The bright sun was overwhelmingly hot on the back of his neck. Edward sat with his head in his hands, perched upon the steps of his home. He couldn't shake the harsh reality of what lie behind the walls of his home. Just a boy of eighteen years and with no particular skills. He was now utterly alone.
His parents: murdered.
He drowned himself in guilt for cowardly hiding in a closet when the incident happened.
The memory of his mother softly mouthing a hush to him before coughing and spraying blood on his face as the intruder slit her throat marred him. Her once bright blue eyes became dull and distant as they stared into nothing. His heart dropped to the floor as his mother's limp body did. The man quickly removed an expensive necklace that was gifted to her by his father. He searched the body for any other prized personal belongings before standing.
The image of her eyes played over and over in his mind becoming more twisted by his memory each time until the woman no longer looked like his mother. With eyes as cold and lifeless as the woman who passed before him, they couldn't possibly belong to the warm and loving woman he adored.
The pounding of his heart faded from his ears as he returned to the present. He was being pulled away from the manor by two officers who held a firm grip on his upper arms. Edward couldn't remember standing. His feet dragged behind him like stone.
He stumbled.
He wanted to look back. He wanted to run back. He wanted to push open the heavy wooden doors and be greeted by his parents. He would even be satisfied to know he still had his younger sister who he tormented by crushing her dolls in their early years. However, unlike his parents, he did not discover her body anywhere in the abode. That possibly disturbed him most. The unknowing fate of his younger sister.
Edward sat in a small room without any windows. Hunched in a wooden chair, he stared at his lap and kept to his thoughts. Across from him sat a professional looking man with a spread of papers displayed over the wooden table.
"Please. Pay attention, Mr. Richtofen. This is excellent news for you." He spoke softly with a German accent as heavy as his voice. It pierced and echoed inside of Edward's hollow chest.
The business man handed Edward the hand written page of his father's last will and testament. Edward looked at the page unimpressed with the exceptional amount of Deutschmarks that he now inherited along with his home.
The two men sat in silence.
With this amount, he could repair the manor.
He could replace the stolen possessions...
Change the blood stained carpet...
Put paper over the blood splattered walls...
"Sell it."
The man across from him sat quietly with no reaction to Edward's remark.
Edward took the ink pen from the table into his own hand and wrote down some numbers on a blank space of the will.
"This shall be used to repair the house." He scribbled down another set of numbers next to it and circled them. "And this," He slid the paper across the table to the man. "I shall use."
A/N: Original post date February 11, 2016, but I started writing in December.
- "I used to crush these (Matryoshka doll) when I was young to hear my sister cry in anguish." - Dr. Richtofen, Call of Duty Black Ops Zombies, Ascension.
*May 3, 2016: I changed Edward's age from seventeen to eighteen. While I don't want this story to be based around a certain year to allow the reader to determine Edward's age in France, 1918 "Origins", seventeen was just a little too young and would leave a major time gap in future chapters.