The Don of Night✔

Twelve

"Have you done the exercise?" Evelyn asked.

Ellie did not.

She debated whether lying to her therapist would be worth it. She would probably prolong her time here, claiming she's not progressing.

Was she?

She wasn't sure.

After her parents' deaths, it was taking her a very long time to balance her life. She just couldn't get it all together without tying everything back to them.

Everything- so her therapist stated, was tied to her trauma of losing both her parents at the same time. And, until she can somewhat heal from it she would always be fragile when it comes to taking risks.

Ellie knew Evelyn was right. Yet, how to heal from it was what had Ellie stumped.

The day she got the call that her parents were dead was the first time Ellie felt what it may feel like to have a heart attack. 

She can remember how it literally twisted in her chest and how the edges of her eyes became dark.

She has never dealt with being asthmatic before, but that day she felt every bit of air left her lungs. 

It took so long for her mind to comprehend it.

To even fathom it

What stuck out to her, even more, was that when it happened, she remembered not crying. 

Although her entire world was sent off its axis, she remembers becoming mute. Speechless.

She wished denial had set in like the way she heard it normally did, but it was like she accepted it all and then shut down. 

So many emotions ran threw her that she didn't know what to do with them. 

The images of her parents laying side by side, ghost-like, and with eyes closed were haunting. 

She didn't know why in her mind she needed to see them at that moment. 

She could have waited for the funeral, but she just had to see them. 

Her mother's black hair was loose around her face and her straight nose was bruised along with her sharp cheeks. Her father, who looked exactly like Vincent, but in an older version stayed by her side even in death. His eyes were sunken and his lip busted. 

Ellie knew that they were cleaned up because the way the mortician explained it, they were badly injured due to the car accident. 

Yet, even while she stared at them that day, her mind imagined their lively faces. Her mother,Valerie had golden eyes and plump lips with full lashes. She had straight black hair that reached her shoulders and Ellie loved braiding it back for her. 

Her father, George with his peppered gray hair and beard that he took so much pride in because he said that just made him wiser. His kind eyes that crinkled on the sides when he laughed with the deepest rumble Ellie have ever heard. 

The last words to both of her parents echoed in her mind, "See you guys soon"

They were out and she was home waiting for them to commence dinner.

Not any other dinner, but their family dinner which was so much different than others.

It was every Wednesday and always at 9 at night. It consisted of them eating anything else besides a healthy and well-put dinner. It was either takeout or pizza and them just eating and chatting with one another in their dim-lit living room with the television on in the background.