arvin solis. d7.

We were forged in hell, Lenora and I.

Neither of us got anything to hide from now - we've been living with granny and pops for as long as either of us can remember, but deep down I'm still runnin' scared. When Lenora's in a mood, I swear I see the fire of her hair crackling, one strand away from exploding. It mostly happens when someone gets on her at school, or we're visiting her mama's grave. She wasn't there when her daddy stabbed her mama in the neck with a screwdriver, but she still tenses up like she's seen the horror firsthand.

My parents are gone too. Mama got real sick when I was little. Dad dragged me out back to the prayer rock, made me kneel before a makeshift wooden monument to beg Ripred to heal her. He slapped me upside the head when I wasn't fervent enough, wasn't able to say it like I meant it because I wasn't sure if I did. I remember feeling bad for the tree that was chopped down to become the centerpiece of our prayers. How ironic was it, that we were asking something dead to renew life.

I had a dog that I loved a lot. We went everywhere together, even to the forbidden places like the dinner table where I'd pass him scraps. Dad killed him. Pinned him right up to our monument and said Ripred would accept the offering in exchange for mama's life. I stared at my dead best friend, skeleton immortalized on a dead tree, wondering when two wrongs suddenly made a right. Two deaths sure as hell didn't make a life.

But in a sense, five deaths made ours - mine and Lenora's. Never wanted things to be this way, but I've got a sister out of it, and she means the world to me. I protect her from the hecklers at school, just like my daddy protected me, even though he'd strike me just as hard as he struck some of those boys. I want to be him as much as I want to be rid of him and his memory.

Memory's a fucked-up thing. I remember the night my dog was shot between the eyes. I remember finding my father covered in his own blood, spilled by his own hand. I remember finding Lenora just as the bucket slipped from under her feet, hoisting her above me where she'd be closer to life. I remember she told me she didn't know who had gotten her pregnant. I remember she was lying.

I remember,

I remember,

I remember

putting a bullet in the chest of the pastor that did it, him and his droopy hair and ugly hypocrisy. And then I ran, and Lenora was no longer part of my life, even though she was alive and that little child growing inside of her was alive and the man who put it there wasn't.

I'm not a bad person. I may have been on the run for weeks, months, even, but I did it for a reason - her.

I would kill for her. That's the right thing to do, ain't it?

To be haunted by the devil all the time as a result is a price worth paying.