"The pain of love is the pain of being alive. It is a perpetual wound." -Maureen Duffy

{Preface}

Tinsley lay on her white covered bed, wondering what exactly possessed her to have so many throw pillows. They only serve to get in the way, and cause annoyance when she's ready to sleep and instead of being able to jump straight into bed, she has to strip it of pillows first. Then she thinks to when her mom would pile every spare bed with as many throw pillows as she could. Tinsley smiles as she remembers her and her mom arguing over the necessity of the pillows, her mom insistent on keeping them.

That's why I have them, she thinks, to remember her by.

As always when Tinsley thinks of her mom, she thinks of how life used to be a year ago. How they had a dark brick house on the outskirts of Chicago. How her father would curse the dog every time he would drag mud in the house. How they were a simple, happy family, and how it all went straight to hell.

Flashback

"You know, if we miss curfew again because of you, I will kill you." Andrew was telling her for possibly the hundredth time.

"Relax. They're probably sleeping anyways. We'll be fine. Besides, we're already here. No need for your dramatics." Tinsley replied, brushing off her brother's threat with ease as they turned into their driveway.

"I am not dramatic, you just take things too lightly. Which, I might add, is the reason we miss our curfew so much in the first place," he shot back as he watched his sister fiddle with her keys, trying to unlock the door.

"Would you shut up? We didn't miss curfew, so just shh."

Upon opening the door, the first thing Tinsley noticed was just how dark it was in the house. "See, I told you they were sleeping," she could feel the glare her brother was giving her for the comment. She merely laughed it off as they walked to the living area. For what seemed like minutes, she struggled to find the light switch (with her brother laughing at her all the while, mind you), "Ahah!" Light flooded the room as soon as she flipped the switch, and the next thing she knew, she was screaming.

Blood was everywhere. On the floor, the walls, the furniture in the room, even the pictures sitting on the mantel. Tinsley staggered backwards and fell to the floor too panicked to do anything else.

There was so much blood. Just then, a thought occurred to her. She had been too panic stricken to think of it before, but now it was all that was going through her mind. The blood had to come from somewhere. More precisely, the blood had to come from someone.

Suddenly, she stood and raked her eyes over the room. It didn't take long for her to see them. How could she have missed them? Just as everything else in the room, they too were covered in blood. Absently, she wondered how there could be so much blood from just two people. That's when she noticed all the gashes, as if someone sat there with a knife and just started slashing at their bodies for thirty minutes straight.

Tinsley couldn't take it anymore. She fell to her hands and knees and emptied the contents of her stomach, sobbing as she did so. She wanted to scream, or maybe run away. It was only a second later she realized she actually was screaming.

Andrew sat on the floor behind his sister, silently weeping. All he heard was his sister's screaming. He could think of nothing, his mind naught but complete blackness. The sight before him was that of a horror movie, not something that happened in real life. Not something that happened to him. Yet here he was, sitting on the floor, silently breaking down, with his parents' battered and broken bodies mere feet in front of him.

He faintly registered the sound of sirens coming closer and closer by the second. It didn't matter. They were too late. His parents were already dead. He wasn't a fool, he knew he might possibly have to deal with the death of his parents one day, but not like this. Not so soon.

Still sitting stunned into utter silence on the floor, he almost missed the sound of something being knocked over - like a table, maybe - from upstairs. That's them, he thought. That's the person who did this.

He had the sudden urge to rush upstairs and do to them what they did to his parents, something he's definitely never felt before. Then he remembered his sister, still screaming and wailing on the floor. Instinct kicked in, and before he knew it, he grabbed his sister and pulled her out of the house with him, her still screaming in his arms. He made it to the curb before he collapsed, Tinsley slightly on top of him and slightly on the concrete of the curb.

They're dead, she thought. They're dead. It's all that Tinsley could think. She had stopped screaming externally the minute she fell to the ground outside, but on the inside she screeched like no other.

She was terrified. Her parents were dead and their killer could very well still be in the house. Amazingly, she was able to hear the noise from upstairs over her screaming. She didn't have long to think over her options of escape - not that she could think clearly at all - before the cops arrived. They burst in the house, guns in hand, while the paramedics rushed to her and her brother.

Eventually, the cops cleared the house, having found nobody inside aside from her already dead parents, and then they proceeded to question both Tinsley and Andrew separately.

"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?" The cop asked gently.

Yeah, my butchered parents, she thought, though she voiced nothing.

The cop tried asking her a few other questions, but Tinsley still said nothing. He sighed and placed a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder before walking to speak with another cop.

Tinsley had long since stopped sobbing, and now she cried silently to herself. She looked up to find her brother, and upon finding him speaking to a cop, she let her gaze wander. Through her tears, she watched as the paramedics loaded two body bags into the back of the ambulance. She watched the police walking around as they did their job - from looking for any evidence to putting up crime scene tap. Her eyes drifted to her house (where she knew she could never set foot in again), to the trees that surrounded the left side of their home. Her breath hitched in her throat at what she saw; a boy. He looked around her age; 16. He had messy black hair that covered his forehead, and, from what she could tell, dark eyes. He was hidden behind a bush, enough so that he couldn't be seen unless you were far enough away and could see around the bush - like Tinsley could. He seemed to be watching the cops.

For a crazy moment, she wondered if he could have been the one who killed her parents. No, she thought. He couldn't have over-powered both mom and dad. Besides, this guy is in the bushes. The person who killed them was definitely still upstairs when Drew and I got home. No way he could have left the house and ran to the bushes without being seen by either me or Drew. He's probably just a curious neighbor, just like the rest of them, she finished her pondering as she looked to her left at all the other neighbors who were watching the whole scene.

She decided he couldn't be the murderer, but even so, he intimidated her. She didn't know why, he wasn't even looking in her direction, much less at her. All she knew was he frightened her. Looking away, she ignored the bad feeling setting in her and decided it was just nerves. Seeing her brother was done talking to the cops, she walked over to him, immediately hugging him tight, not wanting to let go. She no longer cried; she felt too tired to. Instead they just stood there, both silent, both done crying, just holding each other, hoping that they could keep each other from falling apart.

End Flashback

Tinsley sighs at the memory, eyes closed. No tears threaten to escape anymore; she's finally gotten to a place where she doesn't cry over them every night. Still, she misses them.

Now she and Andrew live with their Aunt and Uncle in Deaton Creak, Ohio. It's one of those small towns where everybody knows everybody; a peaceful place. The quietness is something Tinsley enjoys though. Since her parents murder, she has always felt safer in a small, quiet town. That is, until fate decided it had left her alone for too long. For soon enough, everything would come crashing down on her again, and she wouldn't feel safe or at peace ever again.

So, if you haven't read the update on my page, then you don't know about me re-doing this story, so let me fill you in real quick. I was trying to get inspiration for this story, so I went back and read the existing chapters. To put it lightly, they were bad. Very bad. I immediately decided that I wanted to start this story over, as I do love the premise. I didn't know I would be getting the rewrite of the preface up so soon, but inspiration hit. Almost the entirety of this scene has been changed, one of the characters has been drastically changed, and also some (most) names have been changed. I personally like this version a lot better than the other and I hope you guys will as well. Your feedback would be much appreciated, so I can know if I should continue this or not.