Growing up I had always thought the concept of revenge was a bit melodramatic. Characters would spend half the story looking for revenge and the other half hating themselves for getting it. Basically a huge waste of everyone's time, i'm sure we can all agree. Hypothetically I always believed forgive and forget was a far better solution and I looked up to heroes like superman and captain America and all the other ultra-righteous ones. Fighting crime and saving the world, always following the rules. But like I said, that was hypothetical.
I learnt a lot the day my sister got taken. Like how much you can miss a person, or how sometimes, you'll do absolutely anything for those you love. But most importantly I learnt that it is impossible to know what you might do in a situation until you're in it. However, i'm getting ahead of myself, so in true superhero fashion, let's go right back to the beginning.
You know something's wrong when a 13 year old doesn't answer their phone. Maria had gone to the cinema a few towns over with some of her friends and no one had heard from her in hours. My parents had so far called her a record number of 17 times and as hard as I was trying not to let it show, I was really starting to worry. In the kitchen, my mum was trying to get my dad to calm down by repeating things like 'don't worry her phone probably just died' and 'she'll be home soon, just you wait' in soothing tones as I hacked into my sister's Snapchat. "Who was she meant to be meeting?" I called out to my mum who replied "Emily" In a voice tinged with urgency. I scrolled down her friends list and hit the call button next to Emily's name. I won't go into too much detail on the life altering call but essentially, Maria had left the Cinema the same time as the others and should have made it home roughly 4 hours ago. My parents were on the phone to the police within seconds and the next minute they were off to search for her. Naturally I had to stay home and wait, in case she came back. For 4 days, all they did was search. By day 5 there was a full blown police investigation underway. By day 8 the media had gotten hold of it and it was all anyone could talk about. The next week or so was a blur of sitting, crying, eating, throwing up and waiting. There was nothing we could do and with every day it seemed less likely she was going to show up.
By day 18 I was back at college and on day 56 she turned 14. 2 weeks later I turned 17.
The house became more and more like a prison. My dad, terrified to let me out of his sight, refused to let me leave except for school. I remember once trying to sneak out to a party, but he caught me. i'd never seen anyone angrier and I never tried to sneak out again. Then University came and it was like a weight had been lifted. Every day when my parents thought I was at uni, I was actually working. A shit job with shit pay where I had to sell shit to shitty people all day but it was something, and it was better than anything waiting for me at home. In the evenings I would shut myself in my room and work on my studies on my own. Forensics and Criminology. On weekends I would look after my mum who was getting progressively worse. It wasn't the fact that she would sit for days in her room or the fact that she would have random manic moods where she would scream at me, or my dad, or the TV or sometimes nothing at all. None of that bothered me. I had become numb to it all to be honest. No, it was that she had given up. I couldn't understand it. The police could tell me all they wanted that it was likely we would never see Maria again, but nothing could ever make me believe it. Nothing.
I need you to understand how much I hated it there. Everywhere I turned there was a reminder of her. Some nights, whenever there was a lightening storm, I would lie awake, waiting for her to knock on my door and crawl into bed beside me. Whenever our parents were arguing I would wait for her in the cupboard under the stairs, where we always used to sit when they were yelling, because it's the only place in the house where you can't hear them. Once or twice the song, 'wake me up before you go go' By Wham! came on the radio but it felt unnaturally empty without her next to me singing along. The pain of living every day without her with me was indescribable but it was our parents that made living almost unbearable. I need you to understand this because on day 464 our mother died whilst I was at work and I never went home, not even for the funeral.
YOU ARE READING
Dark Heroes: chapter one
Teen Fiction'Growing up I always thought the concept of revenge was a bit melodramatic. Characters would spend the first half of the story looking for revenge and the other half hating themselves for getting it.' Kody has always loved superheroes but what will...
