Inferno

Prologue

Lily

It happened on June 26, 2016. My sister Jessica Ruins was murdered. Our normal white picket fence American family changed in a matter of seconds. Arriving at the farmers market. We were none the wiser. She is the oldest child. Then it was Jake, Sam, then me. Our mother passed away from a car accident when I was two years old. I never got to fully know her. It's been us four with our dad Jeff. He is awesome. At least he used to be. He took us to sports, and waterparks, and always came to me and Jess's dance recitals. And Jake's football games. Sammy was still trying to figure out what he wanted to do in life. He played basketball for a while but hated it. He tried baseball but stopped when his grades started to fail. I did dance for a while but had been looking into theater classes at school. Jess said she wanted to stick with dance because she is good at it and loved it. So why change?

When Jess wanted to go to the jewelry. I offered to go with her but she wanted to go by herself. We said bye and she headed off. We saw the cool paintings, looked at the exotic cars then started to head back. We were exhausted since Dad insisted to go see the cars which took two hours because he had to stop and look at all of them and talk to the owner and get pictures etc... " Alrighty now let's go find Jess and head on home. I am tired. " Our dad says. The three of us stop walking and stare at him. " You're tired? " We said in unison. He laughs " Alright now

don't turn this on me. You four wanted to come here. I had to practically beg my boss to let me have the day off. We all have to spend time with each other, we aren't going to be around forever "

We continued and Jake noticed that the jewelry booth was empty with a sign that said Be Back At Four pm. " Hey, isn't this where Jess said she would be? " We all looked at the booth and didn't see Jess anywhere.

" Maybe she went to a different booth. " I said

Then Jake frantically pointed at Jess " THERE SHE IS! " He shouted. We all looked in the direction of where he was pointing and I can't say for my brothers and our dad but my whole world stopped as I saw my sister tied up and gagged being dragged into a white van that was in the middle of the walking path in the market. They shoved her in but before they closed the door she saw us and spit the gag out of her mouth and started screaming for us. I'll Never forget it. The look in her eyes was as if she had seen the depths of hell. The scream sounded agonizing. The trepidation in her voice. I don't have words to describe it. And I don't think I will ever be able to. The doors slammed shut. It was silent. I started running Faster than I have ever run in my whole life. Our dad ran ahead of us. He then tripped and fell to the ground. He had sprained his ankle. We caught up to him. He stared at the van expecting it to take off. He shouted so loud that people heard him from a block over " NO!!!! " But the van didn't take off. They shoved Jess in there. Then we saw the men running out of the other side and away from the van. Jess was in there by herself. Then the loudest head-splitting, ear-piercing detonation erupted from the van. Ablaze of inferno flames filled the air as the van was ripped apart by the explosion. It took me forever to realize what had happened. But when I realized it, I didn't say anything. I dropped to my knees, wrapped my fingers in my hair, and screamed as loud as I could. 30 minutes passed by. I had started to groan. More time passed and I started hyperventilating. I ended up lying on the ground. My heart and soul felt like they were trapped in darkness and there was nothing I could do about it. Jake was crying trying to get to the van but was being held by strangers. The pain in his voice was similar to someone experiencing a high volume of pain. Sam was crying. He was holding onto a necklace that Jess had given him. praying to whoever was listening to bring her back. Our dad stood on his feet for the longest time and then dropped to his knees. He didn't cry, scream or call out. He simply stared as the flames of hell took his baby girl. I got up on my knees and made eye contact with our father. The amount of pain I saw was as if he was being burned from the inside out, it was gripping torment. Finally, someone pushed play on time, it was no longer frozen. Everything started moving fast. The firefighters were putting the fire out, paramedics were checking DNA and the police were trying to control the crowd of people and ask us questions.