Chapter One

14 2 0
                                        

Teal:

I was twelve when my world was pulled out from under my feet. My father, who I loved dearly, died leaving a gaping void that felt like it would never be filled. Almost every night since that fateful night I have had lucid flashback dreams. The moment the police officer explained his remains had been found burned will forever be ingrained into my memory. It was odd knowing I was dreaming. Experiencing a lucid dream while watching yourself from above like a ghost is slightly bizarre. As I watch from above, I notice the instant my younger self's movements shake and falter, just before she slumped and fell in a heap on the hard-oak floors. The glass she had been holding shatters as it hits the floor. Staring from above at the glass shards and left-over orange juice littering the floor, I feel a fleeting sense of anger that my mother had drugged me. Watching my younger self as she lay there on my bedroom floor, her raven black hair splayed out haphazardly around her head. She wears the faded blue jeans and the black tank top that I had once favored. I cannot help but wish I could turn back the clock and reach through time and space to warn my younger self. Gazing at her, I can't help but realize how naïve and innocent I was at this young age. I felt void of physical feeling, void of the normal human range of emotion. Just detached as I watch everything unfold from above. From my vantage point, the woman I have always thought of as my mother sneers at my younger self who lays in a heap on the floor.

"You pathetic thing. You were never a daughter of mine. I told him, I never wanted you, but no, he brought you home anyway. He would never listen when I told him you were an unnatural abomination. In the end, he loved you more than me. He left everything to you and Derek equally. The stupid fucking fool left nothing to me or our actual daughter. It was not supposed to go this way. He was supposed to die and leave the house and everything to me! NOT YOU! But you bewitched him."

Derek was my adopted brother, who I had gotten along with. He and I had been like two peas in a pod, as thick as thieves growing up long before I had any idea that I had been adopted. It made sense that Dad would leave him most of his money and property as an inheritance. The money meant nothing to me without my father. There were some things in life far more precious than the almighty dollar.

Cerci, my adoptive mom ran a hand through her short blond hair then leaning over she spat on my unconscious form.

Internally, I thought, "hold up! What does she mean? None of it made sense. How couldn't I be her child if they both had adopted me? An unnatural abomination?'

Questions bounced around in my head as I float above, watching without the normal range of emotion one would expect in such a situation. She walks over to a closet in the hallway and puts on latex medical gloves. The sound of them snapping snug against her hands echoes in the small space. It occurs to me she probably got them from the doctor's office she works at. Watching numbly from my viewpoint above, my mother turns back into the hallway closet just outside my childhood bedroom door. Pulling out a box of rags, gas cans, bags of dirt, and bloody clothing, she bends down, placing the bag of dirt on the floor before opening another bag. Pulling out a bloody shirt, she places the red and green plaid colored shirt in my unconscious hands. The metallic smell of blood and gas drifts to my younger self's unconscious senses as my lucid self-floats closer to view the blood-soaked piece of clothing she placed in my hands. Viewing it closer, I realize it was my father's shirt, the one he had worn the last time I saw him alive. Her angry footsteps stomp back towards the closet, where she took out a second box and placed it on the floor. Kneeling beside my still form, she rubs blood-soaked clothing on my jeans. Done with the blood-soaked clothing, she reaches for a bag of dirt, before proceeding to grab a gloved handful, rubbing it onto the soles of my younger unconscious self's shoes.

"You should never exist, but since you do, I see no choice but to get rid of you," she sneered as she reached for a box she had set down earlier. Opening the box, she pulled out a bag with a bloody knife inside. Placing the bloody knife in my still hands, she wrapped my small fingers around the handle.

Tidal Vortex-Book OneWhere stories live. Discover now