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Chapter 1:

This nightmare again. Every time I’m finally able to fall asleep it works its way to my mind and wakes me up again. Shrugging out of my sweat drenched sheets I push my feet into my slippers and shuffle to the window. It’s raining again. Maybe that’s why the dream came back. The rain beats against the window echoing eerily in the silent house. The memories come one by one slithering into my mind like a serpent, winding itself around my heart and compressing. I try to fight them, to push them back into the dark recesses of my mind, but they won’t surrender and finally they flood in, taking me to my knees.

I had been at a friend’s house attending a sleep over for the very first time. Everything had been fine until it had started to rain. When I was younger I used to be afraid of rain, of the sound of it beating against the windows sure that suddenly the windows would burst and we would all be swept away. I had started to cry and my friend had gone and told her mom who, in turn, called mine. My friend’s mom told me that my mom was on her way and I allowed her to help me pack my belongings. Ten minutes later I watched from a window as my mom’s headlights bounced off the garage door and pull to a stop in the drive way. Quickly I threw open the door and rushed to my mom’s awaiting arms. I remember she had smelled clean. Like the children’s hospital she worked in. She was still dressed in her familiar scrubs, the ones with tiny dancing bears on them. At the time it didn’t occur to me that I had pulled her away from her work. She gave me a quick squeeze and steered me into the back seat deftly flicking the seat belt in place. “Hold my Heart” by Tenth Avenue North had been playing quietly over the radio as we pulled out of the silent neighbourhood. We only lived a couple minutes away, it was supposed to be a short ride. We pulled to a stop at a red light and my mom had leaned around her seat to ask me about my sleep over. She didn’t notice the man stumble across the cross walk, she didn’t notice him zig zag to her door, but I did. I noticed. I noticed as he had yanked open the door and put the small gun to my mom’s head. I noticed as he pulled her from the car and threw her on the wet ground. He robbed her. He took everything she owned including her wedding ring. He didn’t notice the small girl in the back seat as he stole my mom’s purse. As he started to turn away my mom said something. I only heard the word “God”, the next thing I knew the man became angry; he turned and shot my mom. Again and again the gun went off. She jerked and her blood mingled with the rain washing it away, leaving no trace. She turned her head and looked at me. I saw her lips move but I couldn’t hear her, I couldn’t hear the last thing she said before her eyes lost its light and her head ease to the side. The man was hit by a car as he was trying to make his getaway, he survived. He had survived and my mom hadn’t. That monster. Why couldn’t God have spared my mom? She loved Him, she died for Him. Her words about Him had gotten her killed, what good was a God who couldn’t spare a good woman.

Moaning, I wrap my arms around my head, trying to push the memories away. Finally they abate leaving me high and dry. Resolutely I pulled myself off the ground and walk to the bathroom. The months after my mom’s death I was awash in pain I couldn’t think straight. I heard from some people in a chatroom that this was a way to let the pain out; a way where nobody would have to know. I was scared the first time and I almost chickened out but afterwards I felt better I felt that maybe, just maybe, I could survive. But eventually the pain always came back and I would have to do it all over again. My arm now had small scars crisscrossing it, it was almost like art work; a rendition of my pain and suffering, a memorial to my mother and a spit in the face to the God who had forsaken her.

“Alis?”

I hear my dad’s voice from the other side of the door. He sounds cheery, like always. He’s moved on. He’s left me in the darkness to fend for myself but I won’t allow myself to hate him, I can’t give up the little bit of light holding me to this world. I slip the blade back in its case and roll down my sleeves; time for that later.

I open the door and there’s my father standing in in his kakis and polo smiling that smile of his. He has the kind of smile that makes you forget your worries for a while, it sets you free. My world brightens just a little bit more.

“Are you ready, bug?” He started using that pet name again after the accident in hopes that it’ll lend a semblance of normalcy.

“Yes, let me get my bag.” A voice void of emotion; sometimes I don’t think I have any anymore. I can’t remember feeling anything other than this emptiness, this incompleteness. My dad hugs me and sets out to start the car.

My bag doesn’t take long to find it has always been stored in a small nook in my desk but I take a second the look around.

The same room I’ve slept in since I was five with the same girly curtains and the same pink and white bed. I can’t make myself change it, I can’t bring myself to take away something my mother worked so hard to make for me; a haven, a place of love. Tears form in my eyes when I see the nightstand and the locked drawer. All the pictures that I have of my mother are in there as well as the locket that she gave me the year before she died. The memories locked away in that drawer; the lock on the drawer as tight as the lock on my heart. I took the key to the lake and threw it in. Effectively blocking all memories of her from my mind, vowing never to cry. She wouldn’t want me to cry for her.