Disclaimer: I own nothing.
I sat in my room for days after ignoring the soft pleading of my mother to come out or eat something at least. But hunger seemed so distant a thought and eventually she had to leave the house. The only thing I could feel was that intense ball of pain that from time to time felt it right to rub across my ribs bruising my insides where I would never know if I healed.
And all that time in my room I did nothing. Sat cross legged on my bed every once and a while having crying fits but mostly I was eerily calm. I didn't touch my computer, or read my books, or watch my TV. I just sat staring at the wall from the end of my bed. not out the window of at the various posters nothing really not even the bland wall.
The blank white wash color that was so empty of everything. The thing I constantly complained about and what I tried to cover up with as many pictures as I could. I became sucked in by the textures of the paint. You strokes you could see Dad had painted not a year ago. The strikes meeting the ceiling by accident.
Dad was gone now.
Just another thing to add to the growing list of things I was losing. Still in that wall was a piece of him and a piece of me. A piece I could feel I was losing from all this. A sweet innocent piece that never fully appreciated what she was given what she was truly blessed with.
A loving interested Father, a sweet protective boyfriend, a hilarious brother, and a nurturing mother.
They were all gone to me down Dad to a greater power by my own fault, my Sam to my cousin, Seth to the bloodsuckers, Mom to her new obsession with living up to her new position as an Elder.
And here I was left sitting in my house alone and staring at everything I so readily ignored and took for granted until it was all gone. There were moms forgotten baking supplies which had long sense been abandoned in favor of the dozens of TV dinners that we'd been living off of lately. Seth's room was a mess understandably for a teenage boy but his old Mario cart video games were now replaced with weights. He was self conscious about how small he was as I wolf so I assumed he must be trying to buff up. Even Emily could be seen here in one of the old family albums a picture of me and Emily at a tribal festival celebrating the changing of the seasons. Our faces painted and feathers in our hair locked in a fierce hug with matching over dominate grins.
But my mind kept going back to he walls that dad had insisted would bring up the value of our house. In the cheap paint was him everything he was. He probably sweat in that paint I remembered watching him paint so furiously while I laughed at him privately over the phone to a friend. He'd nearly given up fishing for an entire week which meant his arm chair started to lose the smell. Something that still brought tears to my eyes whenever I went to sit there.
But none of this was him he was gone because of me. Because I changed because I'm a freak of nature. I'm no idiot if Seth had changed right before his death and not after he wouldn't have suffered from the shock that caused his heart attack. It was all me lashing out about my grades dropping and how it was none of his business why. Or why I'd taken to staying out past curfew with guys I barely knew. I can still the horror in his eyes as he identified the symptoms of the impending change. The trembling hands the blood curdling scream, the increased height, and the sight of me, a blur as I shook like a tuning fork.
And then he hit the floor and mom was torn between aiding me and him. Her finally choosing me as I took off out of the house just one last glimpse of Seth's face as he ran back into the room with all of Mom's Medical supplies. The next time I'd hear him would be when he joined me as a wolf not an hour later.
The change was painful as could be expected exploding into a giant wolf was no easy feat. And no one knew I was coming. when I became to grow super tall people just attributed to an ancestor with exceptional height. So as soon as the change was complete I heard his voice.
The exclamations of shock as the pack struggled to comprehend and as many of them demanded answers from Sam who's mind was immediately searching me. Lingering on the more painful moments of the last year. They didn't have time to regroup before Seth joined and I heard the earth shattering feeling of grief.
Dad was dead.
And it was singularly my own fault.
Ever since then the pain hasn't stopped.
I never expected it to.