Lying to Survive

Chapter 3

Light and Darkness

Over the years, you learned how to live on your own. Your father wasn't exactly the loving and affectionate type. Your mother locked herself in her room and lost herself in her own world.

But alone was how you liked it.

When you weren't with your tutor, you were pretending to be anything from a pirate princess to a world-renown explorer. You sat in the library and read a countless number of books in a chair that was much too big for you. You went down to the basement, in the room on the right, never the left, as your father had told you, and watched old movies and ate snacks you had snuck down there.

Your life was an odd beaming light in the middle of a foreboding darkness. You didn't know what exactly went on in the dark, but you decided to spend your time being curious about imaginary creatures that lived in the forest surrounding your house instead of why everybody who came to visit had guns and why your uncle Antonio had left your house a week ago and didn't come back.

But then, after you had just turned twelve, some of the darkness intruded your beam.

Your mother died.

No one told you exactly how, but, judging by the empty pill bottle you had found on the bathroom floor later on, you probably could've guessed.

Your father called you into his office. As soon as he told you, you felt like the air had gotten knocked out of your lungs. You felt your hands shaking. A lump that would've made it hard to breathe if you were even doing that in the first place, formed in your throat. Tears pooling up in your eyes replaced your father in front of you.

One blink and they came out rushing out like mini waterfalls. You weren't sobbing, you still couldn't breathe. Your brain realized that for you. It screamed at you to breathe and your body began to try to comply. You inhaled but it just came out as a choked sob. You exhaled but it was a small hiccup. You went on like that for a few minutes. Your father just leaned back in his big leather chair and watched you.

Then, after letting you cry for a few minutes, he stood up and walked over next to you. You looked up at his looming figure.

"Don't cry." He said. His tone wasn't sweet or comforting, like other people who say those words sound. It was more like an order. "These things happen, and they will for the rest of your life. It's time you learn to deal with it."

[A/N]
Okay, that's all for today folks. More updates in a few days!
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