The Monster I hold dear

|1 | The many regrets of Kerry Kingston

Up until the last eight months of my life, I had it good. Dinah Ledge County is a pretty neat place to grow up in, it's small and as safe as it gets. Everybody knows everybody. I've always had food on my plate, new clothes despite being the youngest in my family,and a cozy roof over my head for all eighteen years of my life. My parents never struggled to make ends meet and we never had to settle for anything less than we wanted. I had two older siblings to look out for me and to play with from dawn to dark as a child. My older brother Kyle is eight years my senior so he's always felt like a third parent, he sure acted like one.Mackenzie, my older sister has four years on me, I was always her baby doll when playing house. She would make Kyle play father and give him our dad's old, beat up briefcase and go to "work" while she took care of me,playing mother. I always had a sibling to hang out with until Mackenzie left for college when I was fourteen.We did have occasional fights as siblings do, but we could never stay mad at each other for long.
If I had to choose the one thing I've missed most since my untimely death, it's my family. During the last eight months, I didn't appreciate them and I was downright awful to them. I regret that the most. I have so many regrets, so many apologies I'll never get to say, and the worst part is I'll never get to take back my last words to my mother. I know when she thinks of that moment, her last conversation with her youngest child, she gets this look. Her shoulders begin to shake, her face scrunches up  showing off  the  many wrinkles I had caused her, and her eyes, the same combination of brown and green colored irises I had had when I was alive, slowly fill with water until it takes over her whole face. It's times like that when I wish I could reach her, wish I could touch her just one more time and tell her I didn't mean it.
I didn't mean a word, I had been wrong that night. I put my killer over my own mother.
My father too, I hurt him just as much as her. I think he understands, I think he knows I'm still here, seeing everything. He knows he can't reach me.

I'm sure Kyle hates me now, I ruined our parents and nearly cost Mackenzie her life. He doesn't like it when people talk about me like I'm some saint. Ever since I was found, I've been on the face of three different newspapers and they even mentioned me on the tv news. Girls like me,middle class girls from suburbia did not let their boyfriends convince them to make a death pact only to later get brutally murdered by said boyfriend. To a small town like Dinah Ledge, my death was huge and shocking. For weeks after my death, there would be vigil after vigil and gossip after gossip. Weeks soon stretched into months, it didn't die down. How could it? No one knew the truth about me. My murderer kept making waves from behind bars, he couldn't keep his mouth shut and reporters and gossip news outlets couldn't keep their ears turned away.
My murder investigation became entertainment, a never ending saga. It was rumored there would be a TV movie made about me, or a book or two. Everyone was hungry for a piece of the Kerry Kingston story. They would never have all the pieces though, not really because I'm not there to give them.
Not even the murderer himself could give them, not without picking up the pieces I left behind. I left them everywhere.
I had a good life, despite only making it to eighteen. I wish I could have appreciated it while I had it. Now I'll never get to, and it's all thanks to Wyatt.