Young Writers Society

For a place that was known to so many as a haven, the local church felt like it provided me with anything but safety. It was ugly too. Very ugly. Come to think of it, I hadn’t been in a single church that I could have deemed as attractive in any shape or form. They were always enormous and not in a way that made me feel sheltered, but in a way that made their roofs look as though they could have collapsed in on themselves any second. The worst thing about them though… I shuddered. The worst thing was that old, dusty aroma that every single church I'd been in before shared. And while my dad choked on his words as he stood shakily at the front of the church, all I could concentrate on was that rancid stench. Instead of thinking about Aimee, I was thinking about a bad smell.

Then again, I couldn’t have blamed it all on the smell. My mind was also focused on the unevenness of the bench I was sitting on, the odd number of candles perched on the altar and how the right half of the room was fuller than the left. The only kind of comfort I could find in all this was that at least those irritants were distracting me. They were taking my mind off everything, from the nightithappened to what was happening right now. Most importantly, they were stopping me from crying. Crying was one of those unnerving, uncontrollable outbursts that was impossible to control, and I always had to have control over everything that was happening to me. Always.

With the dusty smell of the church still seeping into my nostrils, I tried my hardest to look straight ahead at my dad and listen to the words he was saying but my attempt failed dreadfully. Everything else around me was too distracting and so instead, I tried my luck at taking note of the people surrounding me. I seemed to be a bit better at that. I didn’t recognise as many people as I felt I should have, but then again, a lot of the people around me were distant cousins and friends of my parents. The longer I gazed at strangers though, the lumpier the bench underneath me began to feel. So many were dressed all wrong. One woman had dashed colour into her otherwise plain black suit but she’d done it so atrociously. She’d clashed a cherry red with a hot pink, and there was even a splash of purple on her hat. It was then I realised that observing the people I didn’t really know wasn’t the best idea for me, so instead, I turned to those I knew a lot better.

My mum, who was sitting next to me, had been the same all week. I’d only heard her speak Aimee’s name exactly four times. I’d counted them. She’d probably spoken her name while I wasn’t around, but I doubted it would have been any more than ten times. I usually hated the way my mum dressed because it was always so dishevelled and what she wore clashed terribly, but she was dressed tidily today. And I didn’t like it. Every thread of her black dress was as neat as it could have ever been. I turned my eyes away from her. I’d never seen my mum smile so much for all the wrong reasons within a week either. I tried not to be too bitter about it though; it was probably just her way of coping. Luke didn’t quite see it like that though.

He was sitting the other side of my mum and although I couldn’t see his face as my dad continued his speech, I could see his foot tapping rapidly against the concrete floor of the church. I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination, but I think I could hear him muttering too. He hadn’t been quite as… sympathetic as I had been towards my mum and her recent behaviour. As for what happened to Aimee, I couldn’t say how he felt about it, or at least how he pretended to feel about it. He only ever spoke about her in a muttered tone that was inaudible. What I did know was that he wanted to tear whoever stabbed her to shreds. I couldn’t blame him.

With a sigh, I lifted my head back up. My dad was still speaking but he was bound to be finished soon. I hoped he did anyway because that way, today would have been over quicker. Out of everyone, he was the one who’d scared me the most within the past week. I hadn’t ever seen him so organised. He’d planned this funeral down to the colour of every single flower, or that was what it felt like anyway. It was ironic really because that to me should have been heaven, but it only made my stomach roll. My dad wasn’t an organised man. He never had been.

My thoughts were interrupted as I realised that the church had turned silent. My dad had finished speaking and was now hurrying back to his seat next to Luke. Before I knew it, everyone around me was standing up and an organ’s tune began echoing around the daunting walls of the church. I couldn’t leap up fast enough. No longer could I feel the unevenness of the wooden bench below me, and although that didn’t get rid of the dusty stench, it was one weight off my mind.

Everyone was singing the hymn being played by the organ by now, although singing wasn’t exactly the best word to use. It was more of a mumbling sound. Luke was still tapping his foot. I knew the hymn because my dad had made sure that everyone in the family either knew it or had learnt it for today. He’d made sure of that. I didn’t feel like singing though, not that I could have concentrated well enough to do so because of that rancid smell. Instead, my thoughts flurried further and further back in time and they didn’t stop until they reached the night it happened. The night she was murdered.

After my dad told me that she’d been attacked, I remembered thinking that I wouldn’t sleep that night. I didn’t want to let myself sleep because I had to know what was happening. Yet as I lay on my living room sofa with my heartbeat pulsing in my ears while my brother paced back and forth in front of me, I fell asleep. I had no idea how it happened, or why I let it happen, but it sure did happen. When I woke up at gone twelve in the afternoon the next day, that was it. Aimee was… she was dead. Gone.

“Zoey?”

I snapped my head to my right and returned to the present. My mum was staring at me with her clear eyes, and there was an anything but convincing smile on her face. Not only was the hymn over and done with but crowds of people were leaving the church. That was when I probably felt happiest that day because it was then I realised I was about to finally leave this eerie place and its rancid stench. To think that not even an hour later, I wished I was back at church.

It turned out I didn’t know my family as well as I thought I did, and it was sad how it took the death of my sister to make me understand them better. It was stupid really, but I thought we’d have maybe spent the afternoon in the living room together when we got home that day. Not necessarily in the living room, I suppose, but definitely together. Instead though, the second we stepped through the front door, my dad hurried upstairs and locked himself in his office, my mum floated into the kitchen without a word and my brother sulked across the hallway. Seconds later, I heard the slam of the living room’s door. None of them had spoken a word on the way home in the car but I was hoping that would have changed when we got home. Obviously not.

With my breath slow and heavy, I quietly walked up the stairs, doing so two steps at a time as always. Although, I had to go back down and start again because I lost concentration and accidentally went up one step after another near the top. Nonetheless, I’d soon planted my feet on the landing. My dad was muttering in his office as I passed but I tried not to take much notice. When I reached the white door at the end of my landing, I paused, inhaled deeply and then nudged it open.

Her room made her look like she was still there. Clothes were flopped over the bed like uneven fireworks, crumpled paper was overflowing her bin, posters and photos were messily slapped onto the wall looking over her unmade bed and her TV was positioned perfectly so that she could watch it before she went to sleep at night.

I wasn’t sure why I did what I did next. I suppose I simply felt like I had to.

First, I picked up some of Aimee’s clothes off the floor. With them in my hands, I carefully folded them, one by one. I placed them in a neat pile at the end of her bed. That was better. I moved on to the next dump of clothes and repeated what I’d done with the first pile. After that, I began to straighten her bedcover and it was then I began to feel myself getting transported into another world. A safer, more comfortable world. By the time I’d started straightening out Aimee’s photos on her wall, I was almost happy. In fact, I was so lost in my new world that I didn’t notice Luke standing in the doorway, not that it mattered. He was quick to make his presence known.

“Stop! What--what are you doing? Don’t touch… Stop!”

My heart leapt up to my throat. Before I could grasp what was happening, my brother had burst into the room. Footsteps charged up the stairs and the swift sound of a door rushing open momentarily distracted me. Before I even had the chance to turn to Luke, there was a hard squeeze on my wrist. He pulled me off Aimee’s bed. I almost fell.

“You bitch! Stop!”

Luke ferociously jerked my hand, yet the photo of Aimee’s that I was holding floated to the floor as delicately as a feather. He shook my hand again. A whimper escaped my mouth. I tried my hardest not to look at him.

“Luke!” My dad. “Luke! Let go of her!”

He didn’t listen.

“What’s wrong with you? What--what have you done? This is her room, you bitch!”

Luke shook me this time, not just my arm. He yelled again. I clamped my eyes shut.

“I--I’m sorry, Luke. I just… It was messy, and--and…” I stammered.

“Luke!”

My brother’s tight grasp was suddenly released from my arm and I was left stammering and shaking. I glanced back towards the bedroom’s doorway to see my mum standing there with her face pale and her undoubtedly quivering lips covered by her hand. When I turned my eyes back to what was in front of me, I saw Luke in the grasp of my dad, who was cursing and snapping at my brother. I couldn’t catch any words that were being said though. I was too busy shaking.

I was in a daze as I watched my dad pull my brother towards the doorway, nudge past my mum and leave the room. I hadn’t said nor done anything minutes after they’d left. Neither had my mum. In fact, she never said anything to me after that. Instead, after another five minutes or so had passed, she forced a weak smile, said nothing and then disappeared from the doorway. I was still shaking. I wouldn’t stop. I thought Aimee’s funeral would have been some sort of closure. Not a reason for forgetting about her and forgiving her murderer, but just a step towards things getting better. But it wasn’t. Everything was just getting worse.

I was lying on my bed in silence that night when I heard a loud but hesitant knock on my bedroom door. It was gone midnight so I knew it wasn’t my mother or father, and so there was only one person left that it could have been. I heard the sound of my door creaking open.

“Zoey?” Luke's voice was far quieter than his knocks.

I didn’t reply to him. I didn’t even bother turning my eyes from the patterned ceiling to my doorway. My brother called my name again but I remained silent.

“Zoey, I’m so sorry about earlier. I--I didn’t mean any of it. I just...” He sighed. “I just don’t know what’s happening to me, but I know I need to stop it.”

I knew I should have hated my brother for what he’d done, for the way he’d grabbed my wrist so tightly that a faint purplish colour had formed on it and for the way he made every inch of my body shake for hours afterwards, but I didn’t have the energy to hate him, not now. Besides, I knew it wasn’t his fault. I knew what my sister’s death had done to him.

“They’ll find whoever did it, you know,” was the first thing I said to him.

I glanced over to my doorway to see Luke’s chest lower with a sigh, which I assumed meant that he was glad I’d finally spoken to him. As what I said processed through his mind though, a strained expression formed onto his face.

“You don’t believe that.”

“I do,” I argued, although the disbelief in my own words shocked me. “I mean, the bad guy always gets caught, right?”

Luke laughed but it was bitter. “This isn’t a film, Zoey.” I was about to defend myself when he began nearing me. He shook his head as he reached the end of my double bed. “Admit it, Zoey, you don’t think the police will catch them.”

“It’s just…” I gave up trying. “Come on, Luke, the police are clueless. You can tell they're clueless and they're clueless because Aimee was such a good liar. She never told any of us about anything to do with Amber Fountains or her boyfriend. Without any kind of leads, from people to places, except for that stupid park, where the hell do they start? They’ve already told us that the murder weapon’s missing and that any D.N.A. found is risky because not only could the rain have washed it off or out of the park, but the place is already swarming in all kinds of D.N.A. from young children and their parents.” I looked up to see my brother’s teeth gritted. “I’d give more than anything for her killer to be found but I just struggle to trust the police… to trust anyone anymore.”

“Well, they’ll catch whoever did it one way or another because I’m not going to let them give up.” Luke’s voice sounded like a young child arguing a battle he knew he’d lost. But then there was a pause. “But what about the ambulance call?”

It was my turn to pause. I’d forgotten about that. The night Aimee was killed, in the early hours of the morning, a call was made to report her murder. The police believed that it would have been minutes after it actually happened, and by putting two and two together, they discovered that whoever did call was a witness: a young male. The only milestone--the gargantuan milestone--was the fact that they called from a payphone. No caller I.D. and no CCTV anywhere near that payphone, or the park for that matter. Nothing. I lifted my gaze back to my brother, who was now perched on the end of my bed. I didn’t see how an ambulance being called changed anything though.

“How does that help?” I eventually asked.

“Zoey, someone out there, someone who saw every single thing that happened to Aimee called for an ambulance that night. Don’t you understand what that means?”

I didn’t answer him. I just stared.

“Whether it was the killer themselves or a witness who called for the ambulance, there’s someone out there who feels guilty for what they did or what they saw happen.” He paused. “Maybe even an entire group of people who feel guilty. Guilty people confess, Zoey.”

Luke stood back up off my bed and he was soon wandering back over to my doorway. Just as he was about to leave my room though, he turned around and on his face was a weak smile and a glimmer in his tired eyes.

“And if they even have an inch of compassion inside their souls, the guilt is going to suffocate them.”




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