The Day I Died

The Day I Lost Everything

Chapter 6

The Day I Lost Everything

When I was 8, my life was perfect.

At least to me it was; in the beginning.

I was the baby of my family, then came my sister, Jenny and then my brother.

Sam.

Sam and I were always close, even at that age. Jenny was always slightly upset and angry at me and it was probably because she was invisible to my parents and I didn't know why at the time.

You see, as dysfunctional families go, mine was perfect on the outside but something on the inside had began to crack. Our parents would fight a lot, loudly. And at one point I found out why they disliked Jenny so much.

One night me and Jenny had a fight, she wanted to listen to music whereas I wanted to watch Peppa Pig.

It ended in her punching me in the face.

Which hurt.

A lot.

My mum found me crying and that's when it began. My dad started shouting at Jenny, swearing and at one point, he hit her.

My mum took Jenny's side, telling him to stop, asking why my face was bruised. I stuck up for Jenny, said it was my fault. Tried to take the blame for it.

They didn't listen.

That's when the argument really began. My dad started shouting at my mum that she needed to be taught a lesson for what she has been doing and then he let it slip.

I knew I wasn't meant to know because all their faces turned pale and froze as soon as he said it.

Poor naïve little me could only ask 1 question.

"What's bleach?"

Because, ladies and gentlemen, it seemed that for several years, my darling sister had been trying to kill me. Poison me with bleach.

In my cereal, pancakes, water..

And every time my parents stopped her. Warned her that if she did it again, she would be sent to a "Special Hospital" as my parents used to call it.

That night, was the last time I saw her.

We all went to bed and when I woke, Jenny was gone and my parents had begun to despise each other.

So about me and Sam. The arguments had began to worsen and they would fight every night, louder and louder, angrier and angrier. We were angry and confused too, where was Jenny? Why are they fighting?

It was during one of the worst fights that me and Sam went to the park, to the swings. The 6 year age gap never mattered. He wasn't one of those guys who would ditch me for his friends or play tricks on me or mess up my hair. He was my best friend. He wanted to protect me.

It was an ordinary park, swings, a roundabout, a slide. All pretty basic but it became my haven. Whenever the fights would start, Sam would appear at my door, he would hold up my wellies and grin and I would know.

8 year old me never saw it coming.

Sam was pushing me on the swings, I was squealing with laughter, begging him to go higher. It had been raining for several minutes but we couldn't go home, not yet.

We were having to much fun to notice that nearly everyone around us had vanished, replaced with people in hoodies, tall people.

One minute I was laughing, climbing higher and higher. The next I tumbled to the ground. Sam shouted at me to run, I was confused. I stayed there for a minute, my knee bleeding from the impact. That's when he screamed at me to run but it was too late, I saw the knife.

So, poor terrified little me ran. She ran until she reached home. She told her parents everything. They didn't believe her of course but they set of to fetch Sam and tell him how silly he was. They sent her to a neighbour for the meantime and went off into the night.

They didn't come back.

Their bodies were discovered the next day. I must have cried for days over the loss of my family, my brother, my best friend. I was broken.

I didn't even know where Jenny was.

They put me into foster care, home after home. Cramped room after cramped room.

Until I was adopted. They were nice but I didn't want nice. My family was dysfunctional but it was mine and I loved all of them. The fights, the anger, the crack that split everything up could have been patched together. But as the years went by I realised that that was wrong, my family was broken beyond compare and so was I.

Thats when I tried to bottle up the memories, forget the pain.

I tried to forget.

But some things can't be forgotten.