The Prisoner Project

SEVENTEEN

"My people died because I loved them."
- George Emil Banks

SEVENTEEN

AS DIANA RAN TOWARDS my mothers voice, I stood frozen still in the one place I had wished my entire adolescent life to escape from. I was suddenly unable to take my eyes away from Hugh's paling corpse. His skin had shifted from almond to a sickly pallid.

All of a sudden, the freedom from Hugh I had craved for for years looked and tasted vile.

All I kept thinking was the fact that he didn't have to die. I didn't have to watch the life drain from his eyes. None of this needed to happen. Despite the fact that he was willing and eager to blow my brains out from my skull, I felt a gaping hole tunnel through the tendrils of my heart as I watched my baby brother die out in front of me.

You never know the exact moment that the blackness of grief begins to consume you, but understand that it would gradually begin at the time you least expect it. I was mentally mourning the man that had broken me in all aspects. That had broken Diana. That had nearly killed my mother.

But just as I reminisced over the bad he had done to us, the bad that had been done to him surfaced.

Instantly, I felt like I had exploded out of my body and was transported back to the past where I would watch my dad remind Hugh of how much he was a dissapointment. I could remember the crying, the sobs, the way he'd punch his bedroom walls because he couldn't find one way to please my parents. Was Hugh just misunderstood? Was that why he physically and emotionally abused my mother, Diana and I?

Revenge.

And then there was the one word he had said before he died. Just before Diana had shot the gun through his head. He had seen her lift the gun towards him and he had said - "Thank you."

I didn't know what that meant to him but hearing it felt like a blow to the chest.

But all in all, Hugh was dead.

I should have been thankful. But when I realised that we'd - she'd completely and utterly obliterated a human being from existence, it was absolute mental torture; I couldn't bring myself to be grateful for anything.

I heard Diana's voice sneak past the ringing in my ear. The gunshot still echoed in my heart like I was the one who had been shot. "Aria! Mom is here, she's..." Her voice broke, the sadness seeping through. "She's not okay..."

I snapped out of my mental detaintment and spun around, leaving behind the biggest mistake of my life, and running towards the light of my life. "Mom!"

Because of the support I and Diana got from the local government for being prodigies, the house was fairly big. Not big enough to hide the painful truth about my life since my father passed though. At least, not to me.

Just as I reached her bedroom door, where Diana's frantic voice led me, I felt like the world had stopped spinning and had decided to let go off me. First thing I noticed was that the pink cotton sheets of my mothers bed was now stained a ghastly red. It was almost as though Hugh had wanted to take all my memories and taint them in front of me because this bed had provided me a haven. I had often crawled into it with my mom whenever Hugh threatened to kill me while I slept in my room.