~ 10 years ago ~
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I shall die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen." I said my prayers and pulled up my covers.
As I was lying in my bed, I thought of my younger sister, Kenzie; she was already sleeping across the room, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched. Despite that instinct, my eyes slowly drooped closed, and I began drifting into unconsciousness.
At that time, my dreams had become so vivid that sometimes I couldn't tell the difference between fiction and reality. It is hard to separate a dream from reality when your reality feels like a nightmare.
For the past few weeks my life had been a living hell. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Later at night when everyone was sleeping, I would quietly slip into the bathroom to get away from everthing. That didn't help much. Feeling an anxiety attack approaching, I would just curl up into the fetal position and lie with my cheek pressed on the cold, tile floor. I tried to take deep breaths, but it never helped. So I closed my eyes and endured the feeling of drowning in dry air.
Just then a scratch at the bedroom window interupted my thoughts. I got up to go sleep with Kenzie in her bed. Tiptoeing across the floor, I silently made my way to her side of the room. "Kenzie, are you awake? It's me, April," I whispered. Finally, I approached her bed. Pulling back the covers I was about to lie down next to her when I noticed something wet on the bed. I could not believe that was happening. Mom had just gotten her to stop peeing the bed. I mean she had just turned six-years-old, gosh, I thought she would have understood by then.
I rushed over to her side of the bed and turned on the lamp. As I turned around I saw she was on her side and her eyes were wide open. "Kenzie, I know I know, you think you're going to be in trouble, but I will take care of it. Mom will never know," I assured her. She still wasn't moving and I didn't know what her problem was.
"Kenzie?" I gave her a light shove. She rolled over onto her back.
Beginning to stand up, I said, "Kenzie, what's the-"
That's when I saw, and I screamed at the top of my lungs. Lying beneath my little sister was a pool of blood. I was so confused, how could that happen? I had been right across the room the whole time. Better question, how did that happen? I mean, what even happened to her? That was when the lights flicked on, and I felt my dad pull me out of the room, but not before I saw Mom fall to her knees in horror.
~ Present Day ~
That was the day that I lost my one and only sister. Ever since that night I think about her nonstop. My parents wanted to know what happened to her just as much as I did, but they didn't believe in going to such great lengths to consider every possibility. I did. As I said before, wierd and unbearable things had been happening to me the weeks leading up to Kenzie's death. That's why I still haven't given up on finding the guilty party.
It only took Mom and Dad a year to give up on finding Kenzie's killer. Even the police stopped looking for the culprit. Now my sister's murder has turned into a cold case, and I'll be damned if I won't continue to look for answer's.
When Kenzie died I grieved for a very long time. Tommy, my older brother, kept asking why I couldn't move on like Mom and Dad. I always explained to him; Kenzie was six, and I may have only been ten years old but if I would have just been more alert I may have been able to save her or atleast make sure she didn't die alone.
After my parents and the detectives gave up on Kenzie's case, my grief turned into motivation. See, my parents wouldn't tell me Kenzie's cause of death when they found out; they said they would tell me when I was older. About four years after Kenzie's death, I asked Mom again; she wouldn't answer, so I went snooping through their things. I found a copy of the coroner's report in a box pushed way to the back of their closet floor.
The first paragragh was a full summary of the coroner's inspection. In the middle of the page, it read, 'Cause of Death: Bled to Death'
On the last line of the page, it read, 'Organs Missing: Heart.'
