Nightmares (Short Stories)

Normal Family

Blinding light will always be the way I remember that I am awake. I am out of my torment that has plagued me nightly while my eyes are shut and my guard is down. Every night it's the same memory of my mom reaching her hand out to me to try to grasp the tiny stubs attached to my 5 year old hand that was plunged into the icy lake behind our cabin.

The lake has been frozen solid for a good month and didn't look like it was going to thaw anytime soon. We were wrong. Mom stepped on a new patch and the very audible crack was the first sign something was wrong. She shifted her weight slightly, picked me up and threw me as far as she could before the ice gave out under her in a jagged circle. We were supposed to be practicing how to ice skate so I could keep up with my older brothers and sister. Being the fifth one always meant I was last at everything. I just wanted to keep up this time and so I begged her to take me out and tech me.

The look of peer horror on her face under the water as her hair floated in a halo around her distorted face terrorized me nightly for the last 20 years. Having her chose to let go of my hand as she saw me sliding in with her so she could save my life, made it all the harder.

When everyone found me crying on the ice a few hours later, everything happened so quickly. My brothers called the ambulances and my father came up from his business meeting early.

As the years passed, the thinly veiled disgust and hatred from my siblings and even my own father at having lost the most precious woman in their life for me never faded. Therapy didn't help. No, what did happen in therapy was short of illegal treatment by a child psychologist that believed in discussing the incident in detail to explain what happened and then pick it apart for what it should have been, murder. She explained that through my actions, my mother was lost to the world and I should have known better than to beg her to help me when I should have been independent and done it myself. I was diagnosed as having a dependency disorder at 5 by a mental health professional.

I grew up thinking I was a burden as my siblings has told me many times before. Any relationship I had, turned sour shortly after it began due to me being emotionally distant as one friend put it and unable to cope with the past and be my own person as my last "boyfriend" put it.

In my mid twenties and I could barely talk to strangers because of the fear that they will judge me and I might lose them as well if a friendship were to develop. I stayed in my home away from my family with my emotional support dog. My new therapist had gotten the notes from my now barred ex-therapist and realized the trauma that she had caused was going to take years to help if anything ever does.

The family I once shared a house with never contacted me after I turned 18 and moved out. I graduated while living in the back of a dog shelter while working there during the day. I still work there, but now as a vet instead of a dog walker. Thank goodness the money I got after my ex-therapist was sued by my neighbor for the damages caused helped get me through school and found me a cheap apartment. Mr Sully was a retired DA that used to let me help with his garden after his wife passed. It was quiet and got me out of the house. He knew everything that happened with my mom and knew I was a mess, but couldn't do anything about it.

He was a gentle soul that helped me find a new therapist. When his cancer got worse and he was alone in the hospital having no children with his wife, I was there to hold his hand. He was the family I never had and the one person I could rely on. My soul hurt for years after that knowing that I would probably never find another like him.

With a shudder, I threw off the last bits of fear from the nightmare and got ready for the day. It wasn't anything special, just the regular day of seeing malnourished dogs and the occasions over-nourished dog brought in, I was ready to call it a day. Henry, my dog was very ready as well.

As the last of the lights were being shut off, a man came to the door dressed as a courier. We got them occasionally, but not this late generally.

With a sigh, I opened the door for a large envelope to be thrown at me and a signature pad pressed into my hands. After that lovely encounter, I drove us home and proceeded to open the thick parcel.

Apparently, my biological father had passed he had been at the cabin and drowned in the lake behind he house. The pages referenced an accident, but with all four of my brothers and sister's being witnesses, it didn't seem like an accident. Drowning in a calm lake versus freezing to death while struggling in a frozen lake were two very different things.

The bottom of the last page finally got to the point. I had been summoned to read the will of my father. I had to see my brothers and sister one more time and then hopefully I would be done with them.

That night was a repeat of every night. A sheen of sweat broke out over my brow as I woke up. Henry came to give my hand a nudge again to break me out of the bad habit of clawing at my skin while asleep.

Tomorrow was the day they assigned to read the will. I had one more day to prepare for the venom I would receive from them. I hoped the day would pass by slowly like always, but all too soon I was waking up in a cold sweat again as my alarm shouted its presence in my room.

Dragging my feet along, I made it just in time to the lawyer's office.

The men and women littered the room, apparently containing wives and a husband for each of the children. The older man walked in with his Colonel Sanders suit on and spoke in an accent to match the suit.

"Today we are gathered here to read the last Will and Testament of a one Gregory Shamman. I will now read off the beneficiaries listed if you could raise your hand so I know who is present and who is not..."

Three hours later and all of the assets of my family had been listed down to the napkin rings. The glares and outright sneers were all plastered on me once again. According to the Will, our father had lived with my siblings long enough to know what kind of people they had turned into and had given them appropriate gifts to match their newly acquired propensity to spend money even if they didn't have it. He also seemed to have learned according to the Will that the day my mother and I went out to skate was the day after they had taken the ice fishing gear out to go by themselves without asking.

I was thoroughly confused as I had never been ice fishing and didn't understand what was happening. I stared in confusion at the lawyer. He had left me everything. Everything. The man who managed t hate me with such passion for decades had left me everything and exactly zero things to the others.

"It seems your father understood that your brothers and sister here had crafted a hole in the ice and let it slightly freeze over without telling anyone." Mom fell in their ice hole. I didn't kill her.

Everyone started to argue who was to blame and a few started asking about police when I just stood up and walked to the lawyer's desk.

"What happened to my father?"

"It's hard to say Shae, I have a feeling their debts were piling up and your father had stopped paying them off. Your mom's death was truly an accident. Your father's..." he just stayed quiet.

I had been dreaming for years about the face under the water, reaching out for help whole I couldn't give it to her. That night my father joined her. His face was blurry, but I knew it was him. The pain of losing them both made me hurt, but at least I knew I could try to heal knowing that my sister and brothers were being indicted on murder charges. I was finally not the one to blame for anyone's death. They were... they were the bad ones, the ones who killed our parents. I hope they have the same nightmares I do so we can all be miserable together like a normal family.