The sea splashed on the shore while seagulls soared high. A life-changing event was awaiting me at sundown. Anxiousness took over me as I sat on the rocks sighting the horizon. Brooding over my decisions. I could still picture him capering around the lawn with Finn, his grey Scottish fold, at his heels. Mother's favourite boy squealing and running with a tennis ball in his tiny hands became a distant memory that occurred numerous times in a week.
The sun went out of sight and the sky began to darken. I gathered up myself and walked back to the car, seated myself and lowered the window. Glancing at the people, I lit a cigarette and drove back to my neighbourhood. Two blocks from my house, at the end of the street, was the house of my beloved cousin Steven and his wife Yvetta. Later this evening was their first wedding anniversary. An elderly couple from the neighbourhood and I were invited to the little ceremony they had managed to organize in their small residence.
Yvetta left college a few weeks after her 17th birthday and well also a few weeks after she received her reports that stated she was pregnant with Steven's child. Meanwhile, Steven was struggling to find a job to provide for both of them in his last year of college. My mother always had great admiration for him. Yvetta had a boy when she was on the verge of turning 18. The boy, Walter, had similar features as of my late brother, Aaron.
Walter lived for a brief time of only ninety-eight days after his birth. The grief took over Yvetta and she isolated herself. My mother gave Steven a therapist's contact in order to help her but it was of no use. She didn't come out of her room for three years. Her isolation made her frail and her skin clung to her bones. Her cheeks were hollow when I saw her on the stretcher outside her house. Steven standing beside the ambulance as they took her to the hospital. She gradually improved by the medicines and regular therapy sessions after her trip to the hospital. The three years of mourning came to an end.
The story doesn't end here, in fact, it begins from here. Yvetta recovered quicker than we anticipated which seemed ample at the moment. Steven seemed to grow content. Everything seemed to go the right way.
I parked my car near the fence of their house and walked towards the door. The conversation of people inside the house became audible when I pushed open the door. I walked toward the living room to find the elderly couple and Steven having a lively conversation that was disturbed when I abruptly stopped at the door. Surprise as he was to see me standing there, a socially awkward person attending someone's wedding anniversary is a rare sight.
I knew I had to keep myself calm and undisturbed if I was to attract no unwanted attention. I asked Steven if Yvetta was in the kitchen so I would just ask her for any help she might require from me. Steven gestured towards his bedroom and told me she might be there. I gave a nod and left the room. The pounding of my heart became terribly intense as if someone else would hear it. I took short steps towards her bedroom. A sharp thin ray of light emitted from the door slit illuminating the corridor.
Peeking through the door and finding the room empty I push it open and enter the room closing the door behind me. The room had a small bed, a dressing table and a couple of chairs beside a closet. There was a bright red coloured gown waiting to be worn. A pair of golden heels were scattered on the carpet. I heard a tap open somewhere behind me and water began to flow. I went numb for a couple of seconds and hid behind the curtains which completely concealed me. I peeked through the curtains to look at the semi-opened door of the bathroom. A sweet, melodious humming followed the noise of the water.
That was it. Yvetta was inside. After a good fifteen minutes, she walked out of the bathroom tip-toed, with her body dripping wet and a shower cap on her head looking for a towel. She wrapped her towel around her chest and back from under her arms and tucking it inside. She looked exquisite standing near the mirror, trying on the gift her husband brought her, the red gown. It fit her perfectly as if it was made for her body. Her curves were prominent and the way she carried it was praiseworthy. But as she seemed all delighted to show it off something occurred inside me.
This is the right time, isn't it? A voice in my head asked my heart. Do I have to do this? My heart replied. Well, you are here, better now than never. End of conversation. The decision was made. There was no turning back now.
My mother left this world when I was only sixteen and my brother was six. Our grandmother raised us till I turned eighteen. One day, on my way back from college, a neighbour's boy came running to me gasping. He told me someone broke into our house and my grandmother and brother were taken to the hospital where she didn't survive and my brother was in a crucial condition. I rode my bike to the hospital where I could only take a look at my brother before his last breath left his throat. His hands and clothes were all bloodied. He was stabbed in the heart thrice. My grandmother was stabbed in her back. Steven and Yvetta brought them to the hospital. Yvetta sat beside me consoling meanwhile Steven finishing some formalities.
I made several trips to the police station before they closed the case due to lack of evidence. The dagger used had no fingerprints on it and was not even bought from within the town. I tried looking around the house for some kind of proof that might get me to the murderers but it was of no use. One night, laying on the bed, I was surfing through my cellphone when I received a voice mail from an old friend but I couldn't load it due to insufficient space in my cellphone. I deleted several voicemails until I scrolled to an unopened voicemail from my grandmother, dated on the day she was murdered.
My heart pounded in my chest and I couldn't make it up in my mind that how could I not see this before. I played the voicemail and it glitched at first then a shriek of my grandmother and went blank again, a few seconds later I heard my brother bellowing and within a second it was gone. I heard a woman's voice following, complaining of her lost son, Walter, that she couldn't see him again and that Aaron reminded her of him, she couldn't bear to look at him because all of her memories came rushing in whenever she saw Aaron.
I pulled out the same dagger from my jacket and walked forward making no sound. She stood there, curling her hair when I grabbed her arm and pulled it behind her. Before she could make any noise I slit open her throat. Blood flowed from her throat staining her gift, the red gown, and the carpet as well. Her hand went numb and she fell on the floor, her eyes were blank and glistening. She coughed blood a few times before her last breath left her lungs and she was gone for good. The blood of my brother was recompensed. I left the room before anyone would suspect her late arrival for the ceremony. I cleaned up while making my way out of the house from the back door in the kitchen and scurried toward my car which consisted of my essentials. I had driven off to another town before first light.
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