First the screaming. Then the running.
Her father's voice echoed through the walls of her bedroom. His fist pounding on the wooden door, "Reyna!" he screamed. "Te voy a matar!" I'm going to kill you.
The door shook on its hinges, but the lock still held. Reyna ran to the window, fumbling with the latch, hands shaking and tears threatening to spill onto her face. She flipped the gold handle and shoved upwards. One foot first, testing the slant of the roof. The red tiles shifted, one clattered off the roof and cracked down on the pavement below. Reyna took one last glimpse at the shaking door, her father yelling something not meant for her.
She edged through the window, but paused, maybe if I just stayed, maybe if I talked to him he would stop. He doesn't know what he's doing, she thought. But this wasn't the first time, the rage only got worse.
Reyna crouched low on the roof to hold her balance, small pebbles shifted under her weight and skittered across the roof. The sky was dark and the only light came from her bedroom, the only place she couldn't stay. For a fleeting second she wanted to go back in and stand up to her father, but the door burst off the hinges with a grunt, followed by the billowing rage of her father.
Any thought of returning tonight left and she flung herself to hide behind the wall, not in view of the window. Please, don't see me. Her heart pounded and her clammy hands felt their way along the tan stucco wall, grasping for anything to hold. Just let him go away. Reyna's mind raced, praying to all the Gods to take her father away, to make him leave, to let him be himself again. Anything but the terror that he had become.
Inside the room, she heard something like a dresser slam to the ground and harsh, psychotic whispers coming from her father, "Where? Where are they? I must kill them. Muerte." The voice became irritated and more crashes followed. The small lamp that rested on a small desk next to her bed tilted, casting shadows on the buildings across the street. Reyna imagined demons flooding through the window, acting out their vicious thoughts in a dance for her father's sanity. The more the light shook the harsher they became, the shadowy dance on the wall turning into a battle. Claws slashed, teeth bit, and with one final swipe, a loud roar came from her room, glass shattered, the light stopped.
For a moment it was silent. Reyna knew she only imagined the images, but she would much rather deal with demons than her father. It always happened like this, after the war, something was off. One wrong movement and suddenly his eyes could turn dark, murderous and Reyna wasn't Reyna anymore. She was the devil. A warrior. A soldier threatening her father with a gun that didn't exist, but that being the only thing he could see. "Traitor!" he would scream, "El Diablo!" The words would change from day to day, never knowing what she would become next, but one thing always stayed the same. Her father never failed to come after her, to chase her through the stockpiled weapons. Which would he choose tonight? Would it be the daggers, the swords? Whichever it would be, Reyna always got away before she could face the wrath. Barely.
The silence stopped and the mumbling began. In the darkness, the words came ten times more terrifying, psychotic. Her father's voice sounded like a whip, "Too bad it had to be like this. I never wanted to kill anyone. But I must protect my family! Without them, the empire will fail."
Something about those words brought up a memory, unclear, but still there. A day when Bellona visited, hadn't she mentioned something about their importance? But Reyna couldn't remember and jolted back to reality as the ramblings from her father continued. "You could never escape me! HA!" the madness surrounded his words, "Where? Where are you?!" His voice began to quake and grew in intensity, "NO! Wh-Where? Stop hiding from me! Diablo!"
Reyna shifted on the roof and another tile broke loudly against the cobblestone below. It sounded like a gunshot, echoing across the alleyway between the buildings. Her father grunted. "NO! Stay behind me! Hold your fire!"
Please, let it stop. Reyna knew these moments. They weren't the same as when he chased her around the house. They weren't the same as turning Reyna into something she wasn't, seeing enemies in everything. It happened too often, this same scenario, over and over. Sometimes she could hear her father moaning through the walls in his sleep. Those were the good nights.
But nothing good came from this. By this point Reyna knew to cover her ears, the worst part always next. She sunk low against the wall, pulling her knees close to her chest and hands over each ear. Her body shook and the first tear spilled onto her cheek. Please. Help him. She prayed, hoping any god would set him free of this madness, but nothing answered.
The scream shook the night air, Reyna tightened the grip over her ears, but it still vibrated through her. She could imagine what happened at this point, almost like she experienced it for herself, but even she couldn't believe the horror that her father must have went through in the war. The horrors that made him like this, that made him see enemies in everyone and everything. Reyna always imagined what he saw the same way.
He would be standing in a dark room, no furniture, and only one window with steel bars blocking it. Not that anyone would be able to use it anyway, being only a foot from the ceiling. Why would anyone put a window that high, why would she even imagine it like that? Either way, nothing in the room moved. Her father stood in the center with his back to the door. Two other men filed in, all wearing military bullet proof vests and bulging black bags slung over their backs. A beam from a single flash light swept across the room, it came from the soldier on the left.
All three men held heavy machine guns, kept up, constantly scanning for something to fire at. The soldier on the right relaxed his gun and pointed toward the ground. Reyna's father turned back to him and gave him an intense look, "Keep your gun up." The man would hesitate for a moment, but follow the order. The two men looked to the one in the center, Reyna's father, waiting for any action but he was still motionless. "Where are they?"
"Something's wrong. They should have been here," the man on the left said as he looked around the room again. Completely empty. No trace of anything except the dirt on the floors and the window too high to see out of. All three men still held the guns up, almost expecting the gunshots, the ones that would never come until they already let their guard down.
It was the other man that spoke this time, on the right, "We have to go. We can't risk anymore time here. They aren't here, they could never have cleaned up so fast." He gestured with his gun to the empty room, the dust that already floated in the air.
"No. They are here and they have him," Reyna's father looked terrified.
"Another time, Ram," the other man said, pausing after he said his name, the nickname they gave her father for Ramirez. "Next time, they'll be here. We'll be ready. Let's go."
"No! Th-they are here. Somewhere. We can't leave wi-without…" He would stutter. Always at this moment. Why Reyna imagined it this way, she didn't know. But he would falter to find words for his friend. The man the three had been there to save. Later she learned after a visit from Bellona all the details, the one time she talked to her mother. She learned about his months stationed in Iraq and the time things went all wrong. At most it should have been a peaceful deployment, mostly at the base, not much action, but that was before they were attacked. She filled in all the war affects, bombs, gunfire, it didn't matter, all that mattered was the aftermath.
Maybe it was the courage her father showed that made Bellona herself come to confront her, to tell her how his part of his team combat were captured. Her father and his best friend, Donny, volunteered for rescue immediately. He was the only soldier everyone referred to by first name. They could almost never be separated, Ram and Donny, they had eachothers backs.
So, that's where her father ended up. One step closer to saving his comrades, but ending with his own sanity being destroyed. Reyna didn't want to imagine the rest of the scene, but the noises from her father still reached her through closed ears and it became impossible to stop the flood of images. But Reyna would be strong. Hold on, just one more night in hopes that her father would come back to her. That she could rebuild their home.
She found her thoughts drifting back to that room. "We can't leave without them. I won't." But this time it was too late. Through the window a small object flew out between the bars and landed just between her father's feet. The soldier on the right, who she knew to be Donny, eye's grew huge and everything seemed to happen in slow motion. He surged forward, tackling her father and sending him flying. A split second later, Donny stood and ran for the grenade, cradling it between his bullet proof vest.
One second, her father shouted something inaudible. Two seconds, he struggles to his feet. Three, the realization hits and he tackles the man on the left out the door. Four. Five. Reyna imagined the seconds being the longest he had ever experienced, yet being helpless to do anything. The other man would hold her father back as he pulled with full force to try to get to Donny. His body ached with the screams, his face contorted in pain and when the sixth second hit...Ears ringing, body aching, just out of range from the blast. He fought back to the room, but the other soldier yanked him back. Her father never heard the words he spoke but knew, "He's gone. We have to go! Before they come."
Together, both men scrambled away, down a hallway and stumbling through the doorway they broke down earlier. They came out onto a bright sunlit, dirt street, with brick and mud brown houses, that matched the road lined the street. They both panted heavily, leaning onto one another.
Immediately after the first step they were surrounded. Harsh voices of another language, circled them with guns aimed for their heads. Frozen. All for nothing. All to die. But her father wouldn't fail. If she inherited anything from him, it was that. They would rather go down with a fight than fail, always stay strong.
He steadied, "Too bad it had to be like this. I never wanted to kill anyone." That line terrified her. One he never failed to say in his moments. Maybe he never wanted to kill anyone, but he did anyway. Maybe he never wanted to hit Reyna, but he did anyway.
Back on that ledge of the roof, next to the window, the final screams dissipated, but her father still brought tears to her eyes. It usually happened like this, but she could never go back, "Reyna? Oh, Reyna. I'm sorry... I wish it didn't have to be like this," but it was and Reyna turned and walked the rest of the way towards the edge of the roof and waited to be saved. Waited for her courage to come back.