Show Me the Stars

Scorpii

Scorpii: The Scorpion

I spent the next two weeks alone in my room. It had seemed as if life was returning to the caged hell as it had been a few weeks before. I watched each day as the sun rose, walked across the sky, and fell below the horizon. The curtains remained open, and the shadows of the mangled woods haunted me. Many of my nights had been sleepless.

It was not the loneliness that bothered me so. No, it had been my own thoughts. Being alone without anyone to distract me meant that the only voices I would hear were the ones inside my head. I wanted for those voices to die out and for my world to be white noise and silence, but they were too loud. I heard the crashing, the twisting and scraping of metal upon metal, the frigid splash into the water, the rushing currents, their bodies, their screaming, their pleading, all of it. 

It wasn't your fault The voice inside my head would tell me.

But you heard them and did nothing Another voice would tell me.

Edith, stop it. You know that wasn't your fault.

But it was, wasn't it Edith? 

Even if it did happen, it was an accident.

You wanted it to happen, Edith.

Edith

Edith 

Edith

"Edith, put that down!" 

Peter rushed to me and hit my hand hard. There were tears flowing down my face, and he tried his best to wipe them as they continued to pour out. His voice was trembling and loud. Spit from his mouth landed on my face, and he pinned my hands behind me. I had no reaction except to cry until he let my arms go and brought me into his arms. There, let him hold me like a child as I soaked his shoulders with my tears.

"It was my fault," I sobbed. "It was all my fault."

"Edith," he said as he stroked my head. I continued to cry until I had no water left to shed. My throat was dry and hoarse and each breath felt like sandpaper scraping across my skin. Blood reached my tongue closed my mouth to keep from spitting it onto Peter.

"Peter," I said after a moment of silence. "I killed them."

"What?" he asked rather calmly, almost as if he'd expected me to confess.

"I killed them. My family."

"Is this something you want to talk about now?" he said as he pulled away from me and sat cross legged.

I nodded. "I wanted to tell you last time, but you never showed up until..."

"Yeah," he said as he scratched his head. "I'm sorry about that. I was always with you, but I just had to...it's complicated. And as for Anthony, we'll talk about him later. But tell me what you wanted to say. I'm listening now."

So I told him. About all of the nightmares I had been having in which I saw the entire incident occur on repeat like a broken record player. I told him about their voices and how chilling they were in the middle of night as I stared at the mangled woods, imagining that their branches were my family reaching out to kill me from the afterlife. I stalled for a while, telling him about all of the dreams in great detail before I told him what I had done. And when I finally did, I broke down.

I was not on my way to see my family that night.

I was 30 miles north of home, heading northbound on the freeway. My eyes were red and burning after having an altercation with my father. Of course it was nothing new, but that day I had had enough. I was going to bring Conrad and Annie with me. I had seen the scars on their bodies, and I had enough letters from them to show CPS that I should take care of them. But I knew I couldn't keep them in my dorm, so I drove off alone.