Smoke filled the air around me. I choked on the thick scent of burning flames that consumed the whole east wing of my uncle’s estate. I couldn’t help but stare into his weak and lifeless blue eyes, the words I dared to speak out loud begging and fighting to get out into the darkening air. I slammed the door to his bedroom consenting the fire to engulf his rugs, bed, green curtains, and bloodstained sheets. I didn’t look back as I ran away, my feet pounding against the newly scrubbed wooden floors. It was a shame that the maids had just finished, his estate always looked so good. Now, all it is was a black shell of what it used to be, what he used to be.
The damages done were beyond his inheritance he left but that least we didn’t have to pay for him to be cremated. My brother sneered at the blackened frames and iron smell in the air; he kicked over what used to be a kitchen cabinet. “I always hated this house and this family.” The cabinet crumbled and sent a pile of ashes into his face. He coughed roughly, his asthma being triggered. “And, I hated him. Good riddance.”
“Enough.” I snapped at him, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I can hear the police cars coming down the road.”
“They aren’t apart of this,” He looked at me, his eyes the same as my uncles. Light blue and precise, they could always cut you open and find all your secrets. “It was all planned, we just finished the job. No one else needs to know that.” He was right for the most part but for the rest of the family, they didn’t know. They didn’t need to know. They needed a funeral, service, and publicity. We needed solitude, silence, and a gravestone.
The police didn’t question us since we too were victims of the fire. We were sent to our home far away from the estate to grieve, narrowing roadways signified the return to another torturous environment. Estate, after estate, after estate, and soon we would have none left to go. No more family to cry and no more family to leave soaking in their own bloodstained sheets. We didn’t grieve, we ran. And we didn’t cry, we smiled.
I looked over to my brother as he pushed the door open to our aunt’s estate, the cold wind blowing right through my ash colored and ripped jeans, along with my burned leather jacket. There would always be another, and we will always go forward. But the rain will always cover our trails, it follows us.
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