Chapter One
Blaire's Point of View
Where does life go after a tragedy? We're always told stories of terrible things happening to people, loss, destruction and chaos, but the recovery story is never what makes the headlines. Where do you pick up if where you left off is now nothing but a pile of ash in a field?
My thoughts began to wonder from one obnoxiously "profound" thought to another as I sat down on the bed in the cheap motel room we had just rented for the night. I allowed my eyes to slowly pan the room. The carpet was old, an off-white color covered in stains and burn marks. The wooden furniture set was tattered and beaten. The upholstery on the chairs was stained, worn and torn. The wallpaper that covered most of the walls had begun to fade; watermarks turned it a rusty yellow color and it was beginning to fall from the walls. It had the smell of all objects that had ever seen age. The bed groaned in disapproval as I adjusted my position.
"I'm going to take a shower; I'll be back out in a bit." My best friend, Liam, said as she walked off to the small bathroom in the far end of the room.
She seemed to be taking the predicament we had recently found ourselves in much lighter than most would. This didn't surprise me. It was Liam, after all. Who, no matter how shaken she may have been internally, her exterior never faltered. Very much unlike me, who lacked the motivation to do as much as move after the death of my parents.
I leaned back on the bed's light, ancient comforter and ran my fingers through my hair. I allowed my thoughts to aimlessly wander from one topic to the next, trying to avoid one very predominant thought in my mind. I couldn't close my eyes. I hadn't slept in two days. My body probably would've been exhausted if I hadn't been so numb to my surroundings. Shaking my head, as if that would clear my thoughts, I got up and looked at myself in the mirror.
My face was pale, almost colorless. Dark, large circles traced my eyes. My eyes were bloodshot, both from lack of sleep and my amount of tears. I looked sickly and fragile. The worst part of this is was that I felt so much worse than I looked. I rolled my eyes at my reflection and walked back to the bed.
I fell backwards onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling. I blinked, and there they were. I blinked again, they were gone. I rolled over on my stomach and buried my head in my arms. I slowly began to sob quietly to myself. How much longer was my own mind going to subject myself to the horror that I had witnessed? Was it ever going to relent?
"Have you seen my clothes?" I heard a few minutes later. Quickly, I dried up my tears and sat up. Liam had come out of the bathroom wrapped in a generic white towel.
"No," I said weakly. I hadn't said much over the past couple of days, either. Whether it was my lack of motivation to do much more than anything than sob, or the fact that the only thing that had come to mind was my recently murdered parents, I didn't know.
A moment of silence passed and I pinched the inside corners of my eyes. I had done all that I could to make myself look less weak in front of her. It was discouraging, though she was entirely sympathetic to my own methods of coping, to see someone remain so strong while you trudged around like your world had come crashing down.
"Found them." Liam stated triumphantly, walking back towards the steaming room in which she had just left.
The bathroom door clicked shut, I laid back down on the bed, facing the door.
I cried hard. Sobs came uncontrollable and I knew there was no stopping them.
Finally after a good ten minutes, my blurry eyes started to close, and I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. For the first time in days, I felt nothing.
Liam's Point of View
I exhaled deeply, feeling the hot water relax every muscle in my body. It was safe to say that this was the worst week of my life. How was it that they could be here my whole life, and then be gone in a moment? I had become an orphan faster than my own mind was capable of comprehending. Maybe that's why I couldn't cry. Perhaps it was because I like to mask my emotions. Blaire wasn't handling it very well, so if I didn't, then who would? I was older, and felt I had a responsibility to be brave for her; for myself. After all, I kept telling myself, it was for the best. The both of us lying around sobbing wasn't going to get us anywhere. And it certainly wasn't going to make me feel any better.
I emerged from the shower and wrapped a towel around myself, before exiting the bathroom.
"Have you seen my clothes?" I asked a distraught Blaire.
"No." She answered shortly. I sighed and continued to rummage until I finally retrieved them.
"Found them." I announced triumphantly, re-entering the bathroom to change. After getting dressed, I blow-dried my hair and played with my dark brown locks until they were to my satisfaction. Then I heard a knock at the door.
"Blaire?" I called absent-mindedly, still examining myself in the mirror. "Hey Blaire, could you get that?" I continued, as I opened the bathroom door. I sighed to see that she had cried herself to sleep on one of the beds. Shaking my head slowly with concern, I made my way toward the knocks, which had become more and more frequent. I opened the door, leaving the chain clasped so that it only opened a few inches.
"Hello," greeted a smiling man on the other side of the chain. "I'm agent Darrow, and this is agent Reeves." He continued, as he and his partner pulled out their badges and exposed them momentarily. I had a gift for reading people, and I had a funny feeling about these two.
"Where did you get those badges? A toy store?" I replied rudely before slamming the door shut. I turned the deadbolt as the man persistently knocked again.
"We just want to talk to you." He called through the door, causing Blaire to stir slightly and then awaken. She looked at me questionably and I shrugged my shoulders in reply.
A more frustrated beating came from the other side of the door, followed by the faint sound of furious whispers, before a quieter, more polite knocking occurred once again.
"My name is Sam, and you just spoke with my brother, Dean." He explained through the door.
"I'm listening." I called back cautiously.
"We're just here to ask you some questions about your parents' death." Sam continued, pausing for a reaction.
I looked to Blaire, whom seemed pretty upset, and she gestured for me to do something.
"Right, because after losing our families and our homes, we really have nothing better to do than sit around and relive it with two complete strangers." I replied bitterly.
"We think we might know what happened to your parents." The other one, Dean, called. I turned the deadbolt and slowly undid the chain, opening the door.
"Then we're going to need your help." I admit quietly, before reluctantly pushing the door open wider, allowing access to the broad-shouldered young men.
"That's why we're here, Liam." Sam insisted they both walked past me. I turned around and eyed them both suspiciously, wondering how they knew my name.
"We did our homework." Dean replied, smirking.
"So what makes you think you can help us?" I asked skeptically. Blaire looked at me as if I was insane.
"I don't want to talk about this right now!" She complained.
"Blaire, please, they're here to help." I said, grabbing her wrist as gently as possible, to keep her from running off.
"No, Liam! It's been two days since our parents died. I'm still trying to take this all in. Maybe it hasn't hit me that both of my parents were nailed to the ceiling and set on fire! I lost everything! My mother, my father, my house and everything in it. And all I have left is you!" She stated with glossy eyes.
"Okay, I'll take the cooperative one, and you can have miss waterworks over there." Dean announced impolitely.
"I resent that comment, Jackass." And with that, Blaire walked away with Sam hot on her heels.
"So, are we going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?" Dean asked jokingly once we were alone. "Okay. Well, you can begin by telling me what you were doing the night both of your parents died." He requested, after a long moment of me not laughing at his previous comment.
"I was at the movies. With Blaire." I answered evenly.
"And when did you return?" He asked.
"Well, you see, our parents, and a few other adults from the neighborhood had been having a poker night. Her parents stayed afterwards with mine to help clean up, I guess. Anyway, Blaire and I got home around eleven, and walked into the kitchen to get some snacks to bring up to the room. It seemed odd that our parents had called it a night so early on a poker night, but I never thought anything of it at the time." I admitted, making sure to avert my eyes as I told the story. "So I got some snacks and poured myself and Blaire a glass of water. I turned around to put the water jug back in the refrigerator, when I heard a drip; a sort of 'plop' noise. I turned around, and one of the glasses of water was swirling into the color red. Hearing a few more drips behind me, I turned to see blood on the floor. At first I was confused. I checked my arms and such, because I thought it was my blood. But then more blood just kept coming, like raindrops. So I looked up, and there they were. All four bodies…pinned to the ceiling." I paused, feeling my evenness of tone break slightly, as I tried desperately to look calm.
"Did the bodies happen to catch on fire?" Dean interrupted, looking intensely interested.
"I was getting to that!" I snapped caustically, angry that he wouldn't let me get through the difficult story. Taking a deep breath, I continued. "I don't know what happened. They just…burst into flames; simultaneously. Right above my head, too. I could tell immediately that it wasn't something I could put out, so I screamed 'fire.' You know, so that Blaire, still upstairs, would know to get out of the house." I acknowledged.
"You found your parents murdered, and all you tell her is that there is a fire?" He asked critically.
"Well, excuse me." I reply calmly, yet coldly. "I figured 'Blaire, our parents have been slaughtered and set on fire'…might ensue a panic." I finished bitterly, causing him to apologize softly. I didn't acknowledge his apology before I continued my story. "Then we got out of the house, and it burned down, we called the police, they investigated, yadda yadda yadda." I finished, figuring he could guess the rest of the story. Dean went to reply, but was briskly interrupted.
"How can you explain it like that?" Blaire's angry voice asked from the door.