It wasn't pettiness driving her decision. It was pure anger.
Emma pulled up to the house, putting it in park. There was no halting how she shoved her door open then slammed it closed- she wanted him to know she was coming. She marched up to the porch.
Even the sight of the house was like a poison. Like a demon to a church. Emma skipped up the steps. It was cold day, the wind howling through, biting at her reddened cheeks. When she stood in front of the door, she was suddenly hesitant. She was debating whether or not her actions were going to be worth it. At most, her father would gurgle a drunken slur then slump off and sleep.
Then she began to think of Alex. He was still at the hospital, still so far under that the chances of his recovery were getting slimmer. It had been a couple months since she first found out that her brother dropped into a coma, and in those months nobody reached out. Emma expected people to notice his absence, or at least her deep sadness. Not even her father, it seemed, noticed.
She remembered the texts and desperate phone calls she made to him. He never picked up. Emma would sit on the hood of her car, over a small cliff down into the wilderness. The service out on the bridge she'd sit on was perfect, so she knew she could never make up for his absence with an excuse. There was never an excuse.
Emma would glance down at the darkness of the small streams flowing below the bridge. The barrier in front of her wouldn't be able to stop the car's full force. Thoughts of leaving the world passed through her each time, but each time would be accompanied with the possibility that her brother would wake up. She'd think about that scenario.
How he'd be afraid and the hospital would call her. If she drove through the barrier, her phone would be dead, they wouldn't be able to reach her. If she jumped, her phone would be there, somebody would find her car at some point. Someone would care about her absence. But she imagined how alone Alex would feel, how he would have nowhere to turn because of his temper when he heard Emma would never come back home.
She had told him that after she finished college, she would never set foot on the property. That angered him, and his anger spiraled into a fight with their father. If Oliver kicked his son out or Alex just ran, Emma didn't know. He didn't share that bit with her.
Now, with her vow being violated, Emma stood in front of that door. Her back was visible to the entire street. She wondered if her trembling frame could be noticed as well. Emma slowly reached up, wrapping her fingers around the door knocker. There was an oddness to the house, like it had been abandoned. The grass was severely overgrown and the bricks seemed to rot like old fruit. The roof seemed withered from natural causes, it never seemed to be taken care of nor restored.
It was cloudy and cold. A kind of day that brewed an intense sadness in Emma's broken body. She knocked, softly at first, wondering if he'd be up at that hour. Emma began to feel slight sympathy for barging in this early in the morning, but that feeling was quickly washed away.
She knocked again, this time louder, harder- firmer. Emma's face scrunched up. A smell seemed to be leaking from inside. It was sicker than the usual sweet citrus smell of the fumes of PBD. It wasn't sweet, instead is smelled rotten. Like intense death. The scent smelled like what she imagined the grim reaper to smell like, or the devil. Like a river of lost souls and rotten corpses.
Emma called out for her father, knocking again. She pressed her ear to the door. Then, her fingers grazed the doorknob. Emma called out for him once again, this time wrapping her fingers around the handle. Clenching her jaw, she began to wonder if the door was unlocked, or if her father was there at all. Then, she glanced out to the driveway, seeing his car and hers. He was here.
She slowly started to turn the knob, expecting resistance, but feeling nothing. Emma's heart began to race. Slowly, she turned it all the way and pushed the door open. A waft of the mixed smells came and attacked her senses. Emma stumbled backwards, face scrunching together. At first, the interior was too dark to see inside. She squinted, trying to get closer to see what was making that awful smell.
Then, she laid eyes on it. A body in the middle of the living room floor.
Emma gasped before coughing out the smell again. The house seemed to collapse around her as she stared inside. The body was contorted, but not in a way that was for torture. Like the killer held him before slamming him to the floor. Blood coated the floor from two areas, his head and his shin. A straight hole was right through his skull, letting bits of his brain spill out onto the wood.
Emma screamed.
The sound of her voice echoed in the neighborhood. Many looked outside their windows, frightened by the sound. One began to run up from the sidewalk when he saw her collapse. The man was quick, jogging up, putting out a hand as he asked her what was wrong. When he looked in, his body retched. Emma couldn't hear anything, just the ringing sound of horror as she stared at her father's corpse on the floor.
His eyes were open, blood pooling out like tears to make a puddle at the base of his face. Oliver's body was contorted awkwardly, his neck facing the other way with his chin resting on the floor, his face facing the other way his body was facing.
The man who ran up to her was calling 911, seemingly calm yet disturbed as he stared at the corpse inside. Emma was on her knees, eyes wide as tears of horror fell. She covered her mouth, the sound coming out being a trembling scream of a wounded animal. The neighbors slowly opened their doors, wanting to know what was going on.
Emma stared inside, staring at her father's unblinking eyes. She wondered if this was why he wasn't answering the calls. She began to wonder how long he had been like this, and how long wouldn't she have known if she didn't let her anger guide her.
The man had a soft hand on her shoulder, staring into the darkness. His voice rang out. He never spoke to her directly, and only stared in, a calm expression on his face. She continued to cry, and he never spoke to anyone other than the operator.
He was too calm.
Like he had seen this before.
YOU ARE READING
The Grean Household
Romance"It was a mistake..." She told her mother, folding her hands into each other. "Marrying him..." Her mother said nothing, she simply sat there as her only daughter stood across from her, on the verge of collapsing from bruised ribs and cracked shins...
