18.

 

It’s morning. Last night I finally got home from the police station around four in the morning. We had to fill out some papers and stuff, I don’t really remember. It’s kind of a blur. The whole time I was wondering what the plan is.

            I mean, plan? It sounds like some weird operation, or some sort of thing involving espionage. Dad didn’t hurt me last night…but I was walking on eggshells the second we left the station. The police didn’t suspect anything about Dad hurting me, they all thought the bruises where from running and hiding. Right.

            The drive home, he didn’t say anything to me. It was just really quiet, and I turned on the radio, and he automatically turned it off. When we got home, he immediately went to the fridge for some drinks, so I knew I should just slip up to bed quietly.

            Now…it’s around eleven, I guess. I think Dad just woke up. I’m sitting in bed, rubbing my swollen feet. Ah, they hurt so much.

            “Okay, there’s not much time.”

            Bethany’s voice pulls me from my thoughts, and I look up. She looks nervous and edgy.

            “The plan.” I say flatly.

            “Yeah…” She says.

            She locks my door and comes to sit on the desk chair right next to my bed.

            “There’s not much time. So listen. You aren’t safe, at least not anymore. Dad is a drunk, a no good abusive parent. Who’s going to save you when he hurts you next time? When’s it going to stop? Have you thought about it?”

            Bethany pauses,

            “Have you thought that he could kill you?”

            I furrow my eyebrows. Kill me? Could he?

            “He really could, Jill,” she says answering my thoughts. And then she lowers her voice a little, “So…we have to stop him. Here’s what I think. You know Dad has tons of guns. So…let’s go get one.”

            I’ve always been told not to touch his gun selection.

            “You know which one is loaded right?” She says, smiling a little, and her eyes glinting with darkness.

            My stomach churns.

            “Yeah…”

            So we walk downstairs, each step slowly and lightly, so we don’t wake up Dad. We go to his gun collection in the basement, and I see the gun cabinet.

            Take it now! My hands shake… What if Dad catches me? What if… Don’t think. Just take it.

            “Take it, Jill. Come on, you don’t have time.” Bethany urges me.

            My mind is spinning.

            I watch myself open the case, and take the heavy, cold gun from it’s hook.

            “Come on,” Bethany coaxes me through it, and says.

            “So…next part of the plan.”

            How can I be doing this? The walls are melting away, my eyes are flitting and my knees are shaking together. All those times…Dad…when we were little? And that image, it’s flying through my mind. The puddle. I get it now. The puddle with the ambulance lights reflecting in it? I remember looking in the street the night….that, Mom was in the car accident.

            I remember. I remember everything. She was coming home from the grocery store. It was a Thursday night. A drunk driver hit her. Who else was in the car? I remember something else…but it’s just on the top of my mind, I can’t quite…..

            “Come on!”  I hear again, and tears are beginning to well up in my eyes.

            We sneak up the stairs to the living room. Dad is lying on the couch, asleep. My heart is beating so fast, I can hardly breathe. My hands are clamped so hard on the gun that they are going numb.

            “You know what you have to do right?” says Bethany, searching my eyes, and I see coldness in them, a coldness I have never seen before.

            “Uh.” I gulp, and cough a little.

            I think about every time Dad hit me…it’s flooding back. How did I not know? What happened to my memories? That one time, after school, he hurt me so bad, I couldn’t go to school for two days…..what about the week in swimming at school, when I had to hide all my bruises because he had beaten the crap out of me the night before? How do you forget? How could I?

            Then I hear Dad make a noise, and I look over at him. He is waking up! Tears are streaming over my face now.

            “You have to! Remember….you have to. Jill. Listen. Shoot him!” Bethany says.

            My ears feel like their bleeding, because pressure is gathering inside them, and I realize it is because I am holding my breath. My legs are weak.

            “Jill?” Dad asks, disoriented.

            He’s a little hung over, I can tell that much.

            I remember all the times he drank himself to sleep, all the times I had to balance the checkbook, pay the bills, just so we could live. The times when I failed my tests, because I had to stay up late cleaning the house, or the times when I couldn’t study because I was making him dinner. When he would forget where he parked his car after a night at the bar, and when I would have to get him a cab at three in the morning.

            I look at Bethany, a blurry image through my tears of confusion.

            Don’t think. Just shoot. The voice is melodically pounding in the back of my mind. Killing…….it’s not right. But, just think…one pull at that shiny cold trigger, and your pain is gone. It’s gone forever.

            “Don’t talk to her!” demands Bethany, her hands gripping around mine on the gun, cocking it for me.

            I can’t do this. How can I do this? A song hums in the back of my head:

            Lizzie Borden took an axe,

            Gave her mother forty whacks.

            When she saw what she had done,

            She gave her father forty-one.

            But Bethany knows better. What am I? I am depressed, even suicidal. I can’t listen to myself….can I?

            Bethany will stick up for me. She screams more at Dad.

            “You don’t deserve to be a parent. You hate Jill. You hate your life, and so you punish her for it. Not anymore. Not anymore.”

            Dads face was stricken with some emotion…I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Something…… and I realize what it is. Fear.

`           “Jill!” He exclaims, his feet stumbling below him, and he tries to back up a little.

            “Jill, no. Don’t…I’m calling 911…..” he says, “if you don’t put that gun down right now…”

            “You can’t tell her what to do!” Bethany says, and laughs.

            My heart is jumping in my rib cage so much I think I will fall over.

            Lizzie Borden took an axe…

            I can hear children’s chants of the song, the clack of a jump rope on a blacktop. Do the children know their jump rope song is so sinister?

            Gave her mother forty whacks.

            “Jill, stop it! Don’t……okay? Just don’t! Listen to me!” Dad says, stuttering in a hazy stupor.

            “No, you listen, idiot.” Says Bethany, and she whispered to me,

            “Come on…”

            I can’t do this… I can’t do this…. No.  I have to listen to Bethany. She can save me….I think.

            “LISTEN, DAMN IT!” Dad screams, panic written across his face, like a vivid neon sign. “Listen! Okay…Jill, this isn’t you. This isn’t you! I have to tell you this! You aren’t ….This isn’t… I have been talking, talking to your doctor! That-that, that lady…Dr. Sandburg. She told me what is going on. I know what is wrong. Put down that gun. Jill, wake up! This isn’t you!”

            He is backing up a few feet and Bethany glares at him, and I see sheer hate in her eyes.

            Wake up? I’m awake. I’m here.

            “Oh, it isn’t Jill,” she mocks, “then who, oh wise one?”

            “N-n-no, Jill. Stop, stop, Jill! Jill? You have to know. Dr. Sandburg said-d, I, I, I should tell you this…, Bethany, that girl you talk about, B-b-Bethany…she isn’t, she isn’t real. Okay? SHE ISN’T REAL! Bethany, Beth, Beth was your sister. S-S-Sandburg…she told me not to tell you yet, she said something about post traumatic, shock….Jill? Wake up. WAKE UP JILL. Is it you? Bethany, Bethany isn’t real. That person you say is your best friend….she doesn’t exist. Do you hear me, Jill? Jill. Bethany, d-d-died….Bethany died in the….car accident. The..accident with your Mom. Dr. Sandburg said you might not remember about Mom…do you? She…she’s in a coma, Jill. Jill? I am talking to you, Jill. There is no Bethany. Your sister is dead, Jill. JILL, YOUR SISTER IS DEAD.”

            Dead? Sister………….No, it can’t be true. It can’t be true. No, no. How can that be? Dr. Sandburg…she must, she must be wrong, right? NO. Just, no! It can’t…and Bethany…is real…..right? What else can she be?

            Bethany is not my sister. Is she?

            My heart is pounding so hard, and I am hyperventilating.

            “Don’t listen!” screams Bethany, and looks at me, sweat dripping down her face “Don’t listen. Shoot, shoot him! He hurts you! Stop him! Kill. Shoot. Shoot now.”

            My stomach feels like it is being smashed into a ball, and I am lurched over, the heavy gun laying in my hands. I try to hold it up at my dad. I squeeze my eyes shut.

            “Shoot!” screams Bethany.

            “DON’T, JILL. NO! NO, WAKE UP! THIS! ISN’T! YOU!”  I hear Dad scream through tears of fright.

            Do it. Do it. Do it.

            And when she saw what she had done… the melody pounds in my ears…

            “Don’t!” screams Dad.

            DO IT NOW!

            So I do.

            She gave her father forty-one.

            I pull the trigger, my finger sliding over the sweat-covered metal. I hear the clear ringing sound echo through the house. As I hear the sound of the gun shot, I realize something. I understand everything now. Now I understand why people always asked why I was talking to myself….why I never went over to her house….how she always just showed up at the perfect time…..How can it be? She was never there. Never there! How could have I thought all this… It was my Dad that came that day at the tree and took me home so roughly. My mom has been in a coma for a year. I remember my sister! Bethany…her name…was Bethany. And she is gone. I remember her funeral…..that day…and visiting my mother…….. What am I? I am some freak, some freak with an…an imaginary freak. Nothing is real. I am hardly real.

I let out a scream as I do it. I pull again, and again.

            Keep going.

            “MORE!” Screams Bethany.

            I hear a groan from Dad.

            I drop the gun in disgust, and fall over, puking on the floor. My body is racked in sobs, and I can’t even think straight.

            I shot Dad.

            I just shot my Dad.

            Oh, my God.

            I am curled into a ball, my mind spinning out of control. I feel like I’m in an elevator, and someone cut the cables. I’m falling, I’m falling…I think of a bird. Then a paper airplane. I was never good at making those. That makes me think of that trip I took to Florida when I was little, on a plane. It was the first time on a plane.

            I crawl slowly over to Dad, and look. He is covered in blood. I shot my dad! I shot him! I SHOT HIM! I scream at the sight, his eyes are looking into nothing, and there are bullet wounds in four places on his body. He is lying on his back, and blood is dropping onto the carpet.

            1…2…3…drops of blood on the creamy white carpet.

            I crawl over to Dad and feel for a pulse. No pulse.

            I am now covered in my own father’s blood.

            “Get up, Jill!” I hear Bethany scream at me, and I stand, unsurely, looking at my blood soaked clothing.

            “You don’t exist!” I sob at her, and yet I want to believe so bad that she is really there. But why can I see her? She is looking straight at me. But she’s not real. She’s not there. She’s not real. She isn’t real.

            I refuse to look at Bethany.

            “You are dead,” I shriek at her, looking down at my blood covered hands.

            I can’t be here. I can’t be here. I pick up the gun off the floor again. I hear faint sirens screaming from far away, getting closer. I did this. I did this. Me. Not Bethany. She’s not really there. What am I going to do? The police are coming. I…I did something bad. I…I killed Dad. I killed Dad! Nothing is real anymore. Nothing.

            No! Bethany won’t shut up! No!

            “Your not real, your not real…” I mutter. I can’t listen to her.

            I am thinking of everything that has happened……..those dreams. Oh, my God. Those dreams, they all make sense. The times I spent with Bethany at my elementary school playground…my favorite memories with her. My mother would always tape us. And she had scrapbooks. The books I found…they were hers.

            How can this be? I feel like I am in some horrible and perverse made for TV movie. But I’m not.

            If I know that she isn’t real, then why do I keep seeing her? Why can’t she go away? Oh god. Oh no.

            Bethany is shouting at me…trying to talk to me. But now, I know everything. I can see everything for what it really is. I look down at my air, almost just bone. I look like a death camp survivor… I don’t eat anymore… all my friends are gone…. I scared them all away………

            All my bad memories……they are back.

            The feeling of Dad’s rough palm smacking my cheek, my shoulder hitting the ground…my vision going black.

            I feel more come up my mouth, and I am retching bile in disgust of myself. I killed him. I killed someone. I have done something no person should do.

            How? Why? Why me? Can this be possible? I didn’t really do it…did I?

            I come suddenly into a shock-stricken calm…and I sit up, crossing my legs and staring at the blood on the carpet.

            The sirens have stopped… I hear car doors slamming.

            Tears trickle down my face, but I don’t bother to brush them away. I am rocking slightly back and forth.

            I stare at the blood. It’s so red.

            I hear the front door being broken down, but I am fixated on the drops of blood on the carpet.

            I rock forward, and then backward ever so slightly, words etching my mind…and I hear myself say,

            “And when she saw what she had done,

            She gave her father forty-one.”