I looked around at the blank sky. I shifted positions on the rooftop and gasped as I almost lost my balance. I placed my hand to my heart as if that could slow it down and sighed. There are nine days until Halloween, the night that killed my parents seven years ago.
I looked down at the wet, empty street below and felt warm blood trickling out of my nose. "Shit...Again?" I sighed as I placed my grey hoodie sleeve below my nose for the second time tonight. There was red and brown dried blood at the end of the sleeve from the last bleeding. After a while, it stopped and I took my hand down. A white flash across one of the windows from the building across the street. Looking closer, the white flashed across again. There was a bloodcurdling scream that echoed into the night.
My blood ran cold as I remembered that night seven years and nine days ago in full clarity.
~~~
The man and woman in the front of the Honda were shouting at one another, and they forgot all about the girl in the back seat. The man raised his arm and struck the woman in the passenger seat. She let out a sharp gasp and started yelling once more. "You never have any respect! You treat me like I'm scum! I'm fucking done with your bullshit!" She screamed. On her cheek, a red welt began to form where he hit her. "Fine! But I'm not the one who drinks all day and has no job! You are a lazy piece of shit on the bottom of my shoe!" He shouted back. They started to overlap one another in screams. The girl in the back seat began to cry silent tears. She was going home after trick or treating, her small body quivering in the white angel costume she wore. Her costume wings were on her lap, and she was stroking them slowly.
There was a thud from the front of the car. She looked up and saw her father had whacked the back of the seat to get her attention. "Yes, father?" she said innocently. He wheeled around in his seat, averting his eyes from the road. "This is your fault you little shit. If you weren't so needy, your mother and I would be at home, relaxing." he snarled. The girl cowered back and responded in a shaky voice "I'm sorry, daddy... I just wanted to trick or treat like the rest of my friends..." There was a scream from her mother and the car skidded, rolling on its side. There was a long screech of metal and then pain, only pain. The girl was thrown from the vehicle, landing on her back. She was conscious and bleeding from the gash on her head. She crawled to the overturned car and sobbed from what she saw. The mother was dead from a broken neck, bleeding from her pretty mouth. The father, however, was just clinging onto life. His legs and arms were twisted in unnatural angles under the car, and he was moaning quietly. Suddenly, the car weight was too much for his body. Blood shot out of his mouth and he was instantly dead. She screamed and sobbed, her broken ribs aching from the movements. She groped in her mother's purse, trying to find her cell phone. Her shaky hands dialed 911 on her fourth attempt and she hit the glowing green call button. It rang twice before the operator picked up. "911 please state your emergency," he said. "M-My parents...My parents...They're dead... C-Car Crash... West street..." she gasped before falling unconscious.
She woke up four hours later in the hospital, IV tubes, and a heart monitor was beeping steadily. The girl's head was bandaged, so was her chest. A nurse was checking her vitals and noticed her awake. "Hello, Rainn. You are in the Intensive Care Unit, alright? You are very hurt. We'll fix you up" she said with a smile. Rainn could not smile back. Within the next two weeks, she was informed she had broken two ribs, a rib had punctured her right lung but they managed to save it, there was a four-inch gash on her cheek that required stitches, and she was having bouts of temporary blindness because her brain hit her skull too hard on impact. She did not remember most of the stay, but she was living with her grandmother (who visited her every day at the hospital) when she got out.
