BLACK

(36) Temper

EDITED

Harsh noises wake me, their loudness echoing in my foggy brain and vibrations from all the commotion shake my body. I sit up with a pounding heart, clutching at my chest to try and soothe myself. The distraught voices continue in my ears, but more dull-like. Instead, my senses hyper focus on what's tangible.

The space is pure black, I can't see my hand before my face, but from the comfort beneath me I know that I am on a bed. My nose tingles with a scent that makes me homesick and vulnerable. I scrambled my hands around me on the bed, trying to find comfort in the mate who is usually there, only to come up empty. Right, I think groggily. Aris sleeps downstairs. I roll onto my stomach, inhaling the sheets beside me to get a comforting hint of his scent.

At the first inhale, I reel back immediately. That is not his scent. Instead, it's something tangy, sweetly spicy. Cinnamon. I only knew one girl with a scent like that, my sister.

And then suddenly, just in the blink of an eye, the fog faded and knowledge came rushing back to me. Aris is dead, I'm in the trailer. But then, Black made us leave. Driving, in the rain ...

My legs kick the blanket off, finding the floor instantly like a magnet was pulling them. The floor has fluffy, warm carpet that makes my toes relish in their spot. Yet the rest of me pushes forward, scrambling to the only space of light, a thin horizontal line that must come from beneath a door. I grasp it steadily, yanking the door open to be blinded by more hazy light.

The yelling out here is louder, more violent. And more frightening, it's voices I recognize. I spin down the hallway, hands finding a railway that is eerily familiar. I hear a door slam, spiking my senses away from the illusion of the building.

My feet race across the tile, chipping in the corners guide my way like I know this place. The cream walls, the elegantly crafted wall tables. I reach a french glass door, one with brass knobs carved into wolf heads. Wolf heads that haunted me, their tooth carvings threatening to bite me in my childhood kitchen. As my fingertips graced the cold metal, I took a final spin to look around.

This is my home. Was my home. There is a mass of shoes at the front foyer, a spiral railing that leads into all of the bedrooms. The living room to the right, it's wonderful pleated sofa as precious as ever. And just behind it, litters and litters of children's dolls and toy houses.

I ripped the French doors apart, stepping into the chandelier lit kitchen, the open space large enough for my parents, yet always cramped with the amount of bodies they raised in this home. At the table, my throat swallows. Audibly, too. I found my fingers running along the hem of my shirt, smoothing its edges to even try and make myself look presentable.

One brown, and one white head of hair stair back at me, green eyes wide and bags of exhaustion beneath them. Neither move, Rosalia with the least amount of concern in the world, only curiosity doted her face. A cup of tea sat untouched before my mother, the heat of the black liquid rising under her nose.

My sister gasps as her eyes rake down me, lingering on my body. "Ce salaud."

The large maple dining table has been pushed into the corner of the room, leaving barely four seats accessible, and it sits uneasy with me. That table was always pulled out into the middle, chairs squished together to make room for every member of our family. But I had to remember now, it has been years since then. My family was almost done growing, done waiting for me to return.

"Baby, it's so good to see you up and well." My mother says, though there is an unknown barrier behind her bright orbs.

"Where is he?" I question, throat dry.