Paradigm Shift

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 Chapter 1: Run

Life ends if an egg is broken by an outside force but life begins if it is broken from within. Great things always begin on the inside.

-Author Unknown-

“Coming.” I opened the door to Sheriff Jake, our town’s chief of law enforcement, and Mrs Redding, the nosiest woman around.

“Hello, this is a surprise! My parents aren’t here; they’re at Chrissy’s Creek for the weekend.”

My parents had invited me, along with my younger brother, Josh, to go with them; but

being imprisoned in an even smaller, more inconsequential town (even if it was only for the weekend) just didn’t float my boat.

“Hello, Katherine. May we please come in?” the sheriff asked solemnly. It wasn’t often we saw these two people at our door: in fact, I couldn’t remember ever having seen them visit my parents but I nodded, letting them in. They headed straight for the lounge where Sheriff Jake urged me to sit. He took the seat to my right and Mrs Redding sat on my left. She glanced nervously at me and I noticed for the first time that her eyes were moist, the marks of previous tears visible on her cheeks.

My stomach churned.

Something was wrong, something was terribly wrong.

“Kate -there’s been an accident.” His expression painted a thousand words.

“I’m so sorry dear,” Mrs Redding added, stifling a sob, patting at her eye with the tissue I hadn’t notice she held until now.

No. I gazed back and forth between the two faces.

“Your parents, your brother –I’m afraid no one made it out alive.” The sheriff’s voice was sombre but crackling with the emotions he was trying to suppress.

“They…” I stared from one face to the other and was met with sympathetic tears and pain-stricken eyes blinking back at me. My blood drained to my feet in one flaccid drop and my stomach contorted, sending a burning, chunky-bile mix up my throat. I ran for the bathroom but it was too late. The fiery slop spewed from my mouth, spitting out the horror as shock rippled through my body like waves crashing against a rocky shore.

“Kate, dear, are you alright?” Mrs Redding asked, hunched at my side. My only answer was a nod. I couldn’t speak. My voice, my life, had been knocked out from under me.

The sheriff left without another word, returning minutes later with a handful of pills which I refused to take. That’s when the phone began to ring. It rang again and again, incessantly, but I wouldn’t answer. I didn’t want to hear “I’m sorry” or “If you need anything”.

It couldn’t bring them back so what was the point? They were probably hollow words anyway. Words used by people that didn’t know what else to say, what else to do.

Ring … ring … ring …

Soon the panic came, then turned to a numbing shock that paralysed me head to toe each time I thought about it; each time I heard Mrs Redding answer that damn phone or tell the story to a sympathetic visitor like a broken recorder, the same hateful words over and over.

A month had passed since they’d died: a month with no answers, no explanations and no family. All that I was told, and all that was discovered despite the rigid investigations, was that they had died in a tragic accident. As if I hadn’t heard that enough times already … I ask you with tears in my eyes, how is that possible? With all the technology and knowledge we have now, why can’t anybody explain it?