Tuesday 4 March 2014

Untimely Terror

The scream escaping her lungs sounded so unnatural, even to her own ears, yet the ear splitting sound had certainly come from within. The room, was drenched in crimson, blood spatter from floor to ceiling as her parents, or what she could make out of them lay sprawled in a puddle of their own blood. She was frozen, in shock certainly but the only movement her body seemed to be able to make was the screams of horror that she would hope could wake the dead.  Her brother came running into the room after her and let out a cry of horror before he grabbed her, picking her up in his arms and pulling her from the room. She screamed fighting his hold and reaching over his shoulder towards the room, burning tears streaming down her cheeks. “Kat!” her brother’s voice sounded shaky, he was talking through tears of his own and yet she could hear him repeatedly telling her to calm down. How could he expect her to calm down when he couldn’t keep himself calm? “Kat calm down please” he begged her but she did nothing but scream.

“Kat?” her dark green eyes lifted from the spot on the rug in which she’d been focusing on, taking into her vision Dr. Moore staring at her expectantly, pen in hand note book at the read waiting to judge, to interpret.
“I’m sorry, what was the question?” she asked boredly shifting her weight on the couch to a more comfortable position. Over the past three years she had grown accustomed to tuning out in her sessions, no progress was being made and yet her Aunt insisted they continued with the treatment until some acceptance could surface.
“Have the nightmares subsided since we discussed those focusing and redirecting exercises?” Kat did everything in her power not to scoff at the idea. Dr. Moore was a nice enough person, she was just trying to help but considering the fact that she had no answers to what had happened that night, Kat wasn’t going to be able to come to any sort of acceptance not until she knew what had really happened.
“Nope” she stated simply her eyes holding steady with a bit of a smile on her lips. “No offence or anything Dr. Moore but I really don’t think they’re going to stop anytime soon” She stated. Even Jared still had the nightmares, that much she knew, but evidently he was a far better liar than she was, enough so to finally get out of therapy for good. Of course, being a legal adult now gave him that advantage over her as well, she could only wait for the day that she was free to make her own decisions.
“Kat do you understand the concerns?” she asked again for what seemed like the hundredth time since these sessions had begun. She simply shrugged her shoulders as she waited for the explanation to ensue.
“You Aunt and Uncle are concerned with your emotional state, they feel that by not coming to an acceptance about your parents death, that you are preventing yourself from being able to move forward”
“I don’t want to move forward. I want to know why it happened” she retorted with ease, was it too much to ask for answers? “Everyone else may be comfortable with forgetting and moving on happily in their delusional little lives but I will never be” she assured her. “And you can tell them I said that” with that she stood from her place on the couch and grabbing her bag headed towards the door.
“We still have time left”
“Great… just bill them”


Kat stood on the sidewalk in front of the office building waiting for her ride. As the familiar honk caught her attention she turned to see her brother’s black pathfinder pulling up to the curb and she shifted her bag before hurrying to get inside. Opening the door she tossed her bag on the ground before pulling herself up into the front seat fastening her seatbelt before turning her attention to her brother. Jared was so unlike her in every way, his deep brown eyes were soulful, while her green ones were menacing, and her chocolate brown hair was countered with his contrasting blond. Their temperaments differed greatly too, he was always the more practical one, level headed, in control. She envied him, and it didn’t help that people were constantly comparing them.
“So how did it go?” he asked curiously as he shifted the vehicle into drive and pulled away from the building.
“Oh you know, as well as to be expected” she said casually and she actually managed to get a laugh from him.
“So the usual then?”
“I thought therapy was supposed to be private?” she said a jokingly defensive tone in her voice. He knew that she said nothing in therapy that she would never say to him.
“I thought therapy was supposed to be productive” he countered and an amused smile settled on her lips as she turned her attention out the window.
“Touché”
“How long are you going to keep this up?” he questioned her curiously and she flipped her eyes back to him.
“As long as it takes” she wasn’t going to just give up. Three years had passed since the day she had walked in to find her parents dead, and it still replayed through her mind as vividly as if she were still standing right there. “It just doesn’t make sense, you know it doesn’t don’t pretend to me you’re suddenly on the move on bandwagon”
“Three years in a long time Kat, I mean most cases go cold in forty-eight hours you know that, just because we want to find out what happened, doesn’t mean we ever will. I don’t want to spend the rest of our lives obsessed with this, Mom and Dad wouldn’t have wanted that” she closed her hands tightly into fists as her green eyes narrowed at her brother.
“She got to you, Gertrude got to you”
“Okay, cut the dramatics, no one got to me, It’s just my opinion.” He sounded so sure that she almost believed him, except that he had that same lost look in his eyes, the same missing piece of the puzzle she saw each time she looked in the mirror. It was because of this she didn’t push, after all Jared was the only one she had left who understood her.
“Whatever you say brother”