Shadows and the dark

Reflections

Skyla is a fifteen year old girl staying in Houston. Separated from her family at a really young age, she is part time worker at a nearby cafe. Finally she bought a house of her own using the money she received from the singing competition she had participated in... Earlier the same month. Skyla has a divine voice; a voice every individual admired that day. She took every person's breathe away at the grand event. No one could help their self but just listen to her heavenly voice and relax with the melody. She was awarded a huge sum of money.

The reason she is separated from her family is because she was not able to stand her father anymore. Her father would drink every single day since the death of her mother. Her mother died 3 years back on 19th of August. The same day she too met an accident and had partial memory loss. She had forgotten a lot of things but fortunately, it didn't affect her daily life much. She was admitted in the hospital for 12 days and each multiple tests were being runner on her because she was shocked by the incident. Until then, she didn't even knew that her mother passed away.

Of course it took her time to settle down with the new life. The burden of her house was on her now as she couldn't depend on her father after the things that has happened. The whole family was shattered into pieces. Skyla couldn't come over the guilt that she had not helped her family when the things happened. She wanted to support her two siblings financially because she knew it would be a waste to depend on her father. So , along with her education she started to work at the cafe.

The house she'd bought was locked for a long time... Likely two years and so, got covered with dust. As she started cleaning the attic she found a leather bound diary. Skyla was a youngster so obviously she was curious to know what was inside it. She dusted a chair near her and sat on it. As she opened the diary, she saw the date, 19th August 2021. The pages had water seeped in them and the written content was not clearly visible. She skipped that much part and reached a page where the introduction of the person to whom this diary belonged to was written. Even a photo was in there. She kept the photo aside and read the name. 'AUGUSTA' The name sounded familiar to her. She felt a sudden pain in her head. She even started to hallucinate scenes such as building ruins, city set on fire, crowd running in panic, people shouting. Skyla bent on her knees as the pain became unbearable. She started to scream and in a few seconds her hallucinations stopped. She started feeling dizzy. At this moment she didn't want to see the picture. She was hesitant but still picked it from the ground and saw it. The person in the picture was a girl who looked just like her... As if she was her long lost sister.
As she was reading through the worn out pages she found something written in bold that made her heartbeat stop for a damn moment. All's he could do was just stand still. She couldn't even breathe for a while. The diary had fallen from her hand. After a moment she coughed badly. She picked the book and threw it away from her.

The words she read were,
FINALLY I KILLED SARAPHINA

SARAPHINA was Skyla's mother who'd died 3 years back in a shootout. Skyla started to faint after throwing the diary. As she fainted a hand saved her from falling.