DUSK TILL DAWN ▐ scott mccall

2nd.

    THOUGH ITS PERMANECE WAS MORE SO SIMILAR TO THE ONE OF A DIMINUTIVE CUT, a product to a cooking mishap of sorts, to Astrid Themis it felt as if it would last as long as searing-iron branding did in human skin.

    Some things aftertaste wasn't momentary — wasn't a thing of the instance. It would be melodramatic to insinuate a savor's duration could mimic such of aforesaid imprint on skin, however at the moment, to the eldest of three daughters, it was a possibility to consider.

    The icky residual taste the situation had brought about hadn't left after she'd digested the news. And as she sat in the empty space, her elbows settled on her knees and her hands supporting her head, she reckon it lingered; a taste, which unrelentingly clings to her tongue, so despicable that the teenage girl fears it'll urge her to puke.

The showdown was equally as vivid in her memory.

   A family sunday with an unusual kickstart to it, but with smooth sailing there on out. Until nighttime, that is.

   The prime event of the evening, otherwise known as the highlight of the night. Old-school board games, ranging from Pictionary to Jenga and (— the parents' personal favorite) Trivial Pursuit, are brought out from storage and settled atop of the hickory-wood, coffee table. The Themis clan usually nestled around it, joyfully conversing non-important topics.

    It was quite a lovely scene. A family; three daughters and a married couple that, while the years have worn their physique down, their love prevailed. Move like would be the most accurate adjective for the unfolding moments.

Backtracking. Dusk had come and gone, the sky drained of colors leaving in its wake blackness. Content smiled stretched through the features of the parents, a mixture of wine and delight coursing in their systems. Their hands laid intertwined in the short and cluttered table.

    "Can we please never play this again?" Modestia Themis, the middle sister, whined. Dramatically dropping her forehead onto the table, the action causing a soft thud.

Her thin mane sloshed like honey on a pancake. The long strands seemed to reach out to each of the people positioned around the coffee-table.

The rest of the family laughed and giggled at the girls incompetence and lack thereof eye-hand coordination. The sounds vibrated of the walls and warmed the spacious (— though for some reason unbeknownst to Astrid, when the entirety of the family situated themselves there, it felt comfortably small) living room more efficiently than the alight fireplace behind them.

"That can be arranged," the mother responded, her almond-shaped eyes almost thin as a line due to her wide, cheek-aching smile.

"No-oh," Astrid interjected, performing with her slender finger the universal sing of no, "come on, that your shit at this doesn't mean we have to vote it out."

"Mean much—" Modestia commented, raising her head from its previous position, however it was cut short by her father.

"Astrid please," the auburn headed man scolded, shaking his head in disbelief at her eldest daughter's vocabulary.

Untangling his fingers from his wife's to settled his outstretched palm facedown on the table.

Astrid's only response was an eye-roll, the most inconspicuous one she could muster. Aware that if her parents caught gist of it, they would label it offense, proceeding to have her head while throwing a hissy-fit.

And, debunking popular belief, she wasn't a spoil sport. Family night meant a great deal to each an every member of the victorian home. It was cherished. It was sacred. And Astrid wasn't about to tarnish it only to amuse herself.

"I, like, agree with Astrid," Rox, the youngest of the set, contributed, "minus the swear though." She added after witnessing her parents' unwavering gazes, her fingers performing a circular-motion on the midnight-black hairs nearest to her scalp. The blackness of her locks was the antonym to the paleness of her complexion.

"Lets build it back up." Astrid, with a slight victorious smile, decided to shift the subject. Scooting the scattered wooden pieces of Jenga to the center of the circular table.

Yet before much building got done, a larger, considerably colder hand enclosed around her's.

"Girls," Felix Themis halted the motions of the house with his statement. The single word like a pause button to the movie that is their lives. Yet the flames still danced and swayed, the soft hum of the nightlife outside their home still rumbled, the illumination in the room still varied due to the clouds that dampen the brightness of the moon.

    Everything but the characters remained ongoing.

    "Your mother and I," he began, yet seemed to rethink his phrasing halfway, "we kind of, uh, have some things to say."

    Astrid feared the worst. Maybe they all did, but she couldn't confirm. She thought divorce. She thought death or desease; and, in a blinding flash, the events of the morning kissed her forehead, reviving the memory.

    Briefly, the terror that struck her heart had her fearing it'll stop altogether.

    "There's not really a way to say this." Something told Astrid that was the biggest input her mother was going to put into the announcement.

    It was a common occurrence, on importance occurrences such as the present one, she's shy away from the spotlight. Letting Felix guide the conversation to the desired point. It wasn't a sexism thing. It was just her mother and her indecisiveness. Fearing that halfway through the scolding or news she'll change her mind and then it'll be too late.

    It was an issue, however that was their marriage dynamic and, to date, it's been successful.

    "We are moving." The three words utter by the father was a bullet through glass.

    Perforating their reality. But more so than merely causing a hole, it brought on cracks, so many, so long that it threaten collapse the entirety of their lives.

    However the pieces of this metaphorical glass that fell, completed the puzzle that Astrid had toyed with all day long.

    Years in a home they've built to their liking, a home that cost them blood and tear but brought the contrary of that, the memories of their daughters' childhoods and early teenage lives, the memories of them as a couple — a married one at that. Their roots that went deep beyond all that, their anchorage to their town, their friends, non-blood family. Hence her mother's tears.

    Only an insensitive wouldn't cry.

    The reactions varied. Delicate Modestia's face was tainted with tears, little things that trailed down her rose-tinted cheeks like droplets on a window. Rox, it was a myriad of emotions and contortions to her features that had everyone wondering which of the many was the most accurate; however over all, reigned a confusion so similar to Modestia's perpetual state of at lost.

    Ultimately was Astrid. She could only blink. The lashes that decore the border of her round eyes, kissing her cheeks for particularly short instance, not even a breath could fit in that time-frame, before resuming their erect position.

    There was a subdued anger in her, discomfort. A sensation close enough to loss that it had her wondering if death had paraded and discreetly swept soul under her nose.

    The news were a mouthful of an unpleasant liquid. A gooey, ebony color liquid, scorching, vile and sour that diluted onto her tongue and grasped her tastebuds so tightly it felt as if the bile-rising flavor would never depart her mouth.

    Astrid thought that it resembled the aftertaste of witnessing live a gore-filled scene. Later on, she'll realize she wasn't so off after all.

∘◦☆◦∘

unedited but i like it. not much dialogue, but this is still kind of an intro chap, real story starts in the next chapter.