he shakes his mother's body in a futile attempt to get her to open her eyes just one more time, hoping to hear her voice calling his name again. I feel his anguish and the pain that threatens to steal his sanity deep in my bones. I live and wrestle with it daily.

I hover close by as the boy collapses prostrate over the body of our mother with excruciating anguish, his small hand gripping hers and pleading with her not to leave him. With shuddering gasps, he lifts his head from his mother's chest long enough to look at our father only to find him staring lifelessly back at us, his eyes so cold and blank and empty. It's just like how the boy and I are feeling at that moment.

Sirens begin to blare in the background, but it's nearly drowned out by the cries of sorrow that fills the air around me. I've been stripped of what I love most in this life all over again, the very center of my world gone forever along with my heart and there's nothing I can do to bring them back.

I squeeze my eyes closed, desperate to erase the memories and to at last find some resemblance of peace, but it's still there behind my eyelids like a deadly predator ready to devour me and spit out the pieces of my heart. I am irrevocably changed, shattered with no hope of being made whole ever again.

I force my eyes open to find the whole scene starting all over again, every agonizing detail—their happy expressions, the flash of the gun's muzzle, the smell of gunpowder mingled with the rain, the screams, the pearls, the blood...just so much blood. I can't help wishing sometimes that he would've just killed me too that night. He pretty much did I guess. I virtually stopped living the moment they drew their final breaths.