Page 6 of Crybaby

“Who are you?” I say to myself in awe, staring toward where she disappeared into the darkness.

I don’t believe in fate, but I can’t shake the feeling the world as I know it is about to be set alight—in every possible way.

Irarely look at myself in the mirror.

Mainly just at my hands as I button my shirt or shift my school tie—a prerequisite for the new school I’m attending today.

I’ll look at my mouth, then skim over the details of my face and look at my hair as I tie it back so that it hangs like a pale horsetail down my back. I don’t dare look into my own eyes. They are my mother’s eyes…ones I’ll never see again.

It was the summer of 2019, and we were driving down to our regular holiday cabin for the school break. It had just gone dark, and cars flashed past us from time to time, but most of the road ahead was just black.

We’d driven this way what felt like a million times before.

I sat in the back trying to get service on my iPhone and cursed under my breath about having to spend my break in the middle of nowhere with my parents. My father hated anything electronic and anything that took quality time away from the family. There wouldn’t be any television.

Mom was the peacekeeper and often drove the car on these trips. I’m sure my father was just humoring her by giving her the wheel. He was very traditional with strict churchgoing values. Values he couldn’t really impress upon me without an argument ensuing.

“If you spent less time on that device, you’d do yourself a great favor, Darcie!”

His voice was the same booming sound that carried over the pews in church. He always spoke to me like I was standing at the back of a room, amongst a crowd. He didn’t even have to turn around in his seat for me to hear him.

“If I didn’t have this device, I wouldn’t have one friend since you always make me go on these holidays while everyone is out doing what kids my age are supposed to do!” I spat back at him.

“What children are supposed to do is experience the world as one should without their heads buried in utter garbage!”

“Garbage? How do you even know? You don’t even know what Facebook is. You’ve never even seen the internet! This is 2019! Not 1960!” I shrieked, infuriated.

My mother sighed as she drove on, and I knew this argument was wearing thin on her. She asked me not to poke the bear, yet I found myself doing it every single time.

“As soon as we arrive, I’ll be taking that from you so you can focus on what’s important, Darcie! I’ll hear no more about it. God did not intend for us to walk around with our heads attached to telephones!” he retorted firmly.

“Telephones?” I scoffed. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

In my frustration, I threw my phone forward between the two front seats, and it hit the windshield. I immediately regretted it, of course, and my father spun around in his seat to reinforce his authority when, out of nowhere, I saw blinding lights block my vision.

In some evil twist of fate, a truck veered into our car. It felt like slow motion.

The details are blurry, and I often think about them from the outside, as if I’m standing on the side of the road watching and not inside the car at all.

I never heard one word from either of my parents again. Only the sound of metal screeching and the loudest bang that made my ears ring. Everything went black, and I could feel warmth flowing all down my head and face.

Blood.

My parents’ and my blood.

My knees were crushed beneath my seat.

Our car spun out of control, and I found myself lying across my mother, as I had done when I was a child. It was as if somehow, she had tried to save me. I could smell the soap she used; it had always comforted me but from this moment onward, it would become a trigger for pain. Lying across her broken arms, I hoped I would die.

I closed my eyes, trying not to breathe. If I could just stop breathing, this nightmare would end.

My father would surely leave me behind at the pearly white gates and send me down to hell.

I deserved to go to hell and burn.

I killed my parents that night. And in a way, I killed myself too.

Only, I had to continue to walk the earth as the pissed-off empty shell that I am.

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