Chapter 2: Echoes in Static and Blood
The house was silent. No drunken shouting. No smashed furniture. Only rain drumming against the rusted roof and the far-off wail of a siren. The quiet was almost worse than the noise. It was the stillness of a predator lying in wait, or the hollow residue of a storm that could come back at any second.
With a shaky breath that did nothing to calm the tremble in my hands, I pushed open the door. The stench met me first, stronger than, sour beer, sharp glass, the background reek of stale cigarettes and something else, violence. It hung in the air, a tangible presence.
The kitchen light was still on, harsh and merciless. Amber fluid puddled on the linoleum, glinting with lethal shards around the epicenter of the explosion. And there he was. Slumped in his grimy armchair, head cocked to one side, mouth slack. The remains of a cheap bottle of whiskey, something stronger than beer, dangled perilously from his fingers. His snores were harsh, sloppy sounds that rattled in his chest. He was passed out. For now.
My eyes flicked to the doorway of the living room. She was there. Mom. Sitting in her worn-out armchair like an discarded doll, fixed on the television. But the set had no pictures on it. Just rolling, grey static, sending trembling, featureless shadows onto her cheeks. Her arms hung limp in her lap. She did not move. Did not react to the shattered wreckage in the kitchen. Didn't see me, standing there wet and shaking, my cheek pounding like a second pulse, my lip split and puffy. Her silence wasn't absence, it was judgment. A brick in the wall of my cage. It hurt more than any of his punches ever had.
Resignation, thick and sour, covered my tongue. Clean it up. Before he wakes. The phrase was reflex, hammered into me. Survival mode.
I moved like a ghost, avoiding the creaky floorboard near the sink. The broom handle felt alien in my stinging palms. Each sweep over the glass shards sent tiny jolts of pain radiating up my arms, reminding me of the fragments I’d probably missed, embedded under my skin. Sweep carefully. Don’t wake him.The rhythmic swish-swish of the bristles was the only sound besides his snores and the rain. I lifted the glinting, threatening pile onto cardboard, heart pounding against my ribcage with every clinking shard. The beer on the floor was cleaned up, leaving the floor tacky and smelling faintly of chemicals underneath the lingering stench.
Dinner. The mere thought exhausted me. My stomach churned, empty and obstinate. But no dinner would result in anger later. He would be furious. I pulled a dented can of tomato soup out of the almost bare cupboard. The pull-tab dug into my sensitive hand.
Hiss.
The sound was too jarring in the still tension. I scooped the gloopy, red paste into a pot and added water, stirring automatically. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Is the water boiling? Is it hot enough? Too hot? Will he wake up and find it wrong? Every bubble that popped on the surface appeared to be a detonation.
The soup simmered, a pathetic attempt. I didn't have the courage to make something else. He wouldn't eat it anyway, not in that state. I turned off the burner but didn't remove the pot from the stove. My job was done. Temporarily, at least.
Escape was not to my room, but a corner of the unfinished basement, cold and smelling of mildew and stale concrete. My "bed" was a thin mattress on the floor, shoved out of the way by boxes of forgotten garbage. I crawled onto it, every muscle groaning in pain. My cheek pounded, a dull, persistent ache. My palms burned. My soul was battered.
Sleep would not come. The pain was a numbing thrum, taunting me along in the waking nightmare. The image of the shattered beer bottle. His grotesque face shouting "Should've been you!" Mom's blank stare. They flashed across my eyes like some ghastly slideshow. I rolled, trying to get into position so that nothing was pressed against my throbbing cheek, so that my palms didn't sear. The rough texture of the mattress scraped at my skin. The cold damp leaked in under the thin blanket.
Fatigue at last claimed me, but it wasn't refuge. It was another kind of trap.
Sunlight. Warm and golden.
"Ethan, can we get ice cream. Pleaseeee?"
Ethan's laugh, piercing and clear, like wind chimes. He ruffled my hair. "Alright, pest, ice cream, then. But only one scoop! Don't tell Mom." The well-used station wagon smelled of leather and the pine air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. I bounced in the passenger seat, smiling. Mint chocolate chip. My favorite. Ethan smiled, warbling off-tune to the radio. The world outside was a green and blue blur.
Then. Headlights. Blinding. Bearing straight for us, careening out of control across the middle line. The smell wasn't pine anymore. It was stale beer, thick and greasy, gagging the car. Ethan's grin vanished, replaced by eyes as wide as saucers. "Amara—!"
SCREECH—
CRUNCH—
The door went sideways. We went upside down. Glass exploded. Not beer bottles this time. Windshield. A scream tore from my mouth, or his? Metal screamed. We rolled, weightless, then hit the ground with bone-shattering impact. Silence. Deafening silence. Then the gurgling, wet sound. I was hanging upside down, the seatbelt digging into my shoulder. Blood. Not mine. Warm, sticky, dripping into my face, down into my hair. The copper smell in my nose, not like the beer, catastrophically wrong. Ethan. His head was at a crazy angle. His eyes, so Mom-like, blankly staring past me, seeing nothing. Ice cream. Mint chocolate chip was splattered on the shattered windshield, dripping pink into the spreading crimson.
"Ethan?" A whimper. "Ethan!"
There’s was the pooling blood. The silence. The empty eyes. The dripping ice cream. The smell of blood and beer and death.
"It should have been you." It was not Ethan’s voice, it was dad's voice, but from Ethan's dead mouth. "It should have been YOU!"
I woke up with a strangled, raw gasp that tore through the stillness of the basement. My heart pounded against my chest like a caged bird. Cold, clammy sweat coated my skin. The ghostly reek of beer and blood choked me.
Reality crashed back, the dripping basement, the sore cheek, the stinging palms, the oppressive stillness of the house above. But the dream hung on, bright and awful. My fault. All my fault. The words were no longer merely his taunts; they were the background score of the nightmare, the reality imprinted on Ethan's frozen eyes and the melting ice cream.
A sob tore from my throat, raw and ugly in the dark. I clapped my hand over my mouth, muffling the sound, my palm on the puffed, sore flesh of my cheek. The pain was hard, a penance. I wished I hadn't asked for ice cream. I wished we’d stayed home. I wished the drunk driver's car had crashed into my side instead .
I wished I had died.
Tears followed then, scalding and endless, streaming down my face, into the thin pillow. They were not for the nightmare, or for the pain, or for the fear. They were for Ethan, stolen away. For the brother who looked at me, who ruffled my hair. They were for the burden of being the one left behind, the one who survived, the one who cause it. They were for the desperation of this basement, this house, this existence.
What's the point?
The thought crept up, cold and seductive. There's nothing here. Nothing but pain and guilt. Why breathe anymore? Why take it anymore? The image of the bus stop sign flared dimly, but it was drowned out by the memory of Ethan's blood and the ringing indictment: "It should have been you."
I cried until my throat was raw and my eyes burned. I cried for the sister who had lost her protector, for the daughter who was a constant disappointment, for the girl who felt like a ghost haunting her own life. I cried until exhaustion overwhelmed me again, this time not into dreamland, but into an inky, salted nothingness. Sleep was not peace. It was just a fleeting ceasefire in a war I was losing.
I cried myself back into the darkness, wishing it would swallow me whole.