Painful Reminders

Prologue

A/N: Thank you so much for taking the time to read Painful Reminders! I truly hope that you enjoy it. If this is your type of book, please vote and comment. I would love any feedback good or bad to help improve my work. This story is a work in progress and while I plan to post twice a week, there may be times that I am a bit late, so I will apologize ahead of time. 

My grandpa was a natural storyteller. As a child, I loved listening as his words painted a world of magic and happily ever after's. It was easy to live in his land of make-believe where families were whole and full of laughter. Love was forever and no one ever died.

As I got older, the world he depicted began to grow dark and the monsters crawled from the shadows. There was no light without the dark, he began to warn me like a prophet. Life and death, sickness and health, good and evil...everything existed to balance out the other. People should never be so blinded by good that they can't see the bad. Another warning. Another puzzle. Another lesson I didn't want to learn. The stories that had been my escape became something to avoid and I became resentful. I lived in a world plagued by darkness long enough; I saw no need for it to haunt my dreams. Couldn't he love me enough to let me pretend a little longer?

***

"You're sixteen, you can't just go out whenever you want!"

Rolling my eyes at his words, as I leaned against the frame of the window that I had just crawled in through. "None of my friends have to be home this early. It isn't fair."

"Your friends aren't you. I need you home by eight every night."

"For what?" I snapped, frustration bubbling to the surface. "What is so important that I can't stay out with my friends? You aren't being fair."

"Amya, you can't go through life pretending that danger doesn't exist." His words held just as much frustration as my own.

"I'm sixteen!" I glared at him, and moved away from the window, toward the bedroom door. "Why can't I be ignorant a little longer? Why do you want me to grow up so badly?"

"You can't have a life like everyone else," his tone was firm and unyielding. "You were born for greater things. You were raised to be aware of the shadows, not hide from them."

"What does that even mean? Why are you always talking to me in riddles? I don't want great things, and I don't want your stupid metaphors. I want to be normal. I want to be just like everyone else. Why can't you let me have that?" I slammed the bathroom door in his face, fed up with the conversation. "Sometimes I really wish I'd had anyone else to raise me, besides you."

"I just want to keep you safe," I heard softly through the door, but I didn't bother to respond to him as I turned on the water and began to fill the tub.

I soaked in the fragranced water for well over half an hour with my eyes closed. Music played from my phone, resting nearby and I tried to pretend that the whole world began and ended in that room. The longer the music played, the easier it always was, and then the guilt would begin to set in. He was only worried. He'd never recovered from the death of my parents, especially my mother, his daughter. It was love that made him this way. I needed to be more understanding. I should apologize...the admittance conflicted with my anger. I felt confined and restricted in his house. He was the only family I had left, and I needed him just as much as he needed him. It's always so easy for me to forget that out of anger.

The sound of shattering glass caused me to open my eyes, and I blinked the fogginess out of my mind as I sat up in the tub. "Grandpa?" I called as I kicked the lever to drain the tub and pulled myself to my feet. "Is everything okay? What was that?"

I thought I heard a movement as I wrapped my hair in a towel and pulled on my robe. Slipping my phone into my pocket, I opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the hall. "Grandpa?" I moved down the hall towards the stairs, feeling suddenly uneasy. "Where are you?"

The downstairs hall was empty and untouched as I came down, so I followed it into the living room and around to the dining room. The sliding doors were wide open, and I started heading in their direction until I caught a glimpse of him sprawled out on the kitchen floor to my left. "Grandpa!"

His eyes opened wide and unseeing, shattered glass and water everywhere, the refrigerator flooding light into the room as I fell to my knees beside him, scrambling for a heartbeat. "Grandpa, wake up!" My vision blurred.

The rest of that night was a blur. The ambulance showed up and the EMT's came rushing in, but I couldn't see past him. I'd moved to cradle his head in my lap as I sobbed and begged for him to move, to say something, do something. I didn't feel the broken glass as it dug into my skin, though later I would remember watching numbly as someone methodically cleaned all my wounds; the ones all over my legs, a few on my arms and palms.

The voices were far away and persistent. My head felt like it was underwater; though they spoke the same words over and over, I couldn't make them out. There was just him; grandpa, lying on the floor with his head still cradled in my lap.

I shrieked as they pulled him away, clawing at them to get back to him, screaming for him to come back to me. Not to leave me like the rest. Not to leave me. I remember blue eyes staring into mine. Not the face. I can never seem to remember the face. Just the eyes as they grasped my shoulders and shook me, and their words. Some of their words seemed to make it through the haze. Dead. Gone. Stop. Amya.

I tried to focus when I heard my name; tried to hear what they were saying, but my body had gone limp as they pulled me to them, hugging me close. I don't remember moving or answering questions, but eventually, I was shoved into the backseat of Becca's mother's car and driven away. Becca said later that my gaze was dull and lifeless, and that I didn't speak for nearly a week. But what could I have said? He was gone, and I was there. Alone.