Her Wish

Her Wish [Chapter 20]

Lower… lower… lower…

His eyes closed with the naïve thought that perhaps they would remain closed, blind to every heart-breaking action he witnessed and every horrifying thing he saw. He wanted to be able to turn away, to be able to actually be the way he acted.

He heard the dripping of the water, echoing with a maximized effect.

His entire body was submerged in the water, blocking out any sounds of the outside world. He was alone, just like he had wished for.

How long had it been since he felt so entirely alone? How long had it been since the house was silent, void of the constant arguing that had occurred recently? Too long – so long that now it was gone; the silence was deathly, abnormal, and awkward.

Lower.

He paid no notice to the bubbles floating to the surface in his body’s own attempt to gasp for air. He was so wrapped in his thoughts that he was completely oblivious to the actions around him. Just as he had hoped for in the past days, weeks, months, he was now successfully distracted and ignorant to the scenes unfolding around him.

He wanted none of it. He wanted out. It was all just far too much to handle.

There was knocking on the door, growing increasingly desperate and aghast by the second, but he heard none of it.

Everything was now just a mere blur to the thirteen-year-old boy.

“Danny! Danny!”

The shouting was frantic, but the boy’s thoughts were elsewhere, nowhere near the reality he refused to accept. His thoughts were all he heard, the visions accompanying them being all he saw. Everything else was at a mere distance, tucked away in a place Danny wished he could avoid forever.

“Danny! DANNY!”

He was desperate, but so was the boy in the bathtub, drowning himself in such deep denial that it began to threaten his life.

Take me out of this world.

A feeling of dizziness overwhelmed him as he tried to slip lower, but found he had already reached the bottom – there was no going any further. He knew this was wrong – how could he not? But at the moment, any place other than the household he once called home seemed to be better.

As long as he could escape.

“DANNY! OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW!”

But he turned a deaf ear to it all. The only sounds audible were the soft drops from the faucet, the sound of the drain maintaining the levels of water, and his pleas to escape.

Moments later, that peace was broken, terminated. He should have known such an escape could only be temporary. Sooner or later someone would find him, pull him back to reality, just like in the way Eric yanked his body from the water.

But perhaps Danny had hoped that they would find him too late. Perhaps he had been hoping that by the time they discovered him, he’d be long gone, able to permanently escape from the chaos of their household.

As he was jerked out of the water, he immediately began coughing and desperately gasping for the air his body had been innately seeking. How much water had been downed, neither of the brothers knew.

Eric was shaking, the fifteen-year-old boy terrified and panic-stricken at the sight he had just witnessed. All around him were broken pieces of what used to be the wooden door, kicked down in his perturbed state of fear, not trusting what his younger brother might have done.