Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Eighty

Eighty

We heard screams. We heard a crash. Then silence. Then a sharp loud crack pierced the air like the pain in my heart. Emma and I gripped each other, sinking to the floor on our knees silently. Time slowed down around us, our hearts purely sliced.

“Anastasia,” Emma croaked. I nodded, I had realised. Anastasia had been in the automobile still. A huge lump swelled in my throat, and I couldn’t breathe. Father. Natalya. My grandmother. They were all dead. They couldn’t survive that drop. How could Father have done that? Emma, Annabel, Minnie and I were orphans because of him. And Rose, the woman I once called my aunt, was lying in a pool. A pool of her own rose-coloured blood.

“I killed her,” Susanna whispered, staring, frozen, the gun slipping from her shaking fingers, her eyes wide. Bobby took a few steps back from her. Bobby… My head swam.

“You got what you wanted,” I laughed bitterly, absorbed by the pain coursing through me, strangling my every bone, joint and vein.

“My Mother. And my Father,” Emma burst out, clutching her chest, and I could feel the weight there on it. The weight of the uttermost worst hurt in the world. I huddled closer to her. Losing my Father was suddenly strange and horrible, no matter how much I hated him, I thought he would always be there, invincible, able to take everything. But tonight had driven him over the edge- literally.

But Emma… oh how I felt her indescribable loss. To meet your Father, and him to be taken away from you in one night. For your long lost Mother, who she had known for little than a year, to go with him.

“Elsie. Elsie.” She clutched on to me, Minnie and Annabel still screeching our arms.

“I feel like I’m drowning and dying. I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m being ripped apart.”

“Don’t say that,” I cried, through chattering teeth, clutching onto her, my sister. My sister.

“Natalya was selfish. She didn’t think about what would happen to you when she went to prison.”

We turned at the sound of Susanna’s voice.

“Go away. GO AWAY! You killed my sister! You betrayed me! You, you, you…”  I was a bubbling volcano and I handed Annabel to Emma. I crawled on my hands and knees and slid my fingers through the wet grass until I felt the cold, shiny, metal surface of the gun that killed my sister.

“You should be happy. You got your revenge, your parents’ murderer is dead. You’re finally the Kingston Heiress,” I snapped, staggering upwards with the gun in my hand.

“I didn’t want it to happen like this! I didn’t want everyone to die!” Susanna whimpered, looking around her for help. But it was just Bobby standing there, looking helpless, and Emma crouched on the floor, screaming and sobbing, the twins in her arms. It was just the six of us now, on a cliff in the middle of the night with tears and blood and broken hearts soaking the ground.

“I have lost all my family because of you,” I spat.

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“That’s a lie! That’s a damned lie, Susanna! You set out to hurt and destroy me! You plotted to kill me, befriended me so you could weaken me, and stole Bobby from me.” Bobby stepped forward. I glared at him; I felt nothing but contempt.

“Elsie, I love you. I sent those love letters before Roxanna came to me with her promises of gold guineas. That proves I do love you,” he wheedled, “I even paid for a notice to be put in The Brighton Herald, to try and warn you.”

What? I put a hand to my head and clenched my hair, running my fingers through it raggedly. All I could do was stare. Should I believe him or not? Did I even care? Our times of being sweethearts was over, and I could never forget his betrayal. Besides, I was married to John. John. Oh God, John. I felt my knees weaken. I needed him, his arms around me. Would I ever feel his touch again, would he ever get to meet his child? Or would John and Jacqueline come to me and… I felt like falling to the ground and beating it.

Susanna was staring at Bobby, horrified.

“It was you that put that notice in the newspaper? I trusted you. I loved you with all my heart… and you really loved Elsie?” She stepped away from him. My head spun. My stomach was empty, my eyelids were fighting with me not to close, and I was as frozen as the hissing sea down below. Down below, where my Father, Natalya and grandmother all lay. How could Father have left me? They were talking about a newspaper advert while my family were all dead, while my life was broken into pieces? What was even going to happen to me?

“You’ve destroyed my life for a stupid little title and some money,” I whispered, raising the gun. Bobby started to walk away from Susanna, seeing the look in her eyes, but she ran after him and pulled his arm. She slapped him round the face and he staggered. I watched as they fought, holding the gun higher and higher, driven by the blood, stained on my clothes and hands. My Mother and sister’s blood.

"Elsie, think about Annabel and Minnie. You don’t want to do this.” Emma got up from the ground in desperation, looking about wildly, as Susanna and Bobby froze, staring at me, looking down at Rose’s dead body, which was inches away from them. I took a deep breath.

I stared into the eyes of the person who I had once trusted more than anyone else and put my finger on the trigger.

The gunshot fired.

And I crumpled to the ground.