The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (12 page)

             
“I’m going to lie.” I replied and said nothing else
to her on the matter.

XXX

             
The memory I have of us leaving her house for the last time is as clear to me still as it was the day it happened. I remember how she insisted on locking the door and how I knew that she was just trying to preserve the smallest
bit of normalcy by doing so. I remember how we walked hand in hand down her driveway to my car that was still parked crookedly next to the curb. I remember how she looked back, tears streaming from her eyes, at the house she had grown up in. I couldn’t im
agine what she was feeling but I would be able to feel it in reality with no imagining necessary soon enough when I said goodbye to my parents. Though they would still be alive when I left them, they wouldn’t be for long. In both cases, our goodbyes to the
people who had raised us were equally final, despite her mother already being dead and her father being missing.

             
“I’m just going to run in and grab some things. Just a few things, so they don’t know that we’re running away. I’m not going to tell them tha
t you’re out here.”

             
She just stared out the window at the sky that was beginning to darken over our heads. The drastic change in the weather was enough to convince me of the impending end of the world; the sun never broke through the thick, threatening cl
ouds. We were in a state of perpetual night. I wondered if anyone else found the overcast days and pitch black nights as ominous as I did. People who hadn’t had the dream would surely shrug it off as just a nasty bout of depressing weather, but I knew bett
er. I found myself staring up into the sky as I walked to the front door of my house.

             
I turned the doorknob and pushed, being greeted not by the familiar smells of the many strange concoctions my parents invented for dinner but by the distinct iron-like s
mell of blood. My heart dropped immediately as the realization gripped me; when I had left the night before, another one of those things had come for me. My parents had awoken, aware of a strange presence in the house. They had been killed mercilessly as t
hey stood between me and the thing that had broken in, completely unaware that I was already gone. Their sacrifice was, to say the very least, completely in vain.

             
I didn’t stumble back at the sight of their bodies lying side by side in front of my closed
bedroom door. I didn’t collapse into a fit of tears. I didn't scream hopeless, desperate questions to no one in particular, demanding a reason for the merciless slaughter of my parents.

             
I lurched forward suddenly as the few bits of food I had eaten over t
he past day came tumbling from me like my body was trying to expel some deadly toxin. After I wretched and gagged and wiped the tears the exertion had forced from my eyes, I did start screaming. I screamed like I was staring the devil in the eyes and like
I was being cut down the way my parents had been.

             
It’s amazing how in the face of trauma, we revert back to the needy nature we possessed as children. I was young still, but old enough to know that Mom and Dad couldn’t solve all of my problems for me and
yet as I stared down the darkness that had scared me so much as a child, all I wanted was for my parents to run in and tell me that it was all just a nightmare.

             
Alice and I were so young and we needed the people who loved us more than anything in the
world to solve the ominous riddle of what to do for us.

             
But they were gone, and we were on our own forever.

Violet

             
It happened while I was sitting in class, staring out the window as a light snow began to fall from the clouds. My teacher was rambling o
n about cell mutations and the impacts they have on an organism. I knew that even though I wasn't listening.

             
“It's snowing!” A girl in my class exclaimed and I couldn't help but roll my eyes; the sudden change in the weather wasn't exactly worth a disrupt
ive outburst. Plus, that girl was in the same clique that I despised: A drama nerd whose second interest was writing emotionally charged prose to describe her trivial high school conundrums and her mundane hormonal changes. We had Creative Writing together
and every time she shared a piece she had written (which was every freaking day), I tuned her out completely and doodled in the corner of my spiral notebook.

             
My sister was the one that recommended I take that class in the first place. She was smarter tha
n me by a long stretch but we both shared a love of books and writing. I wanted to become a novelist one day. Our parents told me that unless I wanted to write an autobiography, my dreams of becoming a famous writer would never come true. My sister told me
that I could do anything I set my mind to, though she immediately chastised herself for using such a trite expression to encourage me.

             
“Thank you for pointing that out to us, Emma.” My best friend and sarcastic partner-in-crime, Miranda replied after loo
king up from her notes. “I'm sure we would have all walked outside without our coats and in cut-off shorts if you hadn't informed us that
it's snowing!”

             
She mimicked her overly excited tone on the last part and waved her hands in the air like a drunken mi
ddle-aged bar hopper trying to dance with their younger counterparts. I covered my mouth as I cracked up hysterically. Miranda was the more outspoken one between the two of us. I tried to keep my scathing sarcasm to myself whereas she wore it on her sleeve
for all the world to see. I needed that, my sister said. I needed someone who would say what I was thinking so that I might one day learn to do the same. Yes, my sister did frequently talk like Yoda.

             
I learned everything I knew about life from my sister.
My mother's high-class career left little room for focusing on her children. So my big sister, the second-oldest of us all, had to pick up Mom's slack. I had only just realized that as I began to go through the trials and tribulations of adolescence. When
I needed help navigating those stormed-upon, erratic waters, my mother would turn away, clueless as to how to assist me. My sister knew by instinct and from experience exactly what to do and say, always.

             
I loved her for that.

             
“Thank you, Miranda.” Our t
eacher said, in slight exasperation. “Everyone, eyes up front, please.”
             
Our class, who like ferrets with ADHD had turned abruptly to the windows at Emma's outburst turned back around, muttering about what a heinous so-and-so Miranda was. I looked at her,
expecting to see some indication of discomfort at being discussed negatively by our peers but as usual, saw nothing but the deepest apathy. I couldn't shake the smile from my face.

             
“I don't even care.” Emma shot loudly at her friend who was staring back a
t us, muttering no doubt about how bitchy Miranda was.

             
Emma certainly looked like she didn't care, if the way she rolled her eyes and shrugged several times was any indication. She raised her voice and said grandiosely, “'Anger is an acid that can do more
harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.'”

             
Now, I know that Emma must have thought she was quite clever for quoting Mark Twain verbatim. Unfortunately, she underestimated Miranda's own knowledge.

             
Emma turned to lo
ok at Miranda and said, “That's Mark Twain, in case you didn't know.”

             
“How long did you have to skim through quotes online to find one that might be applicable to real life?” Miranda asked her, “Is that what you do in your spare time when you're not writi
ng pathetic little essays about your closeted boyfriend and your fake suicide attempts?”

             
“Ladies, that's enough!” Our teacher snapped, “May I continue now, Miranda?”

             
“Sure, blame Miranda...” Miranda said as she held up her hands in mock surrender,
“Continue.”

             
I shook my head slightly, still grinning, before returning my gaze to the world outside my window. I marveled at the number of kids who had done that very same thing over the years. They had sat exactly where I was sitting, staring out the win
dow, dreaming of the moment the bell rang and they were free. I don't know where my sudden burst of nostalgia came from. My sister would tell me later that my reminiscence was so strong because somewhere in my subconscious, the infinite knowledge was emerg
ing and as a result, I knew what was to come.

             
I don't remember the moment that I drifted off. Biology was my long period that day and we still had over an hour left of class. My teacher's voice was droning on and the snow was falling softly outside, lulli
ng me to sleep...

             
A high pitched whirring sound that caused an entire city to fall to its knees. Everyone holding their ears and screaming so loud that their faces were turning red from the effort and I still couldn't hear them over the screeching sound.
Then, a silence so deep that it rattled my brain. It lasted for such a long time; a minute and a half felt like an eternity. Then, an explosion that shook the earth beneath my feet. A tidal wave of fire was barreling towards me rapidly and there was nowher
e to run. There was no escape from this fiery death. For a split second, I felt it swallow me, my skin blasting off, every nerve ending screaming in agony...

             
I
was screaming in agony and in terror when I awoke. As soon as my eyes opened, I saw that the en
tire class had turned to me, their faces betraying shock and in a few cases, amusement. I jumped up, sweat pouring off of me like a last defense against the burns I had just suffered.

             
“What? What is it?” Miranda asked as she stood up, too.

             
“I'm...” I sta
rted to say as my teacher walked around his desk to approach me. I pointed at the door, unable to speak now.

             
“You're fine. Go ahead.” He told me, nodding. His brows were furrowed and his face conveyed something more than just concern. There was recognitio
n in his eyes that I didn't understand.

             
“I'm going with her.”

             
“Yeah.” Mr. Barnes nodded and Miranda came running out of the classroom after me. I was walking as fast as my legs would allow. They felt weak and I acknowledged briefly that they were trembli
ng worse than the rest of my body. My sister would tell me later that my survival instinct was still working; my body was trying to save itself from the stream of fire.

             
The stream of fire... What was it? Why had it been so real?

             
“Hey, crazy!” Miranda gra
bbed my arm and turned me around to face her. “What happened? Oh my...” My appearance halted her mid-sentence. I was still sweating and my face had gone far beyond the white of a ghost's skin. “You need to go to the nurse, Vi. You look terrible.”

             
“I need
to go home.” My throat clenched and tears started to fall from her eyes. “I just want to go home, Manda.”

             
“Okay. Come on. We'll go. Mr. Barnes will explain what happened if we get in trouble for cutting. Let's just go.” She grasped my hand and the contact
comforted me more than I would ever have said. We passed teachers and administrators without stopping, walking right out the door into the frigid winter air.

             
It was the cold that snapped me back to my senses. I started telling her about the dream, rambli
ng on and on with all the grim, terrifying details.

             
“It was just a dream, Vi. You're just freaked out from it. I remember this one time I had a dream that my teeth were falling out and I woke up...”

             
“This isn't like that!” I snapped at her, raising my vo
ice to a volume that I didn't intend. “This was... It was so
real!
”

             
“All dreams feel real like that, Violet.” She told me as she started the car. “Plus, that wasn't just a dream. It was a night terror. Remember in Psych what...”

             
“You don't understand. It
was just...” I shook my head slightly, bringing one trembling hand up to my face to rub my eyes.