Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Suspense/Mystery

Home was no-longer the home I knew.

The home I knew was filled with laughter and smelled of the happiness that my family enjoyed.

Now it was filled with hidden sadness that everyone knew was there and echoed the booming silences that took place every time anyone was present.

I walked up the steps of my brick-made home, and opened the door. The mat beneath my feet welcomed me, while the darkness of the halls told me a different story.

I guess people aren’t the only ones that mourn.

Going up to my room, and making it up to my bedroom was a blur.

Taking off my clothes was made subconsciously. 

Making it to the bathroom was unknown to me; and I only came alive once the water hit my skin.

I stood under the spray of the shower for 15 minutes until I began to scrub. And scrub. And scrub. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn’t wash the scent of mourning off my skin, so I gave up, turned the water off, and stepped out onto the cold of the tile.

Walking into my room, I made sure to avoid the mirror. I didn’t want to see my brown skin, brown eyes and dark unruly hair that looked too much like Grams.

I didn’t want to see the look of death reflected within my eyes. So I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling, and counted the glow-in-the-dark stars until they drifted me to sleep. 
I woke up to the feeling of flesh touching my own. I was halfway across the room before my mind caught up with me.

“Why did you leave?”

My mother’s words were so sharp, I was sure she had cut her tongue on the syllables. Her angry eyes searched mine for an answer I couldn’t give and her anger was coming off of her in waves; the heat of the emotion warming my skin.

“Well?” Her eyebrows raised in question and my legs quivered, I couldn’t tell her why—I didn’t know myself.

“Answer me child”. The hands on her waist balled into fists as her body gave way to the anger her eyes had already expressed. “I—I don’t—I don’t really—really know”, the words escaped my throat before I could catch them, and the water within my eyes decided to follow a path my cheek bones created.

I looked at her and I thought I saw the mother I once knew within her features, it’s as if my broken words brought her out, but it must been an illusion, because it passed like a wind had carried it away ,and a storm brought back the woman I now knew as my mother.

Her face was as stiff as Grams had looked in her final resting place.

“You’d better find out, no-one has the time to give you answers girl”. Her words following her as she turned and walked out my room.

Her steps like thunder against the floor,and  her indifference like lighting, left me to deal with the rain alone.