Dear. . .

Ch. 1: Dear Mom, did you ever notice?

Ignorance is a choice. People choose it to hide from what's in front of their face because they're scared. Ignorance is fear.  

<><><><><<><><><><><><><><><><><

The lights in the average one story, three bedroom house were almost all out. The only luminescent on at ten past two A.M. in the Tempest house was the microwaves very own. It cast a starch yellow light down onto their gas stove. Callista Tempest watched the light blankly. It caused tears to gloss over her eyes. Everything in this house did.

It was no longer a home to any of them. Uninhabitable due to the memories just as toxic as any form of a mold or fungi. They slathered the walls seeping pungent perfumes in every room. No one could blame the family for the sudden hatred towards the house that had managed only to be a loyal shelter. The house itself had done nothing wrong, it was what was inside the house.

Callista, shortened to Cali though she was hardly ever called that, was the only one still awake. Her daughter had gone straight to bed once they got home and her husband had, in a way, done the same. She would join neither in their slumber that night. Cali wouldn't be able to sleep without assistance from some nice pills for the rest of her ten years when lung cancer would take her life.

Her bony tired fingers clawed at the edge of the horizontally folded orange envelope. She flipped it open like a book, except this one only had a beginning and an end. Written on the front was in her daughters perfect print: Callista Tempest

It made her choke on her own spit, a few tears trailing down her cheek. Her daughter had touched this. The odd orange envelope was touched by her. She ripped a straight line across the top, being very careful with it. It was important to her even though it clawed at the already deep wound she held. To her, it was something her daughter had touched, been apart of, something she had trusted to Mrs. Tempest. That's why she handled it with a care that resembled the way a newborn is treated.

The dull fading orange letter that had spent weeks prior in Emily's pencil box obtaining a mixed smell of crayons and lead. It also held the lavender rose sent from the bar of soap she had kept in there. Emily had little quirks to her and that was one of them. Every year when her family went on vacation she would always steal the soap and put in into the pencil box she used.

Callista smiled at the remembrance of her daughter's lovely little things. It just dug the wound deeper and wider, like a hole, that just keeps getting bigger and bigger the sides falling in on themselves. She wasn't used to the feeling of pain covering her entire soul, she never expected it, but then again with a girl like Emily, no one expected it.

Inside the envelope was two pieces of college rule paper. The edges were ripped holes. Perfect circles that had their perfection violated. Torn and mutilated in a very metaphoric manner. Callista wondered if it was intentional, some sort of morbid symbolism.

The two paper parts were folded into the classical thirds and stacked neatly on top of each other. Both of the parts were written double sided. The mother unfolded each letter placing them side by side tediously. She was scared to read the letter but did so anyways trying to satisfy her conquest for closure.

Dear Mother,

Those words were enough to start the woman on crying, again. It was a very pitiful thing to watch good thing her second and last daughter was blasting music as she slept a sleepless night. Not to forget the husband who was knocked out after his one too many drinks. Callista was left alone reading the remnants of her daughters life while crying,