🖤BUD🖤

Chapter 2

Aunt Amalia takes over dad's office and sits in his chair. "Okay, Alex. Nightmares... How are they? Do they still keep you up at night? Are you still having them?"

Flashes of dad's face bloodied, the ringing of his voice breaking through the mind control. I could still feel the blood flicking onto my face.

I shake my head. "No... I've been sleeping like a baby, guess the NyQuil is working like a charm."

"You're such a bad liar Alexandria. You're going to have nightmares especially after what happened. You and your father have suffered severe trauma. I know you've been through a lot but talking about it can really help me have a better understanding of what happened and how we, as in your father and I, can help you."

"I know. It's just hard trying to figure out what to say... everything that's happened doesn't seem real. I don't know how to talk about it because of that."

Amalia gets up and leaves the room for a moment before returning with an old looking book. "Here. Let's start journaling."

"Journaling? What am I twelve writing about my crush? How will this help?"

She clears her throat. "Well, it's a starting point and if this doesn't work we can try something else, okay Alex? You can write about how the day was, normal day things. You can carry this around with you too. If you're feeling anxious, jot down your thoughts on why. And if you have a vivid dream write it down and how it made you feel. Just write something everyday and we'll go over everything in about a week so you can get some stuff down."

"Do you really think it'll help Aunt Amalia?" she nods. "Okay. I'll try."

* * *

I felt warm air blasting against my face, I was driving looking around confused on how I ended up here and when I looked in the passenger seat i-it was grams... "Howard, dear put some tunes on. The radio these days is horrible." she smiled.

I pulled out a cassette tape and popped it into the player. I watched hands tapping the steering wheel as "I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey & Frank Sinatra.

Grams grabs my hand. "I'll never smile again until I smile at you." I sing in gramps' voice. "I love you darling. When this job is over then we are done running serums for good and we will just focus on our business." I looked at her as she had the biggest smile on her face.

Next thing I know I hear a motorcycle roaring up and it flies beside us swerving. "Howard!" Grams scream out as I hit a patch of ice, the right front tire hits a rock just enough to flip the car into a ditch. I came to and realized what just happened.

"Maria?" I turn my head to the side enough to see shards of glass with blood running down. "Maria..." Footsteps approached the driver's side. Still suspended from my seat belt, I struggle to look toward the approaching stranger. "Help my wife! Please. Don't worry about me, just see if she is ok." I hear the all too familiar sound of a hand gun's slide being drawn back and slam forward. "No! Please!" CRACK!

I jolted up in bed with a scream to see that dad and Aunt Amalia were trying to wake me up. "Are you okay?" I stared at my hands in silence, shaking. Dad tried touching my shoulder, but I jerked away. "Monkey... Pepper, can you make her hot rose tea? Please." Dad turns back to me.

Pepper starts heading out of the room. "Yeah, of course."

"Are they always this bad, Tony?"

Dad shakes his head. "They get bad, but never this bad. We never had to physically wake her," he says. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I looked at them. "It was about grams and gramps... they got into a bad accident, that's all I remember."

Aunt Amalia crossed her arms before looking at dad. "Tony, can I talk to you in the other room for a second?" they leave the room. "Did you ever tell her about what really happened to mom and dad?"