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Five | CLARA

SOTC: I Know What You Did Last Summer by Shawn Medes and Camilla Cabello

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I could tell one how every sound unfolded.

How one servant girl screamed to spare me, another clasped her eyes shut and withered into a corner banshee shrieking. The guard's profanities becoming longer than intensifying by length Roblox OOF videos as he fell to the floor from the table, promising hell I was their spawn.

But all I could do was marvel over the gun positioned in the center of my forehead.

My way out.

Out of all the reasons, this was going to kill me: another person. Not a hand of mine to stop armies of life-enders sown into them, not a fragment of my consciousness molded into their own. I truly had no idea what they'd do; what they were capable of. They could kill me on the spot right here without hesitation.

It was a miracle.

"Kill me, please," I whispered.

Sound threw itself octaves into the sky. Each servant girl cried out a gut-stabbing sob and the guard rang his last curse.

But I only continued to stare at the gun until it came.

BAM!

Not the sound of the bullet shooting through its life-ender but of the man banging it sideways onto the dark desk.

"Take her to a guest bedroom," he ordered.

Fingers jabbed into my skin as both guards yanked me out of my chair and out the office. Dazed, confused, and alive.

Quartz hallways encompassed my sight as the guards forced me through the hallways again, my feet propelling me forward to catch up until it was involuntary. With a whiplash my already throbbing head bashed into a dresser. A yelp escaped my throat as I clasped my head, making the Click! Of a door lock and fading footsteps barely audible.

But just enough that I endured the pain to sit up.

Grand windows complemented a beige interior, lined with gold borders. The same elements crafting the mirrors and many trinkets placed onto dark surfaces like the dresser my body rammed into. Such as the two vanities placed on each side of a layered, white canopy bed with the largest decorative pillows.

What in the Bridgerton-style 365 days?

I stood up and grazed my fingers against the comforter of something I hadn't seen in months, its soothingness causing my eyelids to droop of realized exhaustion. Maybe adrenaline was last in the emotions I had lost, but I guess that was for another day at life I was granted.

Too exhausted to know what was going on, no will to escape in my grips, and disappointment I knew too well, I sunk into it and succumbed to the darkness of closed eyes, crossing the bridge from reality.

Where a memory awaited on the other side.

Two Years Ago

"Oh my lord," Mom whisper-yelled, her hand over her mouth with a glare on the other table. "Her mom let her wear that here!"

My two younger sisters, Hannah and Anna, and I whipped our heads to the family sitting at the table behind us at St. Mathias Church's Mother's Day Brunch. A girl there wore a vintage t-shirt and leggings. Her outfit asked Mom for execution. Mom hated leggings.

"Tammy," Dad exhaled quietly.

Mom turned to me. "Clara, if you ever wear that, whew! I should enjoy my Mother's Day without seeing the shape of a promiscuous girl's behind."

"Yeah," I said, glancing at the sausage and eggs scattered about my plate.

"Speaking of which..." She launched backwards in her seat and repeatedly snapped her fingers. "Excuse me, waiter—"

"Mom, the waiter put peas on my plate!" Hannah whined, and I immediately recalled when she specifically asked the young waiter for peas.

"Can we eat now?" Anna the ten year old chirped.

"Not now, sweetums," she snapped at them before whipping her head back in the aisles as people got up. Then she exclaimed it. "Hi— Hi, waiter? Do you speak— Ma'am, are you coming or not?"

Dad blinked, glancing away from his wife.

Mom slapped a hand over her chest. "Hi! Oh, hi!" she chirped ever so brightly at a woman in formal attire coming to us.

"How may I assist?" the waitress asked, a breath in her voice upon taking out a pen and paper.

Mom laughed, taking a breath. "Finally! I am a God-fearing wife and mother of three daughters— all baptized!— with my husband, and I'm unsatisfied as an attendee of this church I've been a part of since I had been myself. Essentially for life. Our food is sub-par. I don't know why, since my husband helped the chef afford his house—"

"Honey," Dad murmured.

"What are you trying to ask, ma'am?"

"For a refund!"

The waitress visibly chewed the insides of her mouth. "Unfortunately, we can't do that."

"Why not?" Mom squawked.

"Uh, m-may I go to the bathroom really quickly?" I stuttered and tugged my ear.

"Go," Mom said to me before nearly snapping her neck to look back at the waitress. "Ma'am, if you've ever been marri—"

I got out of my chair and scurried not to the bathroom, but by the door out of Mom's eyesight.

"What's up, kid?" Dad asked when he came over to me a second later. It was out secret. Whenever I'd tug my ear, he'd know that I needed to talk to someone.

"Why does she always have to do that?" I whispered, my eyes stinging.

"Hey." His tall figure bent down and rubbed my shoulder. "Hey, Mom's just upset. She works around the house a lot and this brunch is a yearly deal to her. And she can just be difficult sometimes."

It was a phenomenon, how my father pulled off a voice in the sweetness of a morning songbird. He already visibly pulled women whenever I went out in public with him from the sharp features he possessed, even in his late thirties, but that voice made them and anyone overhearing him melt to the floor.

"She's always difficult," I murmured, looking down.

Dad exhaled.

"She always embarrassed us and talks bad about people... and... and I hate it so much.."

"Here, look into my eyes." I slowly lifted my head to stare in my reflection of ink stained in circles of two spheres, adding to our identical light hair and jaws. "Now whatever you do, don't laugh!"

I lost as he repeated over and over again. Chuckles sputtered out my mouth when I didn't eat my smile quick enough. It was the greatest forbidden fruit effect ever.

"Wanna hug?" he asked softly.

He extended out his arms, but I already tackled into the embrace. He rocked me in his huge, muscular arms in stiff yet light, feathery motions, like they themselves constructed a pillow to soothe anyone out of trouble. Put cruelty knit with humanity to eternal slumber.

"You're cool, kid. Nothing will ever change that," he whispered in my ears was softer on the mind than good dreams.

My voice was quiet. "You're cool, too."

Dad extended his fist. Each finger contained a tattooed letter to spell out, 'CLARA'. When Mom found out he got them, she went ballistic, but he calmed her down by saying he'd hide it in public. I extended out my fist with sharpie-made letters in the same fashion spelling, 'DADDY' and bumped them together.

"Alright, ready to go back?" he asked after a while.

"Yeah," I said as we pulled back, smiling.

As he roughed up my hair, we strode through Easter brunch to face the music of the altercation together. I'd love my caring father until my last breath.

Even after what he did to me weeks later.

Teaser: Xerxes makes a deal with Clara.