Blank Stars

chapter 3

We pulled up next to Sophia’s house, it was large and white. It seemed so clean, which was comforting to me but my insides were still churning from my situation, I was far too high strung to take comfort in that small fact. I sat thinking over my hallucination, or vision or whatever it was that had occurred in Marcus’ office. Had it been real? I don’t know I used to always think that my dad was crazy for believing in the conspiracy theories that he did, they seemed so farfetched and ridiculous. 

All the adults around me as a child muttered in their closed circles about my parents. This was before my mum had died, at this time my dad didn’t like conspiracies either. The adults would never say anything to me of course, who would tell a kid that their parents are lunatics, even if they didn’t say it to my face I knew that was what they were thinking. Someone once said that my mum was just trying to solve her own problems by showing up others. The government was the perfect target apparently, something that big must have a pretty hefty shadow.

I mean just because there’s a shadow doesn’t mean there’ll be anything within it, but my mother believed there was, she worked to reveal all the dirty secrets that were concealed in the dark. Even my dad thought that mother was becoming obsessed, unhealthily so, but he didn’t do anything about it. Instead he just let her continue until the point where she was too paranoid to leave the house. Then one day she did, she up and left, said there was someone she needed to see urgently; apparently she had proof of something, not that we ever knew what that something was.

Whatever it was my father became convinced that she was killed for it, to silence her, to get rid of the threat she posed to the government. The threat of light being cast on their dirty shadows. I was young when she died, so I just believed the coroner’s when they said she had been murdered by some random serial killer. Obviously my dad didn’t believe that but he would rather his sweet little girl not know about the horrors of the world. As I grew up he would tell me stories about stars, and little by little I began to notice the small notions that all was not as it seemed, eventually the stories stopped. I don’t know why they stopped nor did I ever ask, I felt I was too old for fairy tales anyway.

“Believe in fairy tales…”

The words resounded in my head, and everything clicked into place. Finally my body began to respond, and I felt the hot air from the fan begin to warm my face and the stench of pine trees filled my nostrils ridding me of the comfort of rubbing alcohol. My eyes widened and I sat still for a moment processing everything. I would find out why they were killed, I would make sure of it. Sophia moved in her chair, turning to face me and snapping me out of my pensive trance.

“Hey honey, are you ok?”

I turned and looked at her, I looked behind her into the darkening sky, preparing itself for our daily blackout otherwise known as nigh. I returned my attention to Sophia and saw the sadness and weariness in her eyes. I gave her a faint smile as her weariness transferred onto me.

“Yeah, well a little better. I just want to sleep right now.”

She nodded and got out of the car I followed her, my limbs felt stiff as I made my way up the steps while Sophia locked the car. I waited by the door and let her by to unlock it, she opened the door and I was lead into the fairly familiar house which was, as always, immaculate. The one thing I loved about Sophia was that she kept everything so clean; it was a paradise for me. She closed the door behind her and walked to the kitchen, her movements were sluggish and so were mine. Tiredness pulled on my legs as I trudged after her. She put her bag on the counter and turned to face me, leaning back with her elbows on the counter. We stood in silence for a moment and the respite was well welcomed. I could see tears itching at Sophia’s eyes as she must have recounted the many great times she had spent with my father.