Pandemonium | Hyunjin

Please don't say you love me

Stepping back through her front door was like stepping into a tomb. A heavy silence filled the air, so quiet that she could hear her own heartbeat. She took two steps into the room and then stopped. The thrum grew louder and louder until it was cut off by her father calling her name from the kitchen. 

She swallowed, kicked off the snow boots, and began to head in his direction. Across the way, the usual TV that always seemed to be on was turned off. The remote that sat on the coffee table was missing. When she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went over towards the sink. 

Her mother could be found there a lot. By the sink or bent over with her head in the fridge, she was always looking for something. Her mother loved to cook and she made some of the most amazing dishes. Carmen would have done anything to see her in her usual spot again. 

Despite her working twelve hour shifts, she always found a way to cook homemade meals. She was like some sort of super parent. Carmen never realized how much she took it for granted until now. 

Her father gestured to one of the chairs across the way. "You should probably sit down for this." His eyes were bloodshot, no doubt, from all of the previous night's tears. A capillary had burst at some point and it left behind a steady red constellation. 

Last night was the first night that he slept without his wife. She was there, but not in the way he wanted her to be. He fell asleep while clutching her stiff hand at the hospital. A nurse was the one to shake him awake. He spent hours by her side and by the time he was woken up, it was after ten in the evening. 

The nurse felt awful, but she had a job to do. Besides that, his wife's corpse needed to be taken down to the hospital morgue. The room needed to be cleaned for another patient. The sadness of a death didn't last for long in the hospital. Someone new needed to be attended to. Death couldn't be thought upon for too long. The living wasted zero time for the dead. 

Carmen hesitated, but she ultimately took a step towards her chair. "What's this about?" She asked as she pulled out a wooden chair. Usually, they all sat at the dinner table when eating meals, but lately, that hadn't happened. It stopped once Lily went missing and since her mother died, she wasn't sure it was going to happen ever again. 

It wasn't every meal, but it was enough to make them feel like a family. She wasn't here most weekdays, but she was here every Friday evening. After her father's construction job ended and right before her mother went into work, they managed to find time to sit with their kids and talk about life. It was something that Carmen used to look forward to every weekend. 

"We're going to have to make plans for your mother's funeral. I don't know if you want to assist, but if you do, we need to discuss what we're going to do." 

"Oh." 

It felt strange to plan something so suddenly. Death was a wrecking ball through the side of a building that caused nothing, but mass destruction. Carmen's gaze found the wooden table and her fingers slipped towards a familiar groove. About a month ago, her father's knife slid while he was trying to carve the turkey. 

The knife slid, skittered across the table, and it scraped across the cherry wood. He felt awful about it, but his wife didn't get mad. She was more alarmed than anything, but Lily was the first to laugh. She said it gave the table character. Character; one of the new vocabulary words that her class was discussing in their reading class. 

As Carmen's fingers rubbed against the groove, the memories of the conversation struck her brain like lightning. The automatic freezing of her limbs, her mother's sharp gasp, her father's soft curses, and Lily's sputtering giggles. They were everything a family should have been and more. 

Silence sat between them again. There wasn't much to say anymore. Funny, how life seemed to revolve so much around specific people. All that was left was the shared devastation between a father and daughter. Band-aids weren't enough to patch up these wounds. 

"Besides that, I wanted to discuss your classes." 

"My classes?" Her eyebrows furrowed. "What do they have to do with anything?" 

"After the funeral, I think it'd be best if you went back to doing your courses like usual." Her face fell and her eyes flickered with hurt. "I know it seems impossible, but your mom wanted you to finish college. She'd be bummed to see you giving up on your dreams." 

"I'm not giving up on my dreams," she weakly uttered. "I'm mourning the life I had. What about Lily? Someone should be here in case-" 

"That's enough, Carmen." 

"What do you mean?" Her eyes narrowed. "Enough? That's not enough. We should be out there looking for her! We should be out there trying to find her. I know what the detective said, but-" 

"Carmen!" Her father snapped angrily. His hand flew into a fist and slammed the top of the table and caused her to jump. "Enough talk about Lily because she's dead!" 

When her wide eyes met his, he cowered. He reached up, took off the frames of his glasses, and sighed. "The detective came down to try and offer us some reality. We knew there was always a chance, but last night, I received a phone call as I was leaving the hospital. They found some blood and with DNA testing-" 

Carmen shook her head. "Don't finish that sentence. Please, don't finish that sentence." 

"With the amount of blood they found and considering how much is in the human body..." 

"Did they even find her body?" Her voice began to rise. "Did they find Lily's body? Did anyone ID her? That could have been anyone's blood!" 

"Please," his eyes squeezed shut, "don't do this." 

"Did they find a body or not?" 

"No." 

"Then how could they possibly-" 

"Because they're professionals, Carmen! This is what they get paid to goddamn do!" Meaty hands slapped the table and he jerked himself upright. Behind him, the kitchen chair scraped backwards and then clattered to the floor. 

"If you want to deny it, fine! Lily's not coming home! Your mom's not coming home! Neither of them are coming back home! You don't think I'm hurting? Do you think I wanted to wake up and give my only surviving daughter this news? Snap out of it, Carmen! This isn't some kind of game, this is our goddamn life!" 

Tears streamed down his cheeks. Along his cherry red face, a vein bulged along the side of his forehead. Carmen's own eyes filled with tears, but she didn't speak. She couldn't. Her brain kept screaming that it wasn't real, but her father's anger was proof that it was. 

"You can keep looking for Lily all you want, but all you'll find is her corpse. If you want to deal with that trauma, go ahead and keep searching, but I just saw my wife dead." 

"She was my mother too!" 

"Then you know exactly why I don't want to see my baby girl dead!" The sound of his heavy breaths faded as he spun around and walked away. The chair remained overturned and upside down on the hardwood floor. 

She leaned forward into her hands, but a sob didn't come out. This was so much grief all at once and she was drowning. Her mother's death punctured one lung and the idea that Lily could be dead punctured another. She knew why her mother was dead, but why Lily? 

Who killed Lily and why?