Echoes of the Infinite (Short Story Series)

Ten: Heartbreak Girl

*Beware: Suicide

Let me guess. You wanna know why I tried to killed him? You wanna know how I did it to the person I ever loved? How I met him again was just an accident. The truth is, I was planning to forget whatever happened. In life, we are the ones who control our lives. It's up to us if we want to mess it up or to change it hoping for a better tomorrow.

My name is Shia and let me tell you my story.

*****

Looking back, I began to unravel the day my sister died, around three years ago. When I came, she was lying in the bathtub floating on her own blood. I wasn't there when it happened and I should have been. So I lied into myself. That was a bad idea. A funeral is no place for secrets. I stood by her gravesite trying believe it wasn't my fault, and then my bestfriend took my hand and whispered, "I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to say how much you love her, Shia," and that was it. I broke down. I fell to my knees, crying, the wet grass staining my blouse.

After the funeral, I didn't want to go home. And something changed. One day can bend your life, and that day that she killed herself seemed to bend mine inexorably downward. My sister had been all over me ever since - advice, criticism, the whole big sister thing. There were times I wished she was with me.

But then she did. She died. No more girly bondings, no more phone calls. And without even releazing it, I began to drift, as if my roots had been pulled, as if I were floating down some side branch of a river. Big sisters support their little brothers and sisters.

*****

I leaned forward in the green chair in the study room and thought about what my ate did three years ago.

"That bastard made my ate killed herself," I whispered. "You heartbreaker bastard."

I dressed quickly from the storage closet in study room, putting on a hunting jacket that I hadn't had on a since an ill-fated hunting trip ten years earlier. Downstairs I went into the front hall closet and found the swiss knife my daddy bought for me before.

I shut off the porch light I kept on all night. With my hand on the doorknob, I took a deep breath. I turned the knob and found myself out on the dark front porch. Closed the door and found myself standing in their front yard holding a portable knife and these words in my mind: find a quiet way.

I walked through their backyard, where I had first seen him. I passed their darkened swimming pool and rusted-out swing set. My heart was pumping, but I could not feel anything but the knowledge in my brain. Francis Lopez had killed my sister.

The wind helped me as I was trying to open their backdoor. Everything fell away. Once I was among the washed dishes on their kitchen, the silence disguised my presence. The sound of my feet gently walking on the wooden floor.

Things made no sense flooded my head - the hard rubber sound of children's roller skates on pavement, the smell of my father's tobacco, my boyfriend's smile when I met him, like light piercing my confused heart.

I took a few more steps upstairs, then stopped. Looks like no one's home but him.

My deeper self trembling. My heart bursting and out, blood gorging the rivers of my chest and then clinching up. Breath and fire and lungs seizing, releasing, adrenaline saving what was left. Charles's smile in my mind gone, my sister's memory taking its place.

"This is the time," I said. "I'm here to finish what you've started."

He didn't recognize my small voice infused with deep hate. He was in deep sleep. My heart was like a stone, heavy, carried inside my chest as I walked through his bed. He got awakened.

"Shia???? What are you doing?" He said in shocked.
"Can you put that knife down?" Now my swiss knife pointed on his bare neck.

I pushed and pushed him in the bed.

"You fucker! You killed her!" I was black and white with blame. I slashed the skin on his cheeks and pushed me away.

"No, I did not. She took her life away," Francis said.
"Remember what was she written on a white paper beside her as she was lying on that tub?"

"No? What the hell do I care about that?" I was trying but couldn't really remembered it. Francis took a rovolver on his mini drawer just in case I would attack him again.

"It was your name, Shia. She was looking for your help but you aren't there when she needed you the most." He said putting his gun down on the bed. I want her tight love for me. But I felt guilty for leaving her on that day. I was granted just one more day but I wasted that only chance.

I took the gun from him and put it in my mouth.

"I'm sorry, ate."