ELEVEN YEARS LATER
Momma died last week. Momma went to Heaven with Jesus. But Daddy's not going to Heaven. My Daddy is going to hell. My Daddy killed my Momma. He closed her eyes forever.I can still remember that night. He beat her until her eyes closed. I didn't see the whole thing. Not with my eyes anyway. I heard her cries from outside the bedroom. Muffled cries, loud cries, painful, endless cries!
He locked the door and I couldn't get in. I can still hear them, haunting me. But it isn't her voice that is haunting me. It is the fact that he made her do that. That is what haunts me. Will I remember forever? Will it haunt me forever? I slide a sharp, cold metal blade across the palm of my hand. I barely press down at all. Blood starts appearing along a thin, almost invisible line of split skin. It hurt. But at the same time, it felt good. I thought that if I really concentrated, I could hear the blood sing as it trickled along the crevices of my palm. Did Mommas blood sing? Did it sing as it danced along her face, her legs, her arms? Could she feel me kiss the palm of her bloody hand when I finally got that damned door open that night? That night last week. I should tell someone, the police.
"I'm too scared."
I'm seventeen and I'm going to college next spring. I wanna go far away. Far away from Dad. Far away from Donny. My Dads niece, Bethany. But mostly just the memories left here. The stain this place has. I'm afraid that if I stay for too much longer, I will stain too. Donny is never home, and when he is he is sleeping or partying with his friends. I'm not allowed out of the house. My family says that I'm evil; a demon. I believe it now. There are such things. My Dad is one. So, maybe it's hereditary. Passed on through mutated genes.
After Mommas murder, I took all of her books Daddy had thrown into the garbage. I kept them hidden between the tare in my mattress. If Dad found them he'd kill me too. Is he afraid of me like I'm afraid of him? I've been trying every day that she's been gone to do that spell she was doing the day she died. She couldn't do it, yet she kept trying, kept working at it. She never got to complete it. I've taken that up as a must do. I concentrate, focusing on the power I have. Momma was trying to make a spell that would serve as a guide for one another so we would never lose our way to each other. Like a tracking device. I thought for a split second, that maybe, just maybe, it might lead me to her. It might bring me to my Momma.