Chapter 10
The explosion was deafening. I felt the bullet enter my body just below my right shoulder. The pain searing my body. I fell to my knees. Blinded by the pain I didn't see what he was doing but I heard it. Mixed in with all the pain I heard the gun shot…
I woke up.
Slowly the images faded from my mind.
Slowly…
It was always like that.
Every night.
And day.
The images.
The memories.
The nightmares…
They all came back to me.
I re-lived them each time I closed my eyes.
Each time I tried to relax.
They came to haunt me.
Remind me that I wasn't like everyone else.
I didn't need any reminder in my sleep.
I already had them on my body and in my mind.
I had the scars that I would bare for the rest of my life.
Which would remind me that my father abused me.
That he shot me.
That he shot himself.
That he killed himself.
That I could have stopped him.
If only I had tried…
But I didn't.
I let him die.
I realised now that it was what he wanted.
I realised that he would never of forgiven himself.
Even if I had stopped him, he would of tried to do it again.
And again.
And again…
Slowly I dropped off to sleep…
I felt his warm, sticky blood hit me. My face was red. Not from crying. I didn't cry. It was from his blood. His life support mingling with my own as I knelt there, bleeding, staring at his lifeless form. Willing him to move. The blood spreading around him as he lay there spread eagled with his brain blown out, soaking into the cream fake fur carpet. Staining it. Turning it pink then red then black. So much blood…
I woke up again.
I let the memories fade again.
I realised I wasn't going to get any sleep tonight.
I got up and put on my robe.
Slowly I walked downstairs and sat down at the kitchen table.
I let the memories wash over me.
The happy ones.
I remembered the laughter echoing down the hallways.
The joy.
The smell of chocolate cake cooking in the oven.
The hushed silence that came before the opening of a present and then the stream of questions of whether you liked it.
The memory of climbing the sacred tree and looking out over the city.
The first day of school when I cried because I didn't want dad to leave me.
Or the time I fell over and dad bandaged my knee when I was a little girl.
Something that would never happen again.
Like dad walking me down the aisle when I get married.
I could feel the pricking at the back of my eyelids as I thought of the maybes…and what could have been…
I suddenly realised that I was closer to dad than mum.
That I had been closer to him.
I realised that that was what kept me there for a whole year.
Why I didn't leave him.
Why I let him kill himself.
I understood him.
I miss him…
I love you too dad…