Life as Me: Annabeth

Annabeth: short story life

ANNABETH:

The waves crashed across the sand and Annabeth knew that her time was coming. The sun peaked over the horizon with its last light before leaving the night in darkness except for the glow of the moon above her head. As the full moon shone brighter than the night before, when she had been in the exact same place she is now, a twig snapped behind her. Her company had left the safety of the woods.

Annabeth turned sharply and a 'bang' was heard before the unknown person was able to even step completely into the moonlight. They wouldn't ever be able to touch her again. Annabeth dropped the gun she held, back to her side, where it had been only moments before. She stared emotionless at the now wide eyes in front of her and still felt nothing.

Even as the body belonging to the eyes dropped to the ground in what felt like slow motion. How could she feel anything when all the feelings she had for this person were long gone as was the person she had been before this all started. That was many years ago, when her family of three siblings and her parents, were brutally murdered before her eyes because of the person she had just killed.

It had taken 9 years to finally find him and pluck up the courage to pull the trigger on the worthless man that she had once called a lover. He wasn't that person anymore and she didn't give him time to try and win his way out of it either.

As the life completely left his eyes, she thought back to all those years ago when he had given her love and affection, the eyes that had shown her trust and a future she could believe in.

"Do you trust me?" He had asked.

"Of course, I do, why wouldn't I? Why what's going on?"

Annabeth had been so hopeless and gullible back then and did anything he had wanted of her. Including running away from the life she'd had and joining the dangerous life of his. She couldn't do that though. Couldn't leave her twin sister and younger teenage brothers, leave her parents in a life she had wished to die old in. A future she held dear to herself, that he'd crushed in one night.

"If you really do trust me, then why won't you run with me?" He'd gotten angry by this point.

"I can't leave my family. I won't give them up just for you and a life I have no idea what is ahead." She had been determined to stand her ground. Quietly hoping he would stay, for her.

That should've been the first sign for her to just break everything off right then and there. That and the slap he had delivered to her left cheek at the words she had spoken. She had cried like the little girl she was and submitted to his every word afterwards to stop the hits. But she still hadn't wanted to leave her family. And she hadn't. But that should've been the second sign for her to run like the wolves were after her, back to her family.

He had left her at his place with tears streaming down her pale cheeks and her hand held to her aching cheek. She wasn't thinking straight at the time, in too much shock over how the night had turned out so far. Once the shock wore off, she had finally high tailed it to her home and her family. But she was too late. As she'd reached the front door, she could tell that something was wrong. Firstly, the door was ajar, and the front light wasn't on like her mother always left it, for when she got home every night.

The second thing was the trail of mud showing an unwanted guest had ventured inside the house, with no care for ruining the hallway rug, leading her to the family room. At the sight that crossed her path when she'd entered the room, she had felt like screaming, but the scream was stuck in her throat as tears started running down her face all over again. He had stood there with a knife to her mother's throat, pressing hard enough for a trail of blood to be flowing down to her mother's pale pink blouse.

Her twin sister lay just inside the door way, her neck at an odd angle and her eyes wide open in shock and horror, a tell-tale sign that she was dead and gone. Her younger brothers were huddled together in the corner, sobbing their little hearts out as they watched in disbelief, what was happening in front of their eyes. Her father was taped to a chair, that had obviously been dragged in from the dining room, begging for him to let his wife go.

"What are you doing?!" She had whispered through her tears.

"I'm making sure that you know what happens when I don't get what I want. And what I want is for you to come away with me. To leave this place. Together." He had used the knife to point at her before returning it to her mothers neck and making a new cut there.

"There is no way in HELL that I am going anywhere with you if you kill my whole family." Admittedly, she now knew getting angry hadn't been the right way to respond to him.

Annabeth didn't know how she could even talk to him with her much-loved twin sister laying inches from her, dead. But she had, and she was sticking with the bravery that had suddenly been bestowed upon her. She kept strong, as next she watched him slit her mother's throat without flinching and an angry glint in his eyes. She let out a sob as her father cried out in anger and pain as his wife fell to the floor, blood rushing out of the gaping wound. One last gurgled scream left her mothers lips, before death too, took her life.

Annabeth's two younger brothers cried harder as their mother hit the floor They huddled together as close as they could, as far into the corner as they could go. Annabeth watched, frozen, as he now moved towards her. She couldn't move, not an inch, oh she wanted too. But struck with fear for her life and the last of her family, she had let him drag her to the couch and tape her hands together......

Annabeth shook her head to rid the rest of those horrid memories. The hardest part to always relive was when she had been forced to watch him torture and kill her younger brothers. That was what drove her to knock him over the head with her mother's favourite vase, that was beside the couch, and run to the police station down the road. She was there for four days and had to repeatedly tell the incident to all kinds of different officials. The police had told her a couple hours after she had arrived that he had got away. She had become angry and had gone on a rampage of her own throughout the station at that news. They'd had to lock her up until she'd calmed down.

Still raw with the details flashing in her head, she had cried, snot and all, throughout the whole interrogation from then onwards. After retelling it for the fourth time, she had stopped crying and continued with a blank face until they had finally let her go. Three months later, the police had closed the case and stopped looking for him. That drove Annabeth to seek out higher help than the police. That is how became who she was today. A rogue FBI Agent, gone psychotic over her family's case and the need to find the bastard responsible. With the help of the FBI resources she now had, she had tracked him down and passed off as an old friend to organise a meeting with him through his gang members.

Annabeth felt a tug on the hand that didn't hold the gun.

"Who was that mummy?" Annabeth looked down at the 8-year-old splitting image of herself that had given her the motivation to continue this case through. The reason for her courage and determination to stay sane and kill the bastard.

"That was daddy, Bethany. That was your daddy." Annabeth answered her daughter before she started walking back through the woods to their car.

The little girl glared at the dead body as they walked passed...