The One Formed of the Smokeless Fire

Introduction

*psa, love interest is based off a young Johnny Depp. Also, chapters will be around 2,000 words, intro is a whole lot shorter though*

Losing my mother created a hole so massive inside my father's heart, that despite having two loving children could not be filled. I could tell even then, on that night, as my father looked into my eyes, his own going glassy, when he said the words, "You look just like your mother." that he was in fact broken.

My father had forgotten candles for our cake and ran to the 7 eleven down the street. The store that was helpful for mid trip snacks, or bathroom breaks, but not much help when it came to birthday supplies as my father later came to find out. Meanwhile my brother and I scoured the house for a key, old enough to fit into the lock on the chest that had lain abandoned for over a decade since my mother died. My father, the one I had never seen read, once in my life, had a large novel sitting in one of his desk drawers, the cover read "King Lear" by none other than Shakespeare, and my father's vocabulary was no where near impressive enough to read something by him. To my luck I opened the book, and just as I had expected a key fitting the lock fell out of the hollow confines of the book.

A smoke like dust erupted into the air as I lifted the top of the chest, it slivered like a snake through the air ducts in the floor boards. "You look lost," Otto spoke, searching my face, as I stared blankly into the wooden chest. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. "What's in there, move over, let me see." Otto whined, pushing me aside. I let the cover of the chest fall back against the floor with a crack. I held my knees to my eyes, blocking out all light and forcing my tears not to fall, I would not let Otto see how much this was affecting me, nor that it had made me cry, however it was just a dumb old chest. "It's just dumb old paintings?! Do they at least smell like her?" Otto knelt down to take a whiff of whatever was in the box. He let out a groan of disgust before straightening back up again. "Mothballs?!" Otto was right they were just paintings, terrifying and dark paintings that danced behind my eyelids every night since as I floated in and out of consciousness. The men's fiery red eyes burning into mine, staring intently and ferociously. Some nights I woke up screaming, rubbing at my skin, where in my dreams I had seen ink black runes. 

I had expected much more; pictures, clothing, an old baby tooth for all I cared, anything, any scrap or piece of her life before me, before she showed up on the shore of the East River. Before the day January 3rd had any negative connotations to it other than it being the third day of a New Year.

"What on earth are you two doing in here?!" The sound of my father's booming voice along with the slamming of a door made Otto and I jump immediately to our feet. It seemed neither of us knew exactly what to say in this circumstance, especially me who had been mute until the age of 10, and still wasn't super keen on the whole, voicing my thoughts nonsense. I just stood there, mouth agape, searching for the right apology, while Otto looked on, fuming, his green eyes clear and slit so narrow that I highly doubted he could see a thing. 

Our father sent us to bed without our birthday cake in our stomach, despite it being a pretty big birthday for us. Over the next few days we watched as the cake crumbled and rotted, uncovered on the kitchen counter where our father left it to spite us.  We new immediately what we had done had crossed some sort of boundary that we were unaware of at that point. But by the time our 18th rolled around we knew exactly what boundary we had obliterated, that one fateful September 16th.