Revenge Fantasy

#4 - Why?

Once the men left the room... Chouko crawled out from under the bed. Terrified and shaking after all of that, having kept quiet with the bed as cover and safety... she- she comes out to see the resulting scene. Reaching out for his hand, holding it gently.

"F-Father, they're- they're gone," Chouko tells him, smiling lightly at him. "You... you don't need to..."

...

It's gone limp.

Chouko... spent an eternity at the man's side, her hands shaking as she held his hand. His lifeless, limp hand. One that doesn't respond to the fidgeting, shaking of hers. The father who's held her hand and guided her these last four years, the one who comforted her when she was scared.

Charles's body lies before her, just... dead. Gone.

Chouko's smile, gone at this feeling, as her eyes gaze upon her father. Staring at him in the condition he was left in, struggling to- feel any sort of life remaining in his body. Unable to feel his pulse, his heartbeat. If not for the... blood... coming out of his head, she would have thought his blood stopped flowing entirely. The blood coming from his head, horrifyingly draining out in a subtle puddle against the carpet.

The sight was too much for this little girl. Chouko feels nothing but a... a sense of dread. Hollow, hollow dread. An overwhelming feeling overtaking her, being left alone like this. The air she breathed a putrid, rotten smog, almost pricking her with needles with each tremble. It takes her ages to register the fatal wound. Seeing the gunshot in his head, engraving in her a morbid feeling that she didn't want to understand.

The girl hoped with all her heart, even with the sight before her, that her father would wake up. That... that he'd be okay. That he'd see his daughter and hug her, hug her close, hug her tight. Hug her and keep her safe and reassure her that she didn't need to be scared and that there was no reason to be scared. The men were gone. It's just him and her.

As much as Chouko tried, as much as she could hope for the best, Charles cannot do that anymore. Charles will never be able to keep her safe ever again.

Chouko clings to this hope, stares in complete and utter silence, hoping that he would. Her small hands holding the cold hand in front of her. Left all by her lonesome, alone in that room, the truth of the matter closing in. Almost freezing every single... ounce... of Chouko's body. A cold chill shuddering through her veins, causing her to helplessly sob a waterfall of tears down her cheeks.

The world began to cry for Charles as well. The overcast weather of the city turned to light showers. Chouko hears the sounds of raindrops falling against the patio, the sound ringing out to her right. Thoughts rushed and roared into Chouko's mind like a storm, her lingering words the lightning and thunder. The image of her father warping before her very eyes, obscured by the sorrow that clouds her vision. Covering his body in a thickening fog.

Death... death was no foreign concept to her, it- it should have come as naturally as words on a page. Its prevalence in Shakespearean works, the fate that befalls all. Chouko understood death, it happens, it's natural. This should be natural to her, she- she shouldn't be this shaken.

This shouldn't hurt, this- it shouldn't.

... and yet, it does.

Why?

Why does it hurt?

Why does it feel like this?

Why is it- hard to breathe right now...?

Why after why flooding Chouko's head, head riddled with nothing but questions. Questions she didn't know the answer to, questions she scavenges her mind for. Desperately scraping for them, the hands in her mind tearing page after page out of it. For every word she couldn't find, however, the sight before her speaks thousands upon thousands of words. Smothering her body in a landfill of pictures, burying her frail body at the very bottom, making her drown in her own questions.