Page 45 of Body Tox

I started to cry, my tears blinding me, the light from outside getting darker and darker.

“Stop!” I heard the shout from across the kitchen, glass shattering near the group’s head.

A bottle. Someone threw a bottle.

The wine was seeping under the door, turning my nightgown crimson-purple.

“Ohhh, looky here. The queen made an appearance!” one said, singing and skipping around.

No…

I could see my mother, shaking like a leaf, waving around another wine bottle in her hand, her white nightgown shining from the open window and the moonlight from outside.

“Mom…” I whispered. My heart sank.

The men walked over to my mother, grabbing the bottle from her hands and laughing at her struggle.

“Stay away!” she hollered. “Do you hear me? Do not come over here. No matter what, stay right there.”

I didn’t understand. The men were already beside her, grabbing her arms, legs, and hair.

She was talking…to me.

I sank back onto the shelf, and the sounds of laughter and my mother crying kept going on and on.

They were hurting her, carving into her skin with remnants of the broken bottle that she’d thrown at them. Her blood was coming underneath the door, blending into the wine and my tears.

I covered my ears, trying to block out their grunting.

The slapping sounds continued long after my mother stopped making any noise. Her white nightgown was red with her blood. Her body was violated in every way possible with every single one of their hands.

I thought the sounds would never stop, and I waited for them to find me, waiting to die the same way. Her eyes were open. Her lifeless stare was focused over at where I’d been hiding like she had known all along that I was in the pantry.

A gunshot rang out, and the sound caused a shuffling of noise as one of the men in black dropped to the ground. I held back a scream, slapping my hands over my mouth and hiding deeper in the pantry. The men scattered.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The deep masculine voice was coming from the staircase.

It was my father.

“How could you do this?” he yelled, dropping to his knees beside my mother, holding her lifeless, desecrated body in his hands.

The men scrambled backward from my father.

“Sir! Please. We?—”

Bang!

Another body dropped to the floor.

“You don’t know what you have done!” he cried, lifting my mother into his arms higher, trying to fix her ripped clothing.

“Not her!”

Boom.

A final shot and a final body dropped.

The blood was pooling so much that I felt like I would drown.

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