My free hand forms a phone, silently asking where their cells are.
“We left them downstairs,” he chokes out.
I shake my head, knowing I can’t drag Mom around the house to look for it.
Stretching my foot out, I stomp the floor, needing Dollie to hear me, needing her to call for an ambulance or something. Needing her to make this right because I don’t know what to fucking do.
“It’s too late. Promise me you’ll do as you always have.” Dad coughs up blood, the red color staining his lips more as he attempts to lick it away. “That you’ll keep your sister safe.”
Always. I nod.
Even now, after this, when I don’t know how I’ll look at her.
Dad…my lips move, and the hand that isn’t still locked around Mom’s throat stretches out to Dad as he rolls from his side onto his back.
His head drops to the side, a tear falling to the carpet as his stare locks on me.
I hold my breath, fearing his touch more than anyone’s because he’s always avoided mine, too.
Mom attempts to talk again, a weak attempt at Dad’s name, before her body twitches in my arms, and too many tears to count fall from my eyes.
Her struggle to hold on continues in my arms, and there’s nothing I can do about it. No way I can help.
I layer her hair with kisses—three of them. And I try to keep my cries quiet, not for her to feel more fear than she already does.
Something fills my hand, clammy and big like mine—Dad’s hand. He squeezes my fingers, crying out the word, “No, no, no…” repeatedly.
Mom’s eyes freeze, a single tear dropping. The joining of our hands was the last thing she saw… and now, she’s gone.
A noise comes out of my mouth, it doesn’t sound like words, just pain, and it doesn’t go away as my glossed stare meets my father.
I become a mess of drool and snot.
“I’m sor-sor-sorry, champ,” he stutters his last words, giving my hand another squeeze.
Sniffling, I manage one nod before he closes his eyes and leaves me behind in the cold upstairs hallway with his dead bodyand my mother’s, and the blade on the carpet between them that I feel like running across my wrists.
With an almost silent click, I close my bedroom door. I head to the bathroom, following the sound of shower water, and Dollie’s bloody dress interrupts the perfection of Mom’s cleaning.
Stalking toward it, I pick it from the floor, ignoring the light smudge left behind.
I take a minute to watch the girl I grew up with, standing lifelessly behind frosted glass.
Temptation guides me forward until I’m standing side by side with her. My fingers press the glass, and she doesn’t even notice.
Her mouth opens and closes, repeating the same words over and over.
“There are no clowns. It’s just a bad dream. There are no clowns. It’s just a bad dream. There are no clowns. It’s just a bad dream.”
Three times I hear it before forcing my slow feet to carry me out of the room.
Somehow, I get downstairs, finding a mess of fallen textbooks in the reading room. I crunch a sprig of sage under my feet before kicking it into the dining room.
Robotic movements take me to the kitchen corner where the washing machine resides, because even in a house this size, we don’t have a laundry room. I toss Dollie’s dress in with anything else that’s already loaded inside, not checking the colors before I nudge it shut with my knee, add detergent, and start it up.
The open fridge beeps over and over again, warning that food will go bad, but I don’t bother to close it. The strong smell of gas fills my lungs, causing me to cough. I check the burners on the stove, finding one of the middle ones turned on.
Twisting it, I turn it off, on, off, on, off.
