Choose Wisely

Chapter Fourteen: Words That Linger & Others That Last

The trailer I made (took hours but was fun, so hey) is on the side, check it out and tell me what you think in the comments. Oh. And there's a new chapter. It's not really new seeing as I wrote it two weeks ago and was waiting to post it but whatever.

Ten comments 'til next upload! (I've written the next chapter already too ;)

"It wasn't the kind of abuse you suffer at the hands of your father," Josh told me, his voice almost in a dreamy haze. I was holding him as we sat on the bed, limbs tangled up together. Despite how it may have sounded, it was purely platonic. Josh needed someone to talk to- and I owed him that. "It was different. Like a thousand different insults hitting me with the force of a million more. Ever since I was young, Mother'd been like that. I think my father knew her when she was gentler, but I don't know what changed her." 

"I don't really know what changed my father," I confided to him, my voice a hush as if I broke a certain volume, our time of sharing secrets would pass. "I used to think it was my fault and then I thought it had been Mother's death that had been the last straw. It was just an excuse, really."

"Thinking that it was your mother's death that turned him?"

"Well, believing it was that," I explained, drifting one of my legs across his silken covers. The white and black yin to yang covers lazily followed my movement: a material echo-snake. "I always knew that my father was the way he was when I was very young. So it couldn't have been my mother's death. Maybe he had his own turning point or maybe it was his upbringing. I never knew my grandparents so I can't say."

"You don't think he was just born evil?" Josh considered, with a sly twist to his tone.

"I don't think anyone can be born evil," I responded honestly. "I think we're all born innocents. It's what we make with our lives that determine us either way."

After a long silence, though we sat in peace, Josh reached through the veil and disturbed the still quality of the air. "I didn't know you had a sister. I thought it was a mistake but then I looked at you. Your face... when you try to hold something back, some strong emotion, I can always see that determined cast to your expression. That was when I knew it was true."

"Daniella," I whispered. I hadn't spoken about her to anyone, not in a long while. Not the whole truth that was. Sometimes I felt like she wasn't real, that I had imagined up a sister to paint over the grimy, grey-stained slab of the love people felt for me. Maybe, I'd thought, she was a figment of my mind, a pretty blue layer over dull grey, because I couldn't cope with the fact that no one cared for me.

"She was my older sister," I cleared my throat, determining to stay strong. "Guided me along the way whenever I needed help... yet somewhere she stopped following that way. Daniella was unhappy. She didn't like the Choice, didn't like the idea of not being able to choose her own path. Daniella was always strong-willed. Even now, I know that the Choice- however wrong it might seem- is the right road for everyone. We need it to survive. It provided us stability, structure, a promise of new life."

"We owe everything to it," Josh agreed. "Sacrifices always have to be made for great movements in time and history."

"Yeah, well, she didn't like that part," I muttered sadly. "She tried to leave- leave for the-" I paused, unable to speak what I had never spoken. I trusted Josh but I didn't want to singe his reputation with these words. The Outcasts were taboo in our society. They were this mystical entity with a cloud of smoke surrounding them and nothing else to be seen. Ninety percent of the time I doubted their existence.

The other ten percent I remembered the hardened resolve that Daniella wore around her like armour when she discussed her plans to join them.

"She tried to leave home," I patched up the gaping sentence, unwilling to part with that one secret. I had released too many already. "My father found her, dragged her back. Killed her when Daniella lay at his feet: her ribs broken, semi-concussed, probably already choking on her own blood."