Trembling With the Strings

The last thing I had done was scream at her. The last words to come out of my mouth had been an insult to her, telling her to get out of my house. If I hadn’t turned her away she could have still been alive! That was what had killed me more than when I had walked into our bedroom and saw my mother’s wide, terrified eyes staring at me through the glass as her head sat on the window ledge; that was what had killed me more than the bloody hand prints on the wall beside our bed; that was what had killed me more than the note left on our dresser that had my final speech to my mother written in red pen.

I had thrown my mother’s love right back in her face. And that absolutely killed me.

“Gracie,” Darius started but stopped—as if he had suddenly swallowed his words.

I shook my head. I knew that nothing he could say would make this any better. My father had been sucked dry, and I had finally been getting over the shock only to find myself drowning in distress yet again. My mother had been murdered within the hour Dray and I had been away on our date. My brothers could have been killed just as easily as our mother had been. I knew that a vampire had killed her (her head had been ripped off with bare hands, and no human I knew was capable of doing that), but had it been the same man—or woman, I didn’t know—that had killed my father?

“Please,” he mumbled, pulling me out of my stupor.

I wrenched my arm out of his hand as he tried to draw me towards him. “Darius, stop. There’s nothing you can say,” I snapped, opening the door and stepping onto the front porch. The stench of blood still lingered in the air, but I managed to ignore the dried red on the concrete.

“You don’t know that until you actually listen to what I have to say,” he told me through clenched teeth. He was trying to conceal his growing annoyance, but he wasn’t fooling anyone—especially not me. “I know what it’s like to have your mother brutally murdered, need I remind you?”

“This is different: I don’t have anyone left now! I’m all alone, and now I’m all alone with three kids I don’t know what to do with, let alone an older sister that is God-knows-where. At least you have a father. I have responsibilities, Darius—more than you could possibly imagine!” I pushed him away as he tried to hold me again. “No.”

“I can’t help someone who won’t let me,” he hissed, his hands curling into tight fists.

“I’m your problem now,” I reminded him. “Unless you plan on trying to leave me again.”

Yeah, that was a real sucker-punch. I know. It showed, too. His face was twisted up in agony as if someone had driven a dagger into his heart and twisted it relentlessly. I would have felt extremely guilty, but I was just too absorbed in the fact that my world was crumbling around me.

For the first time in—well—ever, he was entirely speechless. He snapped his mouth shut suddenly, his teeth grinding as he turned away from me and walked back inside.

I sighed inwardly, following him into the house and closing the door softly behind me. He was lying on the couch watching a blank TV screen. I walked up to the television and turned it on. I tried to hand him the remote, but he stood up and attempted to leave the room.

I say attempted because I grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks.

“Dray, please—!”

“No,” he told me, his voice cold as he mocked me by choosing the one word I had said to him with such disdain. “I just wish you would trust me. But you don’t—you just don’t.”

He muscled past me, storming up the stairs and slamming the bedroom door loudly behind him.

We didn’t talk any more that day.