The Catalyst of the Stars

Family, torn.

"What do you think we should do?"
Collin said, biting into an apple taken
from the tree we were resting under.

"I don't know."

"Well," he said, "aren't you boring.
We have to go somewhere."

"I want to go someplace safe," I
spoke out, the purple tinted clouds
above becoming blurred with childish
tears. Collin sighed, taking out the
green themed photographs of our
mother out of his coat.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you think?" He took out a small traveling shovel, and started to dig a row of holes running circular around the base of the tree. Then, with an apologetic smirk, started to place each photo face-up into each hole. He paused a moment before smoothing over the dirt and placing rocks and picked grass over each mound.

"Why?" I began to sob.

"She abandoned us. That's why."
"Here." He got up and began to
pluck apples from the branches above
before placing them in his coat pocket.

"We'll use the extra space for food." I put my face against my knees, shielding my eyes from the world as if to hide the insecurities built up over the course of the day. Another sob sent vibrations through my tiny body, taking my breath from the transpiring air.

*****

Mother had died the day before within a single stroke of the overhead clock. We laid her in her blanket into a shallow grave improvised by father and him. Then all of us together, me,

Aaron, Collin, and Father, lowered her white figure into the soil below. As the two boys set to shoveling the mound of soil onto her body, the sky passed from blue to black. A single tear streaked across Collin's left cheek, dripping into the mud below. It was the first time I had seen him cry.

Father spoke a few words, and the rainy choir marched back inside. Jackets unfolded into the old chair. The old lu se tech camera used to take so many of our photographs stood in the corner, suffocating in dust. The fireplace stood empty in the background, surrounded loosely by firewood, a chair, and a candle. Photos were scattered around the house, most of which featured mother sitting in a wooden chair with one or two of us siblings seated comfortably on her lap.

The far end of the hallway produced a provocative smell, as I trudged down. I glanced into the bedroom our mother occupied before her death. Tattered rags littered the bed and floor, droplets of blood from the morning's events clung to the edges of the bedside table.

Mother died here.

Collin told me it was a disease one can develop over time. "It attacks the stomach and ravages the lungs," he said. "The final stages of it can be either subtle like a dying in your sleep sort of thing, or it can be miserable like hell, or so I heard."

The whimpers and cries that seemed to sneak through the cracks of the door and into my ears each night would point to the latter.

I turned from the room, looking away from the chaos of the former day's tragedy. Outside the sun had already collapsed from its throne, and the once purple sky of the Zi se day, was gone. It felt like another form of a nightmare, not of horror, but rather something of stark depression. While not always bad, depressing dreams are still something the living mind would want to wake up from.

Screams

A breathy cry quivered through the air, yanking my attention from the bedroom as I looked down the hallway, alarmed. The sound of Father's screams, followed by him pounding his fist against flesh, told me that he was beating Aaron again.