Living In Lies | #OnceUponNow

Chapter 20: Saving Lives

     My eyes open once again, this time in a very familiar home. My home.

     "I don't feel so good," I heard my younger self say from the kitchen.

     "You probably ate too much cake. Why don't you do lie down?" my mother advises.

     "That sounds like a good idea. Goodnight mommy, goodnight daddy, goodnight sissy,"

     I then take in my surroundings. I am standing in the main hallway. That means Alice is going to be coming this way. I need to hide, but where?

     Before I can find a place to go, I see my younger self walk this way, but she doesn't seem to see me. She walks right past me and into her room. My room.

     Then, it hits me. I can stop it. I can prevent my parents from being murdered. I storm into the kitchen, assuming no one can see me, grab a kitchen knife, and head to my old room.

     The only way I can do this, the only way I can keep my parents alive, is by killing myself before the deed is done. I run toward younger Alice, for she just jumped out of bed. I need to hurry. I threw the knife, but the strangest thing happened. In mid-air, the knife jolts down, almost as if it were swatted away. It then zoomed down to impale her foot.

     That pain, that unbearable pain in my foot that spread up my leg, the pain that drove me to go mad and kill my parents, that was this. This knife was that pain. I didn't stop it. I didn't save them. I caused it...

     Tears started forming in my eyes.

     "It sounds like a tornado in there. I'll go see what it is," my mother said from the kitchen.

     I heard her footsteps as they echoed down the hall. Tears started rushing down my cheeks as I watched my younger self crawl out from under the bed, knife and pistol in hand.

     My mother walked into the room and I watched as young Alice murdered her. There were now tears dripping onto the wooden floor.

     I then watched as young Alice stepped over my mother's dead body, treating it as if it were trash. I could not stand to watch as she killed my father as well.

     "Alice! What happened? Where's Stephanie?" my father asked worriedly.

     "There's no need to worry about mommy. She's just napping. You look tired too, daddy. Maybe you should join her?" my younger self said.

     "No," I could scarcely hear my father whisper.

     "It's okay, daddy. Everyone falls asleep sometime,"

     "No. Alice, don't..."

     A gun shot and the sound of dead weight hitting the floor. It was too much. I was now in a pool of tears. It was worse re-living it all. All of my mistakes, my failures, everything I have done wrong.

     I look up for the first time in the past twenty minutes. Through tear-filled eyes I can see something that seems to be popping up too often: Melody's snake ring. Young Alice seemed to be wearing it. When did that happen? I never noticed anything...

     My tears soon blur my vision to the point where I am forced to close my eyes, and at this point my vision goes black for the third time.