Collateral Damage

chapter 27

The incident the night of thanksgiving resulted in me getting back my memories. As rare as it was for a person who had retrograde amnesia to recall everything, the things that went down that night triggered me to remember my past.

Those were some awful memories and now I understood why Alexis and his father didn't want me to remember them. I flinched every time my mind wandered to the memory of the night my mother was killed. And I admired Alexis to witness what happened and holding himself together after that. That was some serious, gory shit we had to watch. We didn't leave the basement unharmed that night all those years ago. Alexis and I were tortured the same way my mother was. He planned to kill us too, but cops had arrived. Just not fast enough to save my mother.

Sarah was the one who had called them. She had arrived at the house after shopping for groceries when she heard screams coming from the basement.

Jeffery was arrested. He wasn't sentenced to death because apparently, he wasn't mentally stable. He was admitted to a psychiatric institute where he spent his days until he found a way to break out. He waited in the dark, biding his time until he could get a hold of me and finish what he had started.

He had it in for my mother because she found out about his psychopathic behavior. He used to torture her and hit her so one night she took me and left him. I was only five. She spent her life running and hiding away from him. We constantly moved cities. Sometimes in under a month. I always had to start new. I didn't understand why she did that. And I didn't like it. I didn't like having to make new friends every time we came to a new city and then having to leave them because we had to move.

She finally found a safe place. Nothing happened for years. There was no news of my father. She decided to settle then. She had a job at a big house as a cook. Because we moved so much, I was homeschooled. So, I accompanied her to work every day.

A boy lived there. Always quiet and always hiding. He sat alone under a tree with a book in his hands. I tried talking to him, but he never replied. I thought he was weird, but I didn't have any friends and beggars can't be choosers. I followed him every day and tried to make him talk. I cracked jokes to make him laugh. He never did. And when I became annoying he used to sneer at me and leave. I was disheartened by his lack of response. I felt dejected and discouraged. I thought maybe he just didn't want me as his friend. I was going to stop trying, but my mother told me to not give up. She told me that he needed a friend just as I did.

So, I tried again. I tried to be like him. I asked for a book from Sarah, the housekeeper. She gave me one and I ran outside, happily clutching it in my hands. I ran towards him but slipped on the grass and fell. I had scratched my knee. I began crying.

A shadow fell over me and I looked up to find the boy with dark hair and equally dark eyes looking down at me.

He picked up the book I had dropped, dusted it, and extended it to me.

'Don't let slight things make you cry. There are pains greater than that,' he said. His voice was quiet, just as I had imagined. And he shared little emotion. I didn't understand then what he said, but the fact that he actually talked to me was enough to make me stop crying.

I was happy. I had a new friend. And we played in his huge house while my mother worked. He told me about all his favorite books and lent them to me so I could read them too. We became close and I woke up every day waiting to meet him again.

Alexis was two years older than me and he was lonely. His father never was never home and his mother had left him when he was little. I began to understand the reason he was so closed off was because he feared another person would leave him if he let them get too close. I watched the boy with sad eyes and swore that no matter what, I would never leave him.