Playing His Own Games | ✔︎

chapter seventeen | the mind is a prison

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"The monsters don't live under my bed, they live in my head"
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Carrie

THEIR WORDS ARE LIKE bullets, their mouths the pistol. Squeezing the trigger, they tear into my skin and embed themselves into my body.

"You have people who can support and help you get through this," my dad is lecturing as he paces the length of the lounge room, his eyebrows furrowed and his hands tucked underneath his armpits. "You have a boyfriend you can talk to, friends you can talk to, people who can help you. I don't understand why you are being so ungrateful and selfish."

"How," I spit out through gritted teeth, "the hell am I being ungrateful?"

My mum pushes through the circle of shadows she was standing in near the window and walks over to me. "Look, honey, what your dad is trying to say is that you are not the only one grieving. Locking yourself in your room around the clock and avoiding any social interaction with anyone apart from Kane, it isn't healthy."

I arch an eyebrow. Though her points are valid, I still have one question left. "And that makes me selfish, how exactly? Maybe you guys have moved on from the death of your daughter quicker than I have. Maybe you haven't noticed the hole her absence has left in this family. And maybe you haven't noticed I'm still accepting and processing that my sister is fucking dead." My voice cracks on the last word, my voice catching in my throat.

My dad clicks his tongue impatiently and my mother exhales, rubbing her fatigued eyes with her knuckles.

I've had enough. I rise to my feet, dusting off my hands. "To be honest, I don't even know why we are having this conversation. It's just a waste of everyone's time."

"Sit. Back. Down," my dad thunders, his face bright red and his hands forming fists by his sides. The sight of him so angry scares me slightly; I've never seen him like his before.

"William," my mum murmurs, her shoulders hunching, her breathing shallower than normal. "Just leave it."

"I will not!" His face is practically glowing with anger, his glasses slipping off the bridge of his nose. "She needs to understand what a brat she's being! Moping around this place, hardly eating and ignoring us when we speak to her, it's unacceptable and it does not help this situation in the slightest!"

"So you want everyone to go back to normal, right?" I say, challenging him with a glare of my own. "Pretend like Alina never existed. Pretend like you didn't admit you wished I were the one dying. Pretend like Mum's mind isn't tearing apart piece by piece every single day."

"Don't insult your mother!" my dad yells, spit flying from the corners of his mouth.

"Insult her? Look at her!" I scream back, motioning towards her. She looks shattered; Rocking back and forth on her heels, unbrushed hair hanging hanging limply around her shoulders, her tortured eyes swimming and swollen with tears as she mouths words nobody can understand.

She is so distant from the present I doubt she can even hear what we are saying.

"We will never be normal again, Dad!" I shout, tears burning my eyes and falling cold down my cheeks. "Normal was with Alina back in Chicago."