Chiara Romero
A young, sweet little six year old girl that was ripped from the place she had lived in for not only a year, all because of her parent's choices. She had to live with the consequences of her parents choices.
She had to be re-stitched...
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- Angelo Romero -
Tossing and turning felt like the only thing that I had done all night. I couldn't tell whether I had actually shut my eyes, or if I was just hallucinating, like I knew I was, whenever my eyes shut, and the image of my father, sitting on my bed, with a knife, waiting to kill me. The same day that I had tainted the image to my younger brothers, one of them being my twins, the image of our parents.
Sitting up, I could feel the sweat dripping down my back, as I wiped an arm across my forehead. I had discarded the hoodie that was too big for me hours ago, but now, I could feel the chill against my sweating arms. Sliding my legs over the edge of the bed, turning my back on my brother and the two babies that had been placed in our arms, I tried to take steadying breaths.
Nothing was working, and the thought of that, made everything worse. It heightened the panic that was sitting in my throat, almost like I had swallowed a rock, and there was no way that I could get rid of it. Reaching my hands up, I tried to scratch and claw at the feeling in my throat, but to no avail, did it work.
Wrapping my hands around my neck, I gave one final squeeze, but it only made things worse. It only reminded me of the nights that I would lay awake, knowing that my father would lay his hands on my whenever he could get the chance to do it. And if it wasn't my father, it was then my mother, forcing me to take a drink with her, before attempting to burn me, whether it was when I was cooking or dousing me in oil, then taunting me with a lighter.
Clashing my teeth together, I clenched my eyes shut as I grabbed the sheets, trying to remind myself of all the techniques that I had been taught, but nothing was working. Nothing was working, because what chance did I have anymore? Leo wasn't just down the hall anymore, and the truth was that both my parents had tried to kill me.
Both of my parents had wanted me dead, while they had prided themselves over their other two sons, completely disregarding the others that they had left behind. They had tried to ship me away to boarding school, then got denied when they were found out to be drug addicts and alcoholics with no money.
The next stop was my grandparents, but even they didn't want me, so I ran away when my grandmother, accidentally, tried to poison me and my grandfather. My grandfather ran away with me, before he divorced my grandmother, and built a house in Italy, where he had grown up, and I hadn't heard from him since.
He could have passed and I would have had no idea. That was something else that was my fault. Reaching over, I discarded all of my thoughts and worries, as I dialed a number that I knew I shouldn't have, but I did it anyway. I did it because I needed the arms to be wrapped around me, even if I would be teased for it in the morning, like I always had been.
But I hadn't cared. I had built a persona from hiding my trauma away, and call me broken and stupid for doing so, but no one would understand. No one had ever understood that my own twin brother had believed our parents over me, and he had wanted to stay, when I was shipped away every single time that my mother said that she loved me more than anything.
"Hello?" a voice queried, and I immediately sagged in relief. I don't know why I was so shocked that this person was going to pick the phone up, as I was sure that he always had his phone on just for me. I was sure that he was always going to pick up, but that doubt in the back of my mind that he would either hang up or just not even pick up, always nagged at the back of my mind, waiting to eat me alive.
"Angelo? You there?" he questioned, and I knew I needed to say something, but my throat had gone thick with my own saliva and thoughts, that I didn't think I would be able to get a word out. I opened my mouth, trying, before I got a word out. "Can't sleep" was more than I thought I would be able to ever get out.
"Leave the room, and keep me on the phone. I'll meet you outside of your room" I don't know why I had doubted that he would ever not know where I was in this house, seeing as this was his house. The same house that backed onto an empty plot of land, where we were supposed to end up, but Leo had never had the time to build a house. He had been too caught up with saving us from our parents, that we had gotten stuck in the life of New York City.
"Mhmm" I hummed, as I heard his feet pattering on the floor, as I still hadn't moved, but I knew I had to. If something happened, I didn't want Gio to see, or the two children that I held close to my heart. Those two kids dissevered the world, and I wasn't going to ruin it for them, like I had for everybody else.
Standing up, I wobbled slightly, as I tried my hardest to get my body moving, and I did, I really did, and I knew that was improvement from the last time this had happened. Making it to the door, it opened, and I dropped my phone somewhere, as I collapsed into the arms, the empty screams and cries leaving my mouth, as I fell to the ground. Nicolas would always catch me, but who could catch him?
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- Chiara Romero -
All I could do, was sit in my tears, because I didn't know what to do. Angelo wasn't next to me anymore, and I would have to climb over Oscar to get to Gio, and I didn't want to wake them up either, so I just sat there, holding the blanket that had once been over Angelo and I, but now was just in my hands.
Sitting here, my hands holding only onto the blanket, it felt like this was the end of something good. That something had happened, and I had no idea. So, as I fell back onto the bed, a wave of tiredness, as I held tightly onto the blanket, trying to sniffle any form of smell of Angelo, to help me sleep, it felt like I had lost another brother.
I had lost Leo, and a bit of Ales, and now Angelo wasn't here anymore. He was going to keep coming and going just like Enzo had been, and to be truthful to myself, I was getting even more scared as the days went by. I thought that I would be able to stop being scared, but maybe I was just made that way.
Maybe I was built with fear and not joy, like everyone else. I wasn't like Oscar, and that was clear, even when I closed my eyes. He was joy and I was fear. We had watched a movie with our emotions, and I felt like that was how I fit. I had always had fear with me, while other people were full of joy.
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