bennett devereux . nine . cbd2

bennett devereux

It’s difficult to know where you’re going when your own imagination cloaks you with a veil and spins you around, disorienting your body from the ground up. That’s how I feel, every morning when I get up and out of bed at Gramma and Papa’s house, the only place I can call home and the only place with any bit of my identity left over from the crash. The crash, you ask? Twelve-year-old me answering the door to a couple of Peacekeepers who tell me that my parents bit the dust a few hours ago. It was a message given with no heart but received by a shattered one.

My sisters, Arc and Circe, have some conspiracy theory that those Peacekeepers were just trying to tranquilize us and it was they who killed my mother and father, deserting us to our grandparents’ home. I, however, don’t quite know what to believe. They’re the law enforcement, and whether you like it or not, you have to trust them to be honest. When all you have are the clothes you lugged over from your old home and your fading (and ever-growing) red hair, it’s tough not to trust them.

My parents left me, by accident, suicide, murder, or something in between, with my two little sisters, now ages sixteen and fifteen. Arcadia too sad and scared to keep a smile for more than two seconds, and Circe with an obsession with some phony witchcraft that she still believes to be real. I am their brother, not their father, but I take care of them as if they’re my own children because holding on to what I know is the only thing that prevents me from jumping blindfolded into the outside world.