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Blood trickled down her face, and when it fell it turned into tears. It felt like a thousand cold eyes were on her, wondering why she was standing there not moving. She stared blankly at nothing as her life flashed before her. Her view was becoming disoriented and blurry before she fell to her death. She heard the ocean as the water hit the shore seeing her mom chasing the young woman by the crashing waves. She realized that young woman was her.

That’s where the horror had all begun for me.

I remembered the memory just like it happened yesterday and not four years ago. My mom had begged me not to wander too far because I might get lost, but I knew I wouldn’t since I was old enough to find my way back to the house if I did end up getting lost. I knew it was impossible since there were so many people on the beach, but they were beginning to leave since it was now getting dark at night which made it harder to find your way since this beach wasn’t near the boardwalk it was down about a mile from where the neighbor was at. I ran across the sand ignoring her warning, and I fell in a hole that the tide must have created long ago because when I was a little kid that hole was never there. My mom came to help me out of the hole when she knew I could get out and then she had the nerve to scold me.
“Marzia, be more careful,” she scowled at me.
I glared and said, “Don’t treat me like a child. I’m 18 years old!”
She then stormed off. I ran after her, but the fog was setting in and I stopped feeling like I was lost. I sat down digging my heels into the sand, and I buried my face into my arms crying in anguish. I was cursing the world for putting me through the burning fires of hell every time I did something wrong. My own birth father left me because he called me a mentally-ill, trouble-making, demonic child.
I heard a voice like an angel calling out for its lost child from a stormy, foggy night. I heard it again, and caught only my name. I looked around, and a boy about my age walked out of the fog. His eyes reminded me of emeralds, and his hair was blonde. His smile was as golden as an innocent child’s. I thought I was dreaming so I blinked and looked again; he wasn’t a dream he was real.
He held his hand out to me and whispered, “Are you lost, Marzia?”
I looked at him surprised and stuttered, “H-h-h-how do you kno-kno-know my name?”
“I heard your mom call you it.”
“Are you a stalker?”
He laughed, “No, I just thought you needed some help.”
“I do need help,” I took his hand as he pulled me up off the sand.
“My name is Felix.”
“Nice to meet you, Felix, and would you walk me home?”
He nodded, and he walked me to my house. I tried to unlock the door as I shook like a scared animal hiding from its prey in the dead of a nuit sans lune. I dropped the key, and he picked it up, unlocking the door for me as I stood there shaking. I wondered what lay beyond this door. When I opened it, I vomited from what I saw. Written on the wall in what I assumed was blood, it said, “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.” The writing had monkeys painted below it; the smell was of rotting meat.
I started to feel the world spin, and I nearly fell in my own vomit before Felix caught me. He held me close to get me to calm down and breathe, but that wasn’t really an option right now. He took out his cellphone and called the police as he felt my head. I was running a fever. So he walked me out of the house and helped me under a palm tree. Then, he pulled out his handkerchief and dumped some of his cold water from his bottle he had in his bag onto it. He put it on my head and held it there. The police had arrived by then. One of the police officers asked him if I needed an ambulance and if I was in a state of shock. He reassured them it was only a fever and I was fine. The other police officer went in to check the house. Then, the police asked who had vomited on the stairs and he told them it was me.
I couldn’t take it anymore and I spilled my guts out about where I had seen those monkeys painted before.
I started telling the police officer about the story behind why I had moved here with my mom. “My dad painted the same horrible scene in my room at home in Colorado because he thought I had demons in me. He thought by doing that he could get the demons out, but of course that wasn’t true. Since, it was all in his messed up mind. I wouldn’t sleep for nights with those hideous things staring at me. So, my mom would come in and clean the walls off. Even though when I got home from school they were there again just like everyday. I had no idea how he found such time to repaint them since he was always busy with his voodoo research.
“I knew he always wanted us dead and that’s why my mom divorced him. She left him in that house to die all alone. It only had been a year since she divorced him and we moved out here to Florida. We moved as far away from our old state so he couldn’t find us and now I know he has found us again. We were going to move back to France, but if we did we’re going to get discriminated against because of what my mother had done. Though we took every measure to get away from him he found us again and he was here to extinguish our lives permanently.”
The police reassured me they were going to contact the police officers in Colorado to see if they could talk to my father and see what is happening. I decided to go live with Felix and his family since I had no other family besides my step father who wasn’t here right now.
Two weeks had went by and there was no word from the police about them finding my father. I heard the doorbell ring and nearly jumped out of my skin.
I wailed, “Oh mon seigneur, vous m’avez fait peur.”
Speaking in my native language made me remember a story my mother had told me when I was little. I was conceived before they were married. That is why they left France before my mom’s parents could find out about it. So, my mom was French and my dad was French American. My mom’s parent’s ended up banning my whole family from their home. So, I really never got to know my grandparents on my mom’s side of the family due to the huge sin they had apparently committed against God. I didn’t get to know my dad’s parents since they were no longer alive.
Then, I realized I had opened the door without even knowing and saw the police standing there staring at me, wondering why I was spacing out. I then noticed that they had to deliver some bad news from the look on their faces. They told me they had searched everywhere even in my old home in Colorado and he was nowhere to be found. They apologized to me and left. Felix tried asking me what was wrong, but I ran past him slamming my bedroom door shut. Then, I locked it wanting my privacy. I violently jumped on my bed, burying my face into my pillow and I cried for hours saying through my sobs, “momma où êtes-vous.” I did that until I couldn’t cry anymore and started to hiccup very hard to the point where I could hardly see anymore through my tears. It was night time by the time I was done and I just couldn’t get to sleep. So I grabbed my knife off my table that I always kept there in fear that my crazy father would break into the house and try to kill me. I put it in my pocket just in case I needed it to defend myself from someone. Then, I realized I was having so much trouble breathing. So, I got up and fell face first into my window, struggling to open it. I got it open and crawled out of my window landing on the soft cool sand with my bare feet. I trudged towards the crashing waves and began to walk down the beach trying to calm my racing mind. I thought to myself as I sat down what he had put me through and he wasn’t there when I actually… I trailed off realizing I didn’t need him in my life he was worthless and a horrible person. He deserved to die for all I cared. I got back up and kept going farther away from the house. I sucked in the fresh air as I walked down to the boardwalk. I could see the lights and I knew I couldn’t wait to get there and sit on a bench to rest my tired legs.
I heard a noise, and I pulled out my knife turning to no one in particular, “Who’s there?”
“Oh, my sweet Marzia, the man said soothingly as he walked into the light closer to me.
As soon as I saw him I wanted to swear at him and beat him until he yelled for me to stop. Instead, I growled at him feeling the beast inside me wanting out so it could rip his throat out.
“What do you want?” I growled at him.
“For you to come home,” he said sweetly.
“No!” I screamed. I picked up a rock and chucked it at him, but he dodged it.
“Why not?”
I realized he had just totally ignored the fact that I just threw a rock at his head.
“I know who you are and why you have come here!”
“Why am I here?” my father mocked.
“You came to extinguish my life just like you always wanted!”
“I can’t believe someone as stupid as you knew my purpose.”
“Je ne suis pas stupide, vous êtes!”
“Smart girl, aren’t you, to still be able to speak French? ”
“Je suis plus intelligent alors vous ne sera jamais, stupide Américain!” I sassed him in French ignoring the last part of what he had said to me before.
“Well, you want to know where your mom is?”
“Yes!”
“She’s dead; I killed her, and guess what sweetheart, you’re next on my list of people that need to die.”
When I heard those words my mind just stopped working. I felt like everything I fought and everything I did to protect my mom was all worthless. I felt like there were a pair of staring eyes coming from the shadows, but I just ignored it because what was more important right now was facing my greatest fear….my father. All of a sudden I felt a knife slice across my left cheek as I felt blood running down it onto the sand turning it red. I grew furious and lunged at him slamming my knife deep into his shoulder as he flinched but didn’t scream in any pain. I was gonna kill him for what he did. For what he did to my mother and me.
He started again as my mind was racing, “Are you----
“Taire, votre une personne malade!” I yelled in French, cutting him off.
I went to stab him again, but I felt someone pull me away from him. I then struggled to get free with no success. I really wanted to kill my father for everything he brought onto my family. It was the least he deserved! The only side I hated of him was his stupid American side. Since, Americans were stupid and didn’t know anything about my culture. They always seemed to discriminate against anyone who wasn’t an American. I realized that I didn’t even like him from the beginning! My mom was blind sided when she married him and didn’t realize it until ten years in the marriage. I loved my mom, but how dumb could she possibly be not to see what he was doing to our family. He was tearing us apart! For that he deserved punishment! He deserved to be hanged in front of the public for the crime he committed of killing my mother!
All of a sudden I heard a soft calming voice that started to talk to me like I was an infant, I relaxed in his arms as the cops handcuffed my dad. I started crying burying my face in Felix’s chest realizing that I had let my anger get the best of me and my anger wasn’t going to solve anything because it wouldn’t bring my mom back she was gone for good. Felix picked me up not letting me walk and carried me back to the house sitting me gently on the couch. He went in the kitchen to make me the green tea that I always loved because it seemed to calm me down when I was freaking out. He came back with it and I started sipping it as I told the cop everything my father had said to me.
Once I finished telling them everything that I could tell them, they made a promise to me. They told me that they were going to get my father to tell them where my mother was, and get her body. Once they gotten her body they were going to give it to me and I could plan the funeral and everything out once they finished finding out how she died. I nodded understanding and as they left I laid my head on Felix’s chest sighing softly.
Weeks went by slowly and miserably. Finally, today was the day that I was going to my mom’s funeral. I looked in the mirror checking twice to make sure my make up was okay, and that I was ready to face the music when I got to the funeral.
Felix came in asking me if I was okay, and he did that about twenty times, I swear. He gave me a hug the last time and told me I had ten minutes before we had to leave. I was shaking so bad in the car on the way to the funeral home. As soon as I walked in and went to look at my mom I knew right there and then that I wanted to run away from the sight that now laid before me and never come back to this funeral home again.
After the funeral was over, I went home and locked myself in the room for the rest of the day crying my eyes out because I felt so helpless that I couldn’t help her.
Three years now have went by since the accident, and now I was acting in plays at the college for the arts I was attending. I had been dating Felix since the day after the accident and he was always there supporting me through everything I did. It made me happy just to know I had someone by my side who would never leave me no matter what. When I turned twenty years old, Felix proposed to me and I was so happy I couldn’t stop screaming and crying. He was going out of country and today was my big day. I was going to perform in front of a live audience for millions of people. I was so happy and giddy the whole time before…
I suddenly opened my eyes blinking a few times wondering where I was at. I looked around and noticed the heart monitor. There was a man sitting on the couch close to the door. He noticed me and stood up approaching me gently not to startle me as though I was a scared little animal afraid of being killed by it’s parents because it couldn’t fend for itself. I noticed it was my step dad and he told me everything that happened. The one thing that shocked me the most was that I had been in a coma for over a year from the tragic stage accident I had in front of millions of people. I was so embarrassed when he told me that. Then, he said that tomorrow is a big day for me that he and my fiance had been planning the wedding since I was in a coma. I was so happy that I smiled and fell asleep really excited knowing tomorrow would be the best day of my life as long as nothing else went wrong.