Oh, Love, Love! [Violet is DEAD!!!]

Drip. Drip. Drip. The rain leaks through the crack in the ceiling, onto the side of the bed Willow used to sleep on. My hand runs over the damp spot, and a bit of water splashed onto my skin, tiny little bits of the liquid going in different directions. The boom of thunder used to scare me. The flash lightning would make me cry. Willow would sit up and play with my hair until the storm passed, and usually I would fall asleep once she started. But not tonight. My twin is gone, forever, and I will never get to see her again. Daddy did it. He hit her wrong, somewhere on the head. Then she fell down and he told the peacekeeper she hit her head on the table. I didn’t say anything. Willow can’t protect me anymore, and Daddy would hurt me. He already has, but not so much as he hurt Willow.

I hear his heavy footsteps, and the click, click, click as he locks all the doors and windows before going to bed. He wasn’t so drunk as usual, and this time maybe he wouldn’t check on me. Click my door goes, and I know I’ve been locked in. There are no windows in my sister and I’s room. I move my hand from the wet spot and let the rain drip onto it. She wouldn’t be sleeping there tonight. My hand slithers down into the covers to pull out her hair band. I don’t know why, but I liked to play with it. When the boom and the flash scared me, it seemed the only thing I could calm down with. There hadn’t been too many storms lately. But I still hated them.

A large sigh escapes my lips and I look at the ceiling, slowly closing my eyes and opening them again with the flash that lights up the room from the cracks in the wood. Mama used to say thunder storms were the giants bowling up in the clouds. That scared me more. I silently wish for my sister back, though I know the effort is fruitless and I will only make myself cry. I didn’t like to cry, it made my eyes hurt and my stomach ache. Daddy didn’t like it when I cried. Only if he was hurting me. Then if I cried he would smile and let me go. I cried a lot.

I turn in bed, facing the wall with the stack of books. Willow used to read those all the time, but I was rather stupid. I didn’t read well, and I was already nine. I knew children much younger than me who read very well, but I’m dumb as a doornail. Willow was always explaining things to me, but I don’t ask many questions, I like to be quiet. Observation is the key to understanding, right? Perhaps not in my case, it is not really helping. Willow was always so social, she would make friends in a heartbeat and introduce me. I got along okay with them, but none remember me now that Willow isn’t there to prompt me to do things. They will never mistake me for my twin, though we were practically identical. Her head was held high and she only knew how to smile. I stared at my feet and turned red if someone touched me on accident.

Getting out of bed, I walk over to the books and open Willow’s favorite. It was about a little boy who was very poor, but he traded the cow for beans. At first it sounded stupid, like something I would do, but further on they grow into a beanstalk and he finds a giant. The giant’s wife helps him, but eventually the boy kills the giant. Willow might get angry if I sold a cow for beans, but maybe we could make them stop bowling if we killed them. Willow would have to do that. I might get crushed by the ball. I flip through the pages, looking at the faded yellow pages with curiosity, studying the pictures with fascination. Suddenly a new leak springs. Drip. Drip. Drip. Flash!

I jump, the book falling from my arms and landing half a meter away. My legs thump and slide , boards creaking and my breath growing rapid. I look towards the door, aware of the sudden thump of my father’s feet on the floor. He was angry. I probably woke him up. he was a light sleeper, and I’d just made quite a racket. Click goes the door, and he throws it open with force to throw it off the hinges had the wall not caught it. His face was red but tired. I can only hope he was too tired to catch me. I was slow, but he could be slower when he was drunk. I run to the other side of the room, but he quickly follows, catching me in a corner. Curses.

He curses some, then stares at me a few moments before asking what I was doing up. “R-reading,” I say, eyes wide with terror and the impending pain that would certainly follow. I was just waiting for him to swing his fist, maybe at my head, where he hit Willow. She once told me that when you die you go up to the clouds and talk to all the other dead people, like Mama. Daddy shakes his head. Boom. Boom. Flash. Flash. Boom. Flash. The giants were having fun up there. Did Willow watch them? They were both in the clouds.

“Readin’?” he asks, and I nod my head fast, already flinching. He slurs something about me being too stupid to read, and suddenly his fist is coming in my direction. I am lucky enough his coordination was not at it’s best, and he misses me by barely half a centimeter. I begin to cry. But this time he doesn’t stop when I start crying. He seems to get angrier. “You miss your sister?” he asks, and I notice for the first time he was crying too. When I think back, he was always crying when he hurt Willow or I. I didn’t pay enough attention. “I miss her too.” His voice cracks. Boom. Flash. Drip. Drip. Drip. “You miss your mother?” He gets me in the stomach and I sit down on the rough, splintered floor.

“I miss them too,” he says, as he kicks me. I yell out, and cry harder. I couldn’t stop, not even if I wanted to with all my might. He was crying too, though, he was still grieving. Ripred, he had to be dead drunk. “I knew she was going to run,” he says, and I know he is talking about my mother. “But I didn’t stop her, she was too determined. She loved you though, far more than I thought she did.” I keep crying as he kicks me again. He is putting more effort into it. I can tell. I slide over a few feet, but he follows me. His ranting was scary. “You aren’t like either of them, Violet. Willow and your mother were wild, you, you are just sick. You are weak. You look like them but you are not them. Why do you exist?”

I do not reply, I just cry harder when he picks me up and begins to hit me again. Eventually I cannot find the tears anymore, and I just squeak. I had tried to be quiet before, but Willow was so good at it, I was not. I was nothing like her and I knew it. I looked like her. That was what Daddy said. He grabs me, dragging me to the kitchen and throwing me into a chair. He knocks a few things off the counter and continues to rant about my mother and sister. I only stare. Had he finally gone mad? Then he grabs a knife from the drawer, one of the really big ones we never had reason to use.

“Daddy?” I say, my voice tiny and mouse like compared to the boom and the flash of the storm brewing outside. His eyes shine with tears, and I get out of the chair. But I am cornered, and he is more than twice my size. “Daddy?!” I yell, tearing down the curtain that covered the window. Maybe someone would see. He begins to sing. I know the song. I made it up when I was four, the same day Mama left…

It was painful at first, but only for the first half second. He made sure my brain was torn, but I know he didn’t really mean it. My Daddy loves me and he’s here with me right now, and Mama and Willow and Daddy and I, the last of the Maccin family, are happy together here in the clouds. At first Mama was angry at Daddy, but the giants calmed her down and now we get along just fine. I forgot how warm my Mama’s arms were, but now I am happy. Just like I always will be. It’s funny, though. Mama keeps shocking us with her fingers, silly lady. Her hair is really funny too, and her eyes are a bit bigger than I remember. Willow has a bad bruise on the side of her head. Daddy has a hole in his chest, but my head is fine. It’s all wrapped up and I never get any headaches. And up here, the rain does not drip.