Requiem [COMPLETED]

The Moving Finger

            As another train rumbled along, a block from our apartment building, I heard yet another high, unloveable whistle screeching in crescendoing arrival and passage, muffled suddenly as it became retrospective, chugging on towards the coal plants out west. Suddenly I realized that trying to keep things as they had been when we were children was not only foolish but impossible. The world hurtled on around us, impeding everything but change. My ideas of the past, my beliefs in people, they were based on what a child had thought, and what had served best my survival. I was lying by omitting the ephiphanies of adulthood, when one can retrospectively see more of the truth, the motives, and have a clearer perception of other people's thoughts and motives. Time is rushing along; my denials do not save me from a truth that hurts no one but me. My denial does however hurt someone else. I am not the me that was, when I was four.

Sven was upset that I wouldn't take our evidence to the police. He thought we finally had claims they wouldn't be able to ignore. We could expose grandpa for what he was, he said. He was mad when I refused to give up the bodies. Actually, that's an understatement.

Sven snapped, "Eating words has never given me indigestion, but then I've had to resort to that measure often enough when I don't even think I'm wrong. Why can't you admit being wrong about this one thing?!"

"Sven, what can they do? They'll look at a bunch of bodies that are really old and say 'hmm, so you say you found them at x location, eh?' And then grandpa will nail us for trespassing and we'll have to go face him in court. Is that what you want, for our evidence to get confiscated as stolen property-- 'young punks pillage family grave'--and deal with grandpa again?"

"Sigrid, they're fucking bodies! That's a lot more evidence than trying to convince a social worker that your caregiver is mean to you. 'Here are some murdered people.' That's way harder to ignore. Jesus, don't you want him stopped?!"

"He is has been stopped! We got away, there's no one else for him to hurt."

"He could hurt anybody!"

"But he hasn't. He only hurts family, people close around him that he could abuse in a controlled, isolated environment. He's not going to go butcher people at the elevator, he's not a chainsaw vigilante!"

"So you're just perfectly okay with the fact that he's killed most of our immediate family; totally at peace with him getting away with it and not facing any punishment for what he did?"

"No, of course not! But I'm saying it's not necessarily that feasible. I mean, these are piles of bones. What if he poisoned them, or stabbed them? How they were killed won't necessarily be traceable through anatomical study. The police could study them and say there's no evidence that they died anything but a natural death!"

"Sigrid, we don't know that yet? Why are you assuming that it's not going to work?! Give them the bodies, give them our evidence. Let them investigate. Let them see what they can. They're not amateurs like us. Why are you so convinced the world is going to fall down around our ears?"

"Because it always HAS! We've always fallen through the cracks, been forgotten and ignored. No adult in a position of authority has ever listened to us and believed us. Why would they now? No one wants to believe bad things of others--"

"You have a very skewed view of law enforcement. It's their job to be suspicious of wrongdoing--"

"SVEN! I'm going to chase after grandpa like some vengeful fury! He's tried to hurt us. We escaped. He's an old man who has no one else he can hurt and little time to do it in; he could live a day or five years. He's already like 85." Sven shot out of his chair, unable to be calm. His hands were shaking and his voice kept going up in decibels.