Series Wednesday: Family Game Night page 75

    I look at the picture my mother just handed me. Percy is lying with his body opened up and most of his insides missing. I feel the anger wash over me. I look at my parents and this feeling of anger gets worse when I look at them. So I turn away and look at Grace. “How close did he get?” I ask Grace. “Close enough to scare me.” Grace says. I sit there and look down at the coffee table in front of me, this dark brown little coffee table with a glass insert. I pick up the coffee table and throw it at the wall. My family doesn’t even flinch. “I want his head on a spike!” I scream at my parents.  My mother gets up turns to the broken coffee table on the floor. “As do we.” She says to me.
                 “So why isn’t he dead?” I ask. “We can’t find him. It is why we needed Hope’s connections to change our names and give us a new start.” My dad says. “You mean the mob.” I reply back to him. “What did you say?” My mother says to me even though I think she is asking a question. “Hope works for the mob. That guy Frankie clearly a mobster.” I say back to her. My mother just looks at me for a moment. “Let’s not waste our time with semantics. Hope helped us change our identities and hide you away.  Since then, there has been no sign of Daniel.” I nod my head and start to walk away. “Where are you going?” My dad asks me. “Away from you. He killed Percy and went after Grace and your solution was to run away with new identities. I just need a moment to wrap my head around all of this.”
                My mother chases after me. “Don’t you dare judge us Cahira! You have no idea what it has been like for us. You cannot fight a ghost.” My mother says to me. I stop walking and think of all the different ways to get her to shut up. I could rip her throat out with my teeth or I could strangle her or even better I can put her in her place. I turn back to her and smile. “What do you do if you have a bug problem? You call an exterminator. What do you do if you have a ghost? You call a witch doctor. There will always be someone who can solve your problems if you just take the time to look. So before you tell me that I don’t know what it was like. Tell me you tired and exhausted every avenue you could before getting scare of the unknown and running away?”  I stand here and wait for her response. She is speechless. “That is what I thought.” I say as I turn back around and walk away. 

Series Wednesday: Family Game Night page 74

What does he mean I can’t handle it? I look at him for a second. “Anything you can handle, I can handle.” I tell him as I turn the page. I see the ripped out organs. The organs were not cut out they were ripped out. Daniel didn’t just kill Percy he butchered him. I look at all the different organs ripped apart.  When I get through all the pictures I realize something. “Where is the picture of his body?” I ask my parents. My mother hands me a letter, this does not answer my question at all. I open the letter and instantly I recognize the hand writing.

                The letter read as followed. “Dear Dad, See as you want nothing to do with your first born son I have taken your baby boy. I decided he was going to be the first to go. If you wish to bury him in peace you will give me Grace. You will put her in the play room for me. If you do not comply you will never find where I hid the rest of Percy. So make sure to choose wisely. Also if you choose not to give Grace to me just know it is only a matter of time before I get her on my own. Love your first born.” I finish reading and look at Grace.

                “They didn’t give me up.” Grace says to me with a smile. “I can see that.” I say with a smile back. Grace laughs and we both just look at each other. “He did keep good on his word and went after Grace.” My mother says ruining the nice moment I was having with Grace. I turn to look at my mother. “Did you think he wouldn’t? Is this it, this is all he sent?” I ask her. “How did you know?” My dad asked. “Know what?” I ask him. “How did you know he sent pictures with the letter?” My dad asks me like I am some kind of palm reader. “I didn’t know that. I just know Daniel and he wouldn’t just send a letter.  He goes big. Where is the picture?”  I ask.  My dad looks at my mother and gives her a nod. She lifts her leg and pulls out the picture and hands it to me.

Series Wednesday: Family Game Night page 73

       My dad makes sure that my mother sits as far from me as possible. “We thought Daniel was dead. There wasn’t any evidence to prove us wrong. Also it had been years since that day, we had all moved on with our lives. Grace was away at college while your mom and I were raising Percy. Percy had really changed a lot after your accident. He was a much stronger person. He had really come into his own.” My dad stops talking and looks over at my mother. “What your father is trying to say is Percy wasn’t the boy you remember.” My mother says as if this has anything to do with how she let him get killed. Both of my parents sit there silently.
                “None of this tells me about the night Percy was murdered. Do you even have the police report?” I ask them.  “Yes we have the police report.” My mother answers as she gets up. “So tell me how you didn’t protect him.” I say to my dad. “He didn’t need protecting because there was not threat, or so we thought. Percy was very social he was always at one event or another. So the dance wasn’t even on our radar.” My dad says as my mother walks back in the room and hand my dad a folder. He looks at it and hands it to me. I open up the folder to see the police report. I start to read through it.
                He didn’t just murder Percy. He tore Percy into pieces. The report states that the kids thought a pipe had busted. The floor was covered in Percy’s blood. When the children noticed the blood the faculty turned on the lights. That is when they started to find pieces of Percy. They found a part of his liver, his spleen, fingers, toes, a chunk of scalp and…….  I look up at my parents. “Does it say his testicle was found on the floor?” I ask them. My parents both nod. I go to turn the page to look at the evidence photos. My dad grabs my hand. “You don’t want to look at those. You can’t handle it.” He says to me.

Series Wednesday: Family Game Night Page 72

      My parents stand there just waiting for me to walk in. “Cahira.” My mother says almost as a whisper. “We weren’t sure if you would ever wake up.” My dad says as he goes to hug me. I feel his arms embrace me. My dad has always had big strong arms that I often felt safe in as a little girl. I am no longer a little girl and his arms did not make me feel safe, it actually makes me feel nothing at all.  I pull back from my dad’s embrace and put on a fake smile. My mother steps towards me with her thick black hair tightly pulled back with metal hair stick. I move away from my dad and walk up to my mother with open arms. She goes to hug me and I pull her sharp metal hair stick out of her bun. I stab her in the leg and as she goes down I whisper in her ear. “I never took you for an idiot, I guess I was wrong.” I tell her.
                “Cahira what are you doing?” My dad says as he pulls me away from my mother. “Out of all the times I went to visit you and spoke to you in your coma that is the one thing you heard and held on to.” My mother says to me. “That’s the only one I heard from you.” I tell her with a smile on my face as she pulls the metal stick out of her leg. My dad pulls me back and looks me in the eyes. “Grace wasn’t kidding, your back.” My dad says as his eyes search mine. I am not sure what he is talking about nor do I care. “How did Percy die?” I ask my dad. He puts his head down and steps away from me.
                “We didn’t see it coming. We saw his dead body, he tricked us.”  Grace says from behind me. “Grace this is not your fault and your also not who I asked the question to.” I tell her without turning around to look at her, no my focus is on my parents. “How did this happen? How did he get close enough to kill PERCY!” I start yelling at my parents. “Don’t take that tone with me!” My mother says as she limps towards me. “Or what mother? What are you going to do!?” I ask her as I step towards her. My dad grabs me and pulls me away from my mother. “Stop it both of you! Now do you want to hear about what happened to Percy or do you want to kill your mom.” My dad says to me. I push him off of me and walk over to the living room that I see off to the side to sit down. “I don’t wish to kill her just yet. That would be boring, so why don’t you tell me what happened to Percy.” I tell my dad as I sit down.

Series Wednesday: Family Game night Page 71

    I wake up to see Grace at the end of my bed. “You killed a nurse?” she asks me. “Did I?” I response. “I suppose not. The official story is she killed herself.” Grace says as she comes close to me. “Cahira why did you kill her?” She asks me. “I didn’t care for the tone of voice she took with me.”  I explain to Grace. Grace puts her hands over her stomach and takes a deep breath. “Your back.” Is all she says. “Grace where is dad and mother?” I ask her.  She closes her eyes for just a second, like she is taking what she just said in. “They are at the safe house. Where I am going to be taking you as soon as the doctor signs you out.” Grace looks out the door. I can see the panic all over Grace’s face.

                “Cahira you are good to go. Just make sure to go to your weekly checkups for the next few months.” The doctor says as a nurse walks in the room with a wheel chair. “I am not getting in the chair. I am okay to walk.” I tell the nurse. “It’s hospital policy.” She says to me. I look her up and down; she is a small mousy thing. I would be able to crush her wind pipe with ease. “Cahira, I’ll push you it will be fun.” Grace says to me. She smiles just like when we were girls. “Ok.” I say as I get in the wheel chair.  As Grace pushes me she whispers in my ear. “You can’t just kill people for disagreeing with you.” I hear her words and laugh. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” I response to her. “You forget I was always with you as a child. We were inseparable before your accident and I remember that look in your eyes before you kill someone. The same one you gave that nurse back there.” Grace says. I just laugh and get comfortable in the wheel chair as she pushes me out of the hospital.

                We pull up to a house that looks more like a fortress. We wait outside these big black iron gates. As the gate opens I see a house covered in snow. I assume this is where my parents are waiting for me. I sit in the car for a moment and close my eyes to think. I wonder if I really want to see my parents, I do have lots of questions about what happened to Percy. I get out of the car and Grace opens the front door for me. Here goes nothing.

Series Wednesday: Family Game Night Page 70

    “I wasn’t around when Percy died. I had to keep my distance so Frankie wouldn’t figure out you are my daughter. We thought you had killed Daniel. Your parents had gone back to their normal lives. Daniel got Percy at a school dance. He gutted Percy bleeding him dry. He left pieces of Percy all over the dance floor for the other kids to find.”  Hope reaches out to me but I look out the window and I see snow. “Where am I?” I ask her since it doesn’t snow where I am from. “We had to move you around a few time. We found out Daniel was visiting you after he killed Percy and we didn’t want to risk him killing you to.” I look back at Hope. “I know he was visiting me I could hear him in my sleep. Where is Grace?”  I ask. “She like your parents are on their way here.” I nod my head and lay back down.

                I must have dosed off, I look around and its night time. I look around my room to see no Hope. She must of left. I really don’t want to be here. I start to pull off the heart monitors and the machine starts making the most annoying beeping noise. I look at it and all of the buttons on it.  A nurse comes running in and looks at me. “You can’t just pull your monitors off it makes us think your dead.” She is scolding me. I do not care for her tone. I look and she is wearing scrubs with pockets. I see a pair of scissors in her left pocket. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I wish to go find my family.” I tell her. “You cannot just leave because you feel like it. You have been in a coma for 5 years. You need to stay here until the doctor tells you that you can leave.” She is scolding me again. “I do not like your tone.” I tell her. She looks at me and I see her grab a shot out of her other pocket. “That would be a mistake.” I tell her as I grab the scissor out of her pocket and stab her in the throat. I feel a pinch in my side. She got me with the shot.

                I stand over her body. She isn’t dead yet she is choking on her own blood. “Like I said I didn’t care for your tone. No one tells me what to do.” She looks at me as she fights for her last breath. I feel my legs getting weak. I am not sure what was in the shot but I feel myself going down. I hit the floor hard. I can hear other nurses screaming as they come in. The scream is the last sound I hear.

Series Wednesday: Family Game night Page 69

     My room is full of nurses trying to calm me down. I see one step off to the side and call someone on her cell phone. I read her lips. “She has awoken.” The nurse says. I feel a pinch in my arm and look at the nurse giving me a shot. “Percy!” Is all I can get out before I gently fall back to sleep. “Cahira.” I hear, I open my eyes. I look to see a doctor at the foot of my bed. I look him up and down. “Glad to see you with us.” The doctor says to me. “Where is my brother Percy?” I ask the doctor.  “Cahira you were involved in a horrible accident. You have been in a coma.”  I start to sit up. “How long was I out for this time?” I ask the Doctor. “Far too long.” Hope says as she walks through the door. “MOM!” Is all I can say as she floats on in?

                “That will be all doctor I will take it from here.” Hope says as she sends the doctor away. “I could hear you in my sleep.” I tell her, she smiles at me. “I was hoping you might say that.” Hope sits next to me on my bed. “I need to talk to you about a few things.” Hope says as she touches my face. Her touch feels different; it doesn’t have the same warm feeling in my stomach as before. “Where is Percy? Daniel is going to go after him.” I tell Hope.  Hope kisses me on the forehead. Her kiss feels hollow like she is about to tell me something I don’t want to hear. As she kisses my forehead she is holding the back of my head. I don’t feel any pain. I start to touch my head and I don’t feel any stitches not ever a scar.  “How long was I out for?” I ask her.

                “You were in a coma for 5 years.” Hope says in a soft voice. “5 years!” I just sit here. “Wait where is Percy? You never answered me.”  I ask Hope. “I was going to wait until everyone got here but I guess I’ll tell you. Percy is dead, Daniel killed him.” Hope is trying to hug me. “When? I just heard Percy’s voice.” I pull back from her. “Percy hasn’t seen you in 3 years. He was killed about 2 years ago.”  I just stare at Hope. “You need to tell me how this happened, every detail.”