The Singing Ice

I cried to the first responders to let me see them and officially say goodbye. Over the years, I've learned to imitate appropriate feelings rather than experiencing them for myself first hand. Not much has changed in my heart. I feel the exact same blank emotions I did when they were alive. My parents have always been cold. Now, as I gaze down upon them, they are a different kind of frozen. As they lay immobile, icy, and blue, their newly found solidified condition seems more true to form. Dead people are just more honest. They are what they are and nothing else.

Nunavut is typically cold during this time of year, but things have gradually been heating thanks to global warming. Being the second least populated region of Canada's Northern countryside, it took a while for help to arrive. Completely understandable considering that our nearest neighbor is at least 34 acres away. Our home and property land are still what some consider a lavish and undisturbed natural paradise. For me, our property merely symbolized a frozen realm of hell. We moved here when I was small. There were never any other children around who were close enough to play with growing up. Considering that 83% of the population is native Inuit and mainly spoke Inuktitut, my chances of finding friendship were radically low at best. As an only child, I kept to myself and buried my head in books. Any alternative reality was undoubtedly more interesting than the present one. My eighteen-room estate is an enviable property situated along a pristine and sizable pond. Our family participated in the usual obligatory outdoor activities around these parts, like hunting and fishing. Inside our home was a different story. When Lynne and Phil were not busy ignoring me, my parents filled our "together time" pouring over informative murder porn documentaries and investigative crime programs. Now I know that they were searching for something-and by the looks of things, they finally found it. I've answered a lifetime of questions and solved all of our problems in one fell swoop.

You don't have to be a genius these days to craft a successful murder. All of the information is out there. Captured murderers have already made all of the mistakes so, you and I don't have to. A bright 15-year-old such as myself did not need to reinvent the wheel. A simple cut and paste job served to do the trick quite nicely. After spending hundreds of hours watching Murder Discovery, Evil Lives Here, and Forensic Files with my parents, I practically earned a degree in what to do and not to do. Select the appropriate time, find the most basic of accidents, show appropriate emotion, and leave no evidence behind. Certainly, my million-dollar inheritance could be called into question, but who would ever suspect me in their right mind? A devastated young daughter. Everyone knows that men commit most murders. From 2018-2019, less than 4% of all homicides were perpetrated by minors, of which less than 1% were female.

It was early in the morning, and they weren't thinking straight. These accidents happen every year. In fact, several years ago, I saw a news story where someone died doing something similar. There would be no suspicious purchases, no murder-related google searches, no fingerprints, suspicious wounds, or witnesses. Inside my mind, I can hear the voices of our neighbors regurgitating the sentiments "They should have known better" and "It could have happened to anybody." Just another winter tragedy. There were 227 similar cases last year alone.

After all, they never were going to forgive me. I would never suddenly become the daughter they always wanted. Throughout my entire life, they treated me like a dirty secret. I have been continually bounced around in various expensive boarding schools during the year and "tolerated" during the obligatory holidays. I often wondered why they never bothered to have any more children seeing as how I was their greatest disappointment.

The moment I learned the truth and uncovered my true calling was an unremarkable Wednesday late in March. Our mini pincher Rex was barking insipidly inside one of the vast halls of our home. Lynne was in the kitchen cooking her infamous mediocre three bean casserole. Phil was holed up inside his musty study playing spider solitaire on the computer for hours on end. I was searching aimlessly for a new book to read inside our extensive library when our biweekly housekeeper Meriwa tapped me on the shoulder. She handed me a small black book, not knowing that the contents would forever change my family's future. My mother started going to therapy I assumed to work on her marriage. I assumed incorrectly. This journal of sorts was a ledger of her darkest feelings and secrets-The blackest of all involving me.

"I know I need to let go and forgive, but contempt holds my heart in a vice," My mother wrote, "After 15 years, we are both still searching for answers and wondering why? I know Rachel was just a child herself when she picked up her sleeping brother. I'm sure she doesn't even remember what happened. But Phil and I wake up every morning with haunting visions in our minds and spend our days trying in vain to suppress constant undercurrents of wrath. We didn't dare have any more children, and we find ourselves unable to love the child we have. When Rachel comes home from boarding school, I feel suffocated by my emotions. I find myself counting the hours until she leaves. It is only then that I can breathe freely again…

How can we possibly forgive and ignore a daughter who was born with such evil in her heart? I grasp in vain to understand how such hatred could have been created as a product of our intensely shared love! There are no answers and no relief. Keeping her in the dark gives Rachel a blissfully ignorant existence while we suffer through resentment in silence.

The last time I saw my infant son alive, he slept peacefully like an angel in his crib. Thanks to her, I struggle to remember him that way. Did she enjoy it? Did her heart sing as she swaddled him in her arms and carried him toward the open window? Was my son awake as he plunged three stories to his death? I imagine her watching gleefully as her brother's head split open on the pavement below. Did she thrive upon hearing my screams as I looked out at the unspeakable horror that lay beneath? Our beautiful baby boy was perfect. We never got the chance to love him. Instead, we are stuck in prison wondering why and how this evil could ever have come from us. Every day feels like a lie. Pretending to love, hiding the truth, masking resentment/contempt. I find it impossible to hold even the smallest of affections for the architect of the bloody dominant image eternally branded inside my mind."

Lynne was right. I had no memory of the incident. I could not recall ever having a sibling, much less anointing myself to only child status. I shut the book, took a deep breath, and laid it down with newfound clarity. I felt a familiar rush as I decided on the next course of action. I don't see myself as a murderer but more like a "problem solver." When obstacles get in the way, I get rid of them. Problem solved. When the world suddenly makes sense, you realize that your existence works precisely like a machine. One motion inspires another. That night I tossed Lynne's journal into the hearth of our living room fire. Everyone else had gone to bed, but I intended to stay up all night.

When you grow up around a large pond, you learn where and when not to tread upon it in winter. Further from shore, the ice is thinner and more unstable. A rich dark blue is safer than grey or opaque white. Indeed, with warmer winters, more people fall in and drown. And the cardinal rule is that no one should walk out on the ice at the beginning or end of the cold season.

Nobody ever wants to lose a dog-Especially, not a dog treated better by my family than their own daughter. Annoying Rex was living proof that Lynne and Phil were capable of love. They were just incapable of demonstrating that love to me. These were my thoughts as I dressed in winter gloves, picked up our loaded hunting rifle from the glass cabinet in the hall, carried it into the bedroom, and aimed it at my parent's heads. Lynne and Phil were shocked but somehow not completely surprised when I told them to pick up Rex and walk outside. There was a bit of expected begging from my father while my mother remained unusually silent. The absence of her speech served to confirm the way she thought about me. I would always be nothing but a murderer in her eyes. What good would begging accomplish? She believed in her heart that I was born this way. A .223 Remington can easily kill a deer 600 yards away. Phil knew that I was a great shot, and Lynne (of all people) certainly understood that I would have zero hesitation pulling the trigger. They decided to take their chances with the cold. Perhaps their bodies would be recovered and somehow brought back to life. It has happened before…but not this time.

I stood confidently as I instructed them to hold tightly onto Rex and back up gradually onto our frozen pond. Rex had gotten out before and had run onto the pond. The only difference was that this time he had fallen in, and they were desperately trying to get him out…when the unthinkable happened (incentivized, of course, by a carefully aimed weapon). It was nearing the end of winter, and there were plenty of pressure ridges leftover from a recent cold spell coupled with an upstart warming trend. The ice in and around such disjointed rims consisted of poorly attached segments. The recent cold spell was brief and didn't leave time for substantially thick ice to form. Rex being a dog, could not possibly have known to stay away from these areas. Like most dog owners, my parents considered Rex to be a part of their family. Of course, they would do anything and everything to rescue him.

A refreshingly crisp wind blew past my head as an eerily familiar noise emerged from undercurrents flowing within the icy fragmented cracks. The haunting tones ranged from deep whale-like noises to more high-frequency pings one might associate with science fiction. Many people don't know that as temperatures fluctuate on a frozen pond, the ice begins to emit a harmony-like song. The phenomenon is called "acoustic dispersion." I could hear the singing echoes today as I added a melody all my own. My symphony started with a sharp crackling, matured with a thunderous boom, and terminated with an echoing crescendo-filled plunge.