Cold Blood

❥Chapter Thirty-eight❥

Written by ChemicalWonderland

Everett POV

Childhood memory

My eyes sting with tears, a heavy feeling in my heart. I gaze up with watery irises to the bright ocean-colored sky, a deep aqua that's brilliance is only interrupted here and there with small fluffy clouds. The sun is bright today, bringing out the death that reeks everywhere. Death is in my father's eyes. Death is in the trampled, brownish-green grass beneath my feet. Death is in my heart.

How can the day be so beautiful, when nothing else is? Its like a lie, a nightmare all wrapped up in pretty packaging.

My father nudges my shoulder roughly, a sign for me to pay attention. I immediately straighten up and look straight ahead, a command that has been instilled in me. My eyes focus in on a large casket being brought into view, a deathbed among a garden of flowers where we gather for my mother's burial. The casket is very glossy and dark brown and expensive looking, even though I know it's not with our income. A bouquet of purple flowers rests on top of the coffin, tied perfectly with a red ribbon. Two burly men carry the casket, one man with large gauges in his ears and the other wearing a torn flannel like he's a lumberjack. I recognize the men from town, the ones who work at a local bar I can't remember the name of. I know my father goes there regularly- I even went with him once- so he probably passed them a crinkled twenty over the dust-covered counter to do the job.

A feeling of resentment for my father builds in my stomach and up my throat like acid. He never cared for my mother and then has the audacity to play the role of a concerned, loving husband when she passed. And everyone seems to buy the act. Everyone except me.

I trace the casket with my eyes, watching as the men approach the six-feet deep hole where my mother will soon lay. The hole has been surrounded by trails of flowers in many colors, shapes, and sizes, like a rainbow thrown across the grass. I hold my breath as they're starting to lower her. This funeral was meant to be quick and final, at my father's command. He insisted it was because he didn't want long-lasting emotional effects on me and it would be better to move on from this kind of tragedy. But the real reason was because he felt this kind of information would be detrimental to his job and could jeopardize the reputation he's built up at his workplace. How it could do that, I'll never know. Maybe he's hiding something.

▸▸▸

The funeral has been over for a few hours, and I still feel just as drained and upset. Watching my mother disappear under piles of dirt was not something I was prepared for. And as soon as she was fully buried, like a memory brushed away by the earth, my father told everyone to get out, but in his nice, citizenship-like way.

And as soon as everyone was ushered out of the garden, he took me back home, tense the entire ride. I wondered if he was angry with me, but I couldn't think of why. Maybe he just wanted a punching bag. But I was wrong. He was anything but mad.

Once we'd stepped into the kitchen flooded with sunlight, my father had burst out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. At first, it sounded like he was crying, his face hid from view. But it soon became apparent that he wasn't. He leaned an arm on the counter for support, doubled over with laugher. Absolutely hysterical, a manic grin spread across his face.

I wasn't sure how to react, what to say. I thought maybe I should just leave and give him some space because he's clearly not in the right state of mind, but as I turned to go he addressed me.

"I did it, you know," he whispers almost breathlessly, gasping for air.

"Y-you did what?" I ask in confusion, his statement started without preamble. Even though he gave no context, I think I already knew exactly what he was talking about.

"Your mother. I killed her," he admits to me, not an ounce of regret or sorrow in his striking transparent blue eyes.

I gasped loudly, immediately stepping back. The words hung in the air like daggers pointed up to heaven, evil and menacing as if he's challenging the universe to punish him. My father reaches for the knife block on the counter almost drunkenly, grabbing a large one with a gleaming blade on the end of its handle.

He holds it up to me, but not in a way that says he's going to hurt me with it. Rather, he's showing me something about it. "This, this is the knife I used," he exclaims, and that's when I notice how clean and shiny this knife looks compared to the others because it's been cleaned. Cleaned of my mother's blood.

My young mind can't seem to wrap itself around the concept, even the idea, that one of my parents could murder the other in cold blood. "Why?" is all I find myself asking with a mixture of emotions in my broken voice.

My father gets a concerned look on his face, his bushy eyebrows furrowing together and his mouth downturned. "Why? Well for you of course. I did this all for you, my perfect son."