Forcing Forget

Forcing Forget (ON HOLD)

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It had been only one week ago that I had been riding in the back seat of my mother's convertible with the chaffeur, Mr. Broward, when a whizzing bullet pinched into the side of his temple, making him jerk the car into a nearby fire hydrant. 

Blood pooled on the smooth leather seats, and his eyes stared upwards at the sky, as if he were waiting for his guardian angel to descend down and take him home. At least, that is what I like to hope Mr. Broward had been thinking about. But knowing him, he was worried for my safety above all; it had always been his duty to take care of me. 

That night, I found out the bullet had been, in all likelihood, intended for me. 

I didn't have to go to Acadamey that day, or even the following. I remained cuddled in my fuzzy pajamas, trying to fixate the last words I had said to Mr. Broward. It mattered to me much more than it should have, but try as I might, I knew I hadn't left him with any remarkable thought or statement that would have been worthy of being the last words he had ever heard. 

When I blink even now, the vision of the blood seeping incessantly under my black uniform shoes  sometimes snaps behind my eyelids. 

But now as I gaze silently at the national Tuskadel Announcements one week later, pictures of the remnant bodies dismantled from a bomb, I know Mr. Broward was lucky to go the way he did. 

"What are we going to do?" my mother wails in the background, her cry muffled by my father's shirt. Like me, he is silent. 

No one answers her, and she just sobs to herself. "I need to call Gretchen... God willing she wasn't at that party," she sniffles, taking a step away from my father. But before she can even dial the number, she collapses to the ground in a sob. My father kneels next to her and scoops her up.

 Like the rest of us, she is scared. Like her, I am now realizing Mr. Broward's homicide, the poisoning of Duke and Duchess Kendall, and the attempted murder of Sir Layden had all been heralds of what was to come, if this bombing was any indication. 

I collapsed onto the sofa, the opulent amethyst encrusting of a layered silk pillow grazing my upper arm. I tuned out my father's hushed comforts, and focused on the reporter. "...50 of 157 attendents were minors. The Crisis and Natural Disaster Bureau have arranged for all children of nobles to be sent to a witness protection program at an unknown location. While it seems unnecessarily cruel-" someone in the back of the room, probably my sister, shatters some sort of glass, tuning out the next few words. I don't even turn around. "-Broward of Pryzone, and if Aubrey-Wren Defoe's case is any dictation-" 

I blanch at the mention of my name, on national television no less. For a moment, all I can hear is the rushed pounding of blood in my ears, and everything slows down to a painfully ironic serenity. But no one else in my house seems to notice.

When I tune back into reality, slowly turning around, I find my sister, like my mother, is now crying, her knuckles bleeding. Underneath her, the shattered glass of the once-had-been-mirror scatters the usually-pristine marble tiles. The phone was lit up on the ground, receiving a call, but no one made a move to answer it. 

Overcome with anger-spurred adrenaline, I jump over the back of the couch to pick up the phone off the ground. The caller-id tells me its my Aunt Gretchen. 

Her voice spills out of the receiver. "-is dead! My baby is dead!" she is wailing over and over again. My voice becomes tight, because I know she only has one son, whom she adores endlessly.