Page 3 of Switching Graves

Panicking, my sweaty hands offer me no help as I scratch and scrape my way back toward my window. I peek inside at the same time a man rips the blanket off my bed across the room with a knife in his hand. Ducking back down, I flatten myself against the shingles again when Emma’s terrified scream steals through the night from the open window beside me. Slapping my hand across my mouth, I muffle the sob that reverberates through my entire body as I listen to the distinct and horrific sound of my sister getting slaughtered a few feet away.

I have to do something. I have to stop this.

They cannot just come attack my home like this.

But how?

And where is Father?

A drop of blood splatters onto my hand from my nostril as I focus my energy on pausing time, the way my father taught me to do. I envision every millisecond ticking on a clock, then reach a mental fist out to stifle it.

Chancing a look back toward the ground, I watch in terror as I realize I’m too weak, and there’s too many of them to controltheir timelines. I'm overwhelmed and outnumbered. More and more people come barreling through our gates. Some are leaving through the front door, their arms full of random things I recognize from Father’s study and the parlor. It takes everything in me to scoot myself over toward the shadowed corner of the roof to ensure I remain unseen.

I have no idea how long the brutal attack goes on. It feels like hours, yet I could swear I was just eating dinner with my family mere minutes ago. Once the screaming dies down and the house goes eerily silent, I pull myself back toward the window and look inside. My room appears to have been torn apart and ravaged. My bed has been turned on its side and my walls have been stripped of the little knick-knacks I’ve been gifted from my parents over the years. Somehow, in the chaos of all the screams and the blood pounding in my ears, I didn’t even hear them destroy my precious space.

“We’ve got all seven kids,” a muffled male voice announces from the hallway.

“Are there seven or eight?” another asks, this one a little closer.

“I thought they said seven,” the first responds.

Heavy foot falls approach, and I’m only just able to get myself out of sight before a tall figure darkens my doorway.

“Where is this one?”

I close my eyes and imagine myself inside his head, the way Father taught me to do. I realize this is Roddney Strikes, a butcher in town from the Aetheris bloodline. He doesn’t have any mental shields to break through, so it takes almost no effort to weave inside his thoughts and place one among the many horrible, vile rumblings I can hear.

There’s a pause, and then a second shadow appears. Roddney repeats the words I just planted into his mind. “A few were together in different rooms. Could have been one of those.”

“Fuck it. If he has a problem, he can come over here and handle it himself. I doubt they’ll make it very far if they’re still alive, anyway. Let’s go collect our due before it’s all gone.”

Rodney nods his agreement and they each step away from my room, their footsteps disappearing back down the hall.

I sit on the roof for hours, my body frozen in the same position until every bone aches and each muscle stiffens. The rising sun illuminated the sky and my gaze follows everyone who leaves my home with handfuls of my parent’s belongings, tallying them up in my head. I recognize so many friends and neighbors I grew up with. People my parents trusted and cared for. Parents of children we played with our entire lives.

They betrayed us in the most lethal way possible. I commit each one to memory, tattooing their names across my brain so I’ll never forget who to seek for revenge.

1

Sonny

Thirteen years old

The night my parents died, I was at my eighth grade dance. My cousin, Poppy, wanted to go and impress a boy she was crushing on, and since she’s thirteen months younger and a grade below me, she needed me to escort her. I pestered my parents for permission for weeks before they finally gave in. By the time the dance came around, Poppy was already over the boy, and my parents had lectured us so much about resisting peer pressure and staying away from unsafe situations, we didn’t want to go anymore.

Of course, everything turned even more sour when a parent volunteer pulled us out of the gym and practically dragged us into a private hallway, where Uncle Graysen and Aunt Divina were waiting, their faces somber.

I couldn’t understand why until Aunt Divina vomited the words out loud in one quick sob. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen her display.

My mother pulled the wheel and drove them straight into a tree, killing both on impact.

It made no sense then, and it makes even less sense now—weeks later.

Orphaned immediately. Completely alone, with nothing to grasp onto. The life I knew has been obliterated, and my mind still struggles to grasp the full scope of what that truly means. It’s like I’m standing in a crowded room, yet no one else seems to feel the impact of the bomb that’s been dropped at our feet.

What would have happened if I had stayed with them that night? Would my mother have succumbed to the voices in her head, or could I have spared their lives—at least long enough to convince her to get help—by providing her with that extra layer of hope when she needed it most?

That’s what she always told me I gave her: Hope. An anchor to this world when everything inside of her screamed to leave it. I’ve known she struggled with mental illness since I could walk. I’ve seen her cycle through different medications and manic episodes—all of them a part of the regularly scheduled programming of my life.

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