Welcome to the Festival of Words 2018! What on earth is that, you ask? Read about it here. I'm joining in for the first time, because I never really knew about it before. But better late than never, as the saying goes!
So let's get this party started, as P!nk says... Or something...
For day one, I chose the following creative writing prompt:
Day 1 – 24 Jun – Use this sentence in your post : You’d never believe me if I told you that I _____________, but it’s true and I can prove it.
Here's my story:
TOGETHER AGAIN
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| Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/ |
You'd never believe me if I told you that I'm a murderer. But it's true, and I can prove it. You see, everyone dies around me. You might meet me and think I'm a regular person. I'm witty, quirky and quick with a joke. Fun to be with. You may even want to be friends. I would advise you against it. It could be fatal.
"It's not your fault," my psychologist told me. Her eyes exuded kindness and warmth. Warmth I didn't deserve. The day they'd taken away Blake's lifeless body, all those years ago, I thought they'd take me, too. Mum was still slumped on the floor. Her guttural wails sliced through the unnerving stillness. I felt frozen in time. Floating. Surreal. How could this be happening again?
After the funeral, Mum didn't get out of bed for weeks. I made her bowls of cereal and cheese on toast which lay untouched. The only things I knew how to make at age ten. I became the mother to my mother. Tall and mature for my age, people said. They shouldn't trust me.
"Poor love," Auntie Lorraine said. "First her father, then her baby brother."
"So sad," sniffed cousin Sally. I didn't like her. She'd never visited before, why was she here now? Auntie Lorraine had always been in our lives. She was Mum's auntie really. My late Poppa's sister. I loved her. She wore brilliant coloured scarves and bustled about as she gossiped. She rarely mentioned my Dad though.
For years afterwards I replayed the accident in my mind. Dad's eager face when he saw me waving from the school gate. He stepped off the kirb onto the slippery wet road. I never knew if he saw the oncoming car. If his life flashed before his eyes in that instant. He bounced off the bonnet, hitting the ground with a sickening smack. My screams were swallowed by the clap of thunder as biting rain fell on the gruesome scene.
Six months later, Blake stopped breathing. They said it was SIDS. Sudden infant death syndrome. My already scarred ten year old psyche didn't understand. I'd been playing peek-a-boo with him. Maybe I'd left the blanket over his face when the phone rang and I rushed off to answer it. I'd murdered him, and I knew it. Could ten year olds go to prison?
Mum was never the same. She was there, but not really there. After a while I went to live with auntie Lorraine. Luckily she didn't have any children, or I may have killed them too.
"Your mum is sick, but in her mind, not her body," she explained. "Do you understand?"
I nodded. I'd made her that way. She'd probably die next. Because of me. She didn't. But she only made brief appearances in my life.
Months and years went by. I went to school, netball, piano practice. I was the good girl. I blended in, fooling everyone. Later, anger surfaced. I became a bratty, belligerent teenager. This eventually morphed into a sarcastic, wisecracking twenty something. I was a chameleon, but drowning inside.
By now, Mum and I had an on again, off again relationship. She'd never remarried and moved around, living a nomadic life. I never knew when she'd flit through the periphery of my existence.
Somehow I'd survived university and established a career. Every day I expected someone to tap me on the shoulder. My secret discovered. I was a fraud. A freak. I didn't deserve a normal life.
Inevitably, Auntie Lorraine passed away suddenly. People I love always do. This time I planned the funeral. Mum turned up.
"Hello, Bethany," she gave me a wan smile. She'd put on weight, but it suited her. Her once coppery gold hair was streaked with grey, but her eyes were the same olive green flecked with hazel and underlying sorrow.
"Hi." I wanted to say so much more than that one innocuous word. Where have you been? I screamed internally. Then she surprised me by learning in to give me an awkward hug.
One by one, family, friends and strangers, paused to give me grave looks and platitudes, before leaving the wake.
"I'll help you clean up," Mum began clearing plates of half stale sandwiches cut in triangles.
"Leave it," I held up a bottle of wine from the fridge. Auntie Lorraine always had some on hand. She'd been fond of glass or two after a long day. "One for Auntie Lorraine?"
"Of course." Mum agreed. I poured and we clinked glasses.
"To auntie Lorraine," we both murmured. A few glasses later, we began to unwind. Or unravel. We were pouring out memories along with the wine. Laughter mingling with tears as we remembered what a remarkable woman auntie Lorraine was.
"I'm sorry, Bethie," Mum wiped the tears gently from my cheek.
"For what?"
"Everything. Especially not being there for you after Dad and Blake died."
I looked into her eyes and knew she meant it.
"You look so much like your Dad."
"It was my fault," I blurted.
"What?" Mum shook her head.
"Dad and Blake. I killed them."
Mum looked thunderstruck. Then everything came pouring out of me. I told her how Dad had stepped in front of the car because of me. About my game of peekaboo with Blake.
"I had no idea," Mum was sobbing now. "I thought you blamed me. You see, I blamed myself."
Then she explained how Dad had picked me up that day because she'd been unable to. She'd been suffering from post natal depression.
"And when Blake died, I felt so guilty. I felt like such a terrible mother, and that's why I was being punished. Why he was taken from me. You were only a child and it wasn't fair to you to be responsible for your baby brother. You did nothing wrong. You were only a girl. My beautiful girl."
She help me tight, snivelling into my shoulder. I tried to tell her I understood, that everything was okay, but the words were stuck in my own sobs. We had so much to say. I knew I could never bring Dad and Blake back, but I finally had my mother back.
The next day we went to the cemetery together, armed with flowers. I finally felt a sense of peace as we placed them on Dad and Blake's crypt. Mum squeezed my hand. "We're all together again," she whispered.
THE END.
Linking with Write Tribe for Festival Of Words.
