Him or Him

Chapter 3-Assholes And Apologies

"Mom? We're back!" Cole yelled as we entered our house after school.

We weren't surprised to see her sitting in the dining room, a cup of herbal tea clenched in her hands.

"How was your day?" Cole asked, kissing the top of her head as I hugged her.

"It was okay." She shrugged giving a halfhearted smile.

"Come on mom, don't tell me you've been sitting here all day doing nothing." I pleaded, taking a seat on the dining chair to her right while Cole took the one to her left.

"Lucia called." She announced.

"Oh." I didn't know what else to say.

"What did she say?" Cole asked, gently rubbing circles on the back of her hand.

"Not much. We talked for a little while about her being in Dartmouth. She really likes it there."

"Oh...do you think she still visits her mum and dad?" I cautiously asked and my mom took in a massive breath,

Aunt Clarissa, my mother's sister, was a perfectionist. She made sure everything she did was totally perfect. But she hasn't been able to perfect anything for the past seven years. When I was ten years old, I went to stay with my aunt and uncle for a while. One night Lucy went for a sleepover at her friends place,she invited me but I said I didn't want to go. Her older brother -Micheal, who was 14 at the time, was at a party with some of his friends.

It was just aunt Clarissa, uncle James and I and everything was going smoothly. But then aunt Clarissa sent me to her room to get her favorite shade of nail polish from her room.

I had just gotten the bubble-gum pink nail polish when I heard a noise downstairs followed by a gunshot. I was young and stupid. I thought uncle James was watching another one of his action movies and he had turned the volume all the way up again. He always did that. I looked down from the top railing down the stairs and the sight in front of me nearly scarred me for the rest of my life.

My uncle was on the floor, blood stained his perfectly white shirt, and my aunt was on her knees, still managing to look absolutely gorgeous despite the tears that were rushing out of her eyes as she begged the men to spare them. I noticed that uncle James was still moving.

The men ignored her pleas and shot him two more times before placing three bullets in her. One in the head, one in the chest and one in the stomach.

One of the men ordered a couple to go search the house for other people and the rest came up the stairs.

I stood there frozen, trying to get air into my constricting throat. My brain refused to comprehend the sight below me as I stood in the dark corridor. The men ran up the stairs and into the rooms without turning on the lights. They took most of the valuables they could lay their hands on. All I could do was chant Psalm 91 in my head over and over.

They didn't find me.

There was only one maid who managed to escape and she - unlike me - saw sense and phoned the police.

I wasn't able to tell them what the men looked like because I wasn't able to see their faces and even if I saw them, my stupid brain wouldn't comprehend it.

They found the men eventually. Apparently one of them was stupid enough to leave his fingerprints on aunt Clarissa's bedside table. The guy later confessed and turned in his accomplices.

Aunt Clarissa's death wrecked my mother. All she had left were her two children and her husband, who stuck with her when everyone else thought she was going crazy.