Page 4 of The Blood we Crave

I just can’t—

“I always liked how feisty you were, Phoebe,” he grunts. The hollow sounds of his shoes pounding on the floor makes me flinch. My blurry eyes catch the glint of something shiny in the moonlight, but before I can recognize what it is, it is far too late.

One large hand reaches forward, landing in her hair once again. Except this time, he doesn’t throw her down. Henry picks her up and hauls her into his big chest. My mom falls against him with an echoing thud.

My hands scramble to cover my ears as she starts to scream. But the shrill echoes of her terror bleed through my small hands. It rings in my head, sinking into my veins, imprinting on my soul so that every time I close my eyes in the future, all I’ll hear is my mother’s screams. Her fear. Her sorrow.

I hadn’t noticed that I’d shut my eyes, maybe because the darkness is calmer than what is happening in front of me. The unknown is safer.

Some piece of self-preservation inside of me knew I wouldn’t survive watching what he’s about to do. I’m already losing enough of myself in this moment; looking at the pure agony on her face would shatter me entirely. I’d never be able to leave this closet.

I sandwich my head between my hands to the point of pain. My ears throb from the pressure, and I can still hear her. I can hear him—his rhythmic bursts of breath escaping his lungs, the rustle of his body fighting hers. It doesn’t matter how hard I try, I’m a prisoner to my mother’s torture.

She’d unknowingly given me a front-row seat to her life’s finale.

I swear I can feel parts of me splintering off with every single scream. I was a fragile glass before, sitting atop a shelf, untouched and in pristine condition. Now, my shelf is threatening to fall beneath me. Every high-pitched cry cracks me, over and over. It’s only seconds before I’m nothing but fractured glass along the floor.

Hours must pass, or maybe it’s only a few lingering minutes. All I know is sweat has started to soak my pajamas, and I’m finally able to block out the noise. The sound of my own heart is so powerful that it hammers above the shouts.

I lessen the weight on my ears, my sensitive eardrums picking up on the smallest of noises. They ache and flinch, ready to recoil from another yell.

But nothing comes.

The screams have stopped, their power dwindled out completely. Not so much as a muffled groan or uncomfortable grunt. They stopped. Utterly nonexistent.

Silence like I’ve never known before hovers in the air so thick, so tangible, that I can feel its weight shoving down on my chest. My shoulders. My entire upper body. It’s the silence that clings to tombstones and breathes alongside early fog on a warm morning.

It doesn’t feel like the quiet I feel in the forest outside the house or the one I settle into when I’m feeding the snakes. No, that’s a form of peace. I feel nothing but serenity beneath the canopy of emerald-green pines. The woods are a silence filled with tiny rumbles that most never hear.

Not really.

I don’t blame them—you don’t notice until you really take a second to listen, almost placing your ear to the damp earth and waiting. The giggle of leaves as the wind whispers secrets. Crickets and frogs echoing calls. Snapping twigs, birds shrieking. Even the trees themselves seem to pulsate with vibrations.

This is not the silence in the woods.

This is absolute. All the sound has been sucked up, as if the noise had fallen into an empty black hole.

It is death.

I can’t breathe. The sweltering heat that consumes me in this closet feels like an inferno. My throat clenches, desperate for air, for relief.

Please, please, please, I beg someone, anyone.

Bring the screaming back.

I know I’d asked within my own mind for it to stop just moments ago, but I didn’t mean like this. No, never like this. Be careful what you wish for, right? Is this the universe showing me a lesson? Teaching me the hard way that wishes have consequences?

Please, someone, bring the screaming back.

I want to shout those very words at the top of my lungs. I want to unleash that prayer to the world—maybe if I’m loud enough, I’d rattle the powers that be, and they would grant me this favor.

But the more I think about it, the reality of my desperate plea, the quieter I become and the more hollow my chest feels.

If she isn’t yelling, then she isn’t fighting him.

Which means she’s no longer breathing.

No longer alive.

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