Silent Pantomime

Chapter 16 | Angel with a shotgun

Chapter 16🌌:

When you sell a house, you need to be baking cookies. The smell of butter, flour, sugar and chocolates reminds the possible homeowner of home and family. It's a fun way to manipulate people into getting what you want, but as you sugarcoat it, you're not really the bad guy, right?

Right in that moment, all I wanted was some of those magic sugarcoating cookies to just sell myself the lie that I was okay.

I looked over at the clock on the oven, 3:56 am. I could see my reflection and I looked a mess, my lips were tinged with blue from the cold and I was visibly shaking. But I didn't care. I unlocked my phone that was on the kitchen counter and scrolled through it as I sat on the freezing tiles in front of the oven. The only thing warming me up were the tears streaming down my face. Oliver was the only one who knew that I pretended from the start, but I never cared.

Hearts can't break, it isn't physically possible. But I remember how much mine squeezed, wrenched, stretched, ached, twisted when he walked out on me; taking away all of my attention as that was where he knew he could hurt me as much as I had hurt him.

I looked back into my distorted reflection on the tiles and let out a small choke.

Just because she's pretty doesn't mean she doesn't have issues.

"Come back," I sobbed out and dropped my phone on the floor with a thud. "I'll be good, I promise." The glass from my phone smashed and caused shards to gash at my skin, but I barely felt it. My mum, Ally, Oliver, were all linked to my twisted sense of needed attention. It was all my fault.

"I'll be good, I promise!" I screamed, "I'll be good, I'll be good, I'll be good - just come back." I held my hand around my wrist tightly until it went purple, I put my pressure on it and I let out a small yelp in pain but I couldn't stop. "Come back!" I shouted, "Just...come back."

My wrist let out a popping noise and I couldn't squeeze it anymore as there was barely anything to hold. It was purple, mangled and it hurt like heaven. But I deserved it. I made my mum go crazy, I made Ally kill herself, and I had the same name as Oliver's murderer. "I'll be good," I kept muttering over and over in a trance, not looking away from my broken wrist. "I'll be good."

"Hazel what the hell are you doing?" I heard my dad yell, but I didn't look up - I didn't want to look up, but I couldn't either. "Hazel look at me," I heard my dad groan, but my mind suddenly snapped.

"No."

"Excuse me?" He asked. I stared deeper into my reflection and the blue from my lips had flushed into red.

"No. I'm not going to look at you. Why should I?" I smiled at my reflection, normally I would be appalled by the mess of myself - but the smile was such an odious joy, so sickening, that it was sweet. "I'm an angel with a shotgun. I can kill you in a second. You don't know what I'm capable of." My dad sighed but I just kept on smiling.

"What are you on about Hazel?" He asked.

"Why are you asking? Why do you care? You've never shown an interest before," I murmured. But my dad didn't answer.

"Exactly."

I finally looked up at him and my smile grew. "It's okay to not care, I stopped caring a long time ago. What's the point in it anyway?" I paused for a second. "Is this what happened to mum?" I asked, which made my dad's eyes go wide. "You know, she used to worry and worry which showed that she cared. But then when she stopping caring, you were never worried."

"Hazel that's not fair," my dad began.

"Life's not fair," I cut in, "Why get given something that doesn't last forever? That's why you shouldn't care." My dad ignored what I said and bent down, grabbed my arm and pulled me off the floor.

"Why are you acting so crazy?" He hissed in my face.

"I'm not acting. This is the real Hazel, only one person knew her, and he's dead."

My dad's eyes grew colder, as if blades of ice were whirling through them. "Hazel, this isn't funny," he spat at me.

"My ex-boyfriend was just murdered, there is nothing funny about it," I spat back. I pulled back out of his grasp and leant back on the counter, subconsciously grabbed my wrist - but I immediately stood back up straight and let go of its mauled state, no matter how much it hurt. Body language is key.

Dad looked at me, wordless for what felt like an eternity. I gave him a frosty gaze and gestured my hands to to the windows and doors, "Just look outside, the police are moving like wildfire," I muttered and my dad slowly walked over to the back door. The muffled noise that had been barely audible immediately became head-splitting, and the red and blue lights blazed into the room like fireworks. Slamming the door, my dad walked over to me, the noise from the outside world once again getting barricaded from our fun house.

"I'm sorry Hazel, but..." my dad said and I rolled my eyes.

"But what, dad? You are either sorry or you aren't, no in between."

My dad sighed, and looked deeply in my eyes. "Your mum used to talk about the magic in your eyes, didn't she?" He asked me, but I didn't answer. "What I'm sorry for is how she saw galaxies in your eyes when I can't see a single star," he slowly spat out the last words. I took in a sharp intake of breath and muttered up to him.

"Sous la lumière des étoiles."

Translation - under the starlight. My mum taught me that phrase when I was a little girl, but I had completely forgotten about it until now. "It means under the starlight, dad. You're head is too far in space to notice anything magic," I said and pushed myself further away from him.

"Too far in space to ever notice me."

A/N
the only french phrase i remember off by heart is "je ne sais pas quelle faire avec ma vie" 🇫🇷🥐