The Blood Lake

The After Math

After hours of driving, I arrived home, with 3 missed calls from the police department. I'm not ready to deal with them right now...don't they understand I'm traumatized? I just lost the only two people that matter to me. Of course, I have my parents but they were my only friends and nobody knows they are gone other than the authorities. It's like the world is quiet. Not in a literal sense but in the sense that my world is quiet. I'm holding this burden on my own. Until I walk through that red front door. When faced with it all that comes to mind are three images that will forever be burned into my brain; My favorite emerald sweater, Mel, and Marcus radiating the same pigment, I quiver. It's 7 am so the neighborhood is just starting to liven up. I felt weird like if somebody saw me they wouldn't see a thin brunette dressed in sweats and a crew neck as if she just returned home from an early morning jog, but a girl with matted hair and a crimson-stained sweater covered head to toe in the blood of the man that killed her best friends.

Reluctantly I open the door, unlocked as always, but now that unsettles me. I guess coming close to getting murdered does that to you. I walk in to find my mother, her hair is tossed into a bun and she is wearing a robe over her pajamas, she sips from her coffee mug but as she peers over the top she flinches and swiftly sets her mug down. "Oh, my heavens Dellah Anne you scared me half to death." She states dramatically. Wrong choice of words. I just stand there. I don't know what to say or how to tell my mother that the kids she had a hand in raising since the age of 6 were now worm food. "Delly..what's wrong, why are you home? Where are Marcus and Mel?" She says as if she had read my thoughts. Strange how mothers can know your true feelings no matter how hard you try to mask them. "Mom..." I say holding back tears. "They aren't coming back".
"What, why what happened?"
"There was a terrible-" I almost said accident but what happened at that lake was anything but.
"There was this man and he...he" I started to sob. "He cut Amelia's head right in two and then he used that same chainsaw, to stab Marcus in the gut and pin him to the great oak in the, the woods and then he chased me to the lake and, and then I took the chainsaw and I killed him...I killed him, Mom, and then dumped his body in the lake...I'm a murderer." I hiccuped. Mom stood there stunned and I don't blame her. She probably needs a few seconds to process the loss of two kids she loved as her own and the fact that she almost lost me as well, not to mention that I murdered somebody in the process even though the bastard deserved It. Tears streamed down her face.
"Oh sweetheart, you're not a murderer. He was, you were protecting your life Delly."
"I don't know what to do, the police want to question me-"
"No not happening, you aren't getting questioned without me and your father present."
Speak of the devil. Just as the words part from her lips there he is walking down the stairs with bed head and his flannel pajamas. He has no clue what train wreck he just walked into but he will in a few minutes.
"There's my Delly Belly.. what are you doing here so soon?"
I hate when he calls me that, and I don't think that nickname suits me anymore anyway, and as I look at him, so does my mom.
"What? What happened, why do you look like you saw a ghost? Elenor...Dellah...Tell me." He's puzzled and concerned. I want to tell him but I can't so my mom takes over.
"Andy....there was a terrible...." She can't find the words just as I couldn't.
"The kids they uhm...there was this man in the woods near the cabin and he had a chainsaw..." she started to choke. "He killed Mel and Marcus...Dellah Ran and managed to...use the saw to...kill him, and then she pushed him into the lake and came home..." Dad was stunned just like Mom but instead of the tears his mouth formed a line and he just stood there.
"Andrew.." Mom whispered. He walked into the kitchen without a word.
"Mom...." I started to cry.
"Dell he's not mad at you he just needs a minute".
"Ok. Can I go to my room? I haven't slept in 24 hours"
"Of course honey anything you need.." she watches me head up the stairs then I hear her footsteps trail into the kitchen

I enter my room, it's the same as it was when I left. The pictures of us on the walls, little Polaroid reminders of what I lost. I sat on my bed and just stared at the wall. That's when I heard my parents arguing downstairs. I think Mom gave him the rest of the details I gave her but couldn't manage to repeat them to Dad. "You can't just walk away from her like she's traumatized and she doesn't need you making her feel guilty." Mom quipped trying to scold him for his reaction. But I deserved it because I was guilty. If I had told Mel to stay and not go into the woods in the first place she would still be here and Marcus wouldn't have bolted in after. If anything should be dead with them.
"Elenor what was I supposed to say?" Snapped dad in response "Our little girl isn't so little anymore not to mention she nearly died and killed a man all in the same night."
"Really Andrew? You were just calling her Delly belly now you're ranting about how she's not an innocent child!"
"Elenor I love our girl and I'm glad she's home safe, but do you know what this entails?" "The press is going to be on us like flies on shit, not to mention the parents do Mae and Jack know?"
"I don't presume so...Dell did call the police so maybe."
"And what about Charlotte and Richard, wait till they Find out about Mel they will be shattered."
"Well obviously, they lost a child. Everyone is heartbroken including me, I loved them as my children Andrew" Mom started to cry, I don't know if I should go downstairs or pretend to sleep. So I do neither and hop in the shower, technically when I cleaned up at the Lake I didn't clean up all the way just a sink bath and a change of clothes. I need a hot shower to clear my head. I enter the bathroom and slip off. The crew neck and joggers, remove my undergarments, and throw them into the hamper. I then turn the shower up to what I swear is next to boiling and hop in. As I dunk my head under the water I can't help but think about the sound that filled my ears when the body of that monster hit the water, I back up from the shower head and sit, my chest starts to cramp and suddenly I can't refill my lungs with air and I start to hyperventilate. I have never felt like this before it's like I'm drowning which is ironic because that's exactly why I feel this way. His face is burned into my brain just like Amelia and Marcus's, there forever. I calm myself, get out and throw on some leggings and a sweater that's two sizes too big, and start to descend the staircase then I'm stopped by the sound of my ringtone. It's the police.