Crimson Hands

People just didn't get how hard it was. Her mother was dead. Her grandparents blamed her father. Her baby brother, who was supposed to be her one focal point in the figure skating routine that was her life, had gone to live with them. It had been five years since her life had changed, and everyone expected her to just move on already. They didn't understand. No one ever understands.

The custody arrangement only allowed her and her brother one day every year together, and every year she tried to make it the best day of his life. Every year he yelled at her for coddling him, for trying to be their mother even though she never could. Every year she stopped herself from yelling back.

This year was different. Her brother just had to get everything he wanted, didn't he? The whole world was about him, wasn't it? There was no room for anything in her father's life other than him, was there? It enraged her. It enraged her to the point where before she could think, she was balling up her fist and decking her brother right in the nose. The sickening crack told her she'd broken it. The tears that welled up in his eyes made her heart pang. But she wasn't going to let that spread. She wasn't going to let him get her sympathy too. He already got everything else.

So she stormed up the stairs and into her bedroom, slamming the door hard enough that her father would know not to bother her. But he didn't listen. Men never listen.

And now he was yelling at her, and it wasn't fair. Why was he yelling at her? Why was he yelling at her when it was her stupid brother who had spilled coffee all over her economics essay? Why was he yelling at her when it was her grandparents who had stolen her brother? Why was he yelling at her when it was he who had let her mother die? Why was he yelling at her when it was her mother who had died?

When her father left, he slammed her bedroom door so hard the whole house shook. But even when the house stopped shaking, she didn't. She was shaking, incandescent with rage and grief and so many other things she couldn't even name.

She wasn't thinking when she took the envelope with her savings from the vent in the wall and the knife she always kept from her sock drawer, wrenched open the window, climbed out, slid down the roof, and jumped to the ground. She wasn't thinking when she landed heavily on her left arm and frankly, she didn't care. What was this pain to the hole in her heart?

She wasn't thinking as she ran into the woods, pitch dark even though it was midday. She wasn't thinking about what running away would mean. She wasn't thinking about her father. She wasn't thinking about her grandparents. She wasn't thinking about her brother. And she most definitely was not thinking about her mother.

She ran for what felt like five minutes, but she knew it must have been hours. The sun had long set and the sky was pitch dark. How had so much time passed already? Her father would have noticed she was gone by now. Reluctantly, she caved and allowed herself to think about her brother. She allowed herself to wonder if she really had broken his nose. She hoped he was okay, that he wasn't worried. That he didn't care. He didn't need to worry about her anymore. So she swiped away the tears before they could fall, trying to shake herself back to her senses, to just laugh it off like normal, but her chest didn't seem capable of laughing.

The trees around her began to spin. She sank down to the ground, dropping her face into her hands, trying to work through her breathing routine. Inhale, exhale, then repeat. Inhale, exhale, then repeat. Do not think about your brother. Do not think about your father. But it was getting hard to breathe, really hard, like she had just run the London Marathon, and her vision was disfiguring as if she were looking through a fish-eye lens.

What had she done? She had left her family, her father, her brother, over what? A stupid economics essay that was still saved on her laptop anyway. She could feel her whole body beginning to tremble again, this time with guilt.

She couldn't think. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear.

When the unknown figures emerged from behind the trees, she couldn't see their faces, half from the darkness and half from the tears blurring her vision. All senses of rationality abandoned her. All she felt was horrible, desperate fear.

Acting purely on instinct, she reached for the knife in her boot and lunged at the largest figure, letting out a bloodcurdling shout as she plunged the knife deep into somewhere she knew would kill him. She wasn't going to let these creeps in the woods in the middle of the night stop her from getting back to her family.

It wasn't until the smaller figure collapsed to its knees and screamed something horrible, something stripped and carved and broken apart, that she realized those creeps were her family. She could make their faces out clearly now. That little boy borderline convulsing on the ground was her brother. That man lying dead on the ground with his blood coating her hands was her father.

She had killed her father.

She let out a choked sob, something inside her snapping as she reached her bloodied hands out for her brother. There once was time when he would have crawled into them and let her hold him, begging her to check his closet for monsters before he went to sleep. Now, though, the little boy who was once her baby pushed himself up to scramble away from her touch, flinching violently like he was afraid she would burn him.

She didn't have time to say anything to him before he was pushing up off the ground and running in the opposite direction, the safer direction.

Her eyes were completely dry. She seemed to have lost all ability to cry, to do anything. She stared down at her crimson hands, stained and dripping with the blood of her father, who lay next to her, unbreathing, unseeing, unfeeling.

He'd probably died hating her, too.

Regardless, she forced her legs forward until her knees shook and collapsed under her, right by her father's head. She didn't know how long she sat there, watching his blood dry onto her hands, tainting them, an ever-present reminder of what she had done, what she had failed to do. The worst part was, it wasn't just her father's blood. It was her brother's and her mother's, too. And she knew that no matter how hard she scrubbed, the blood would always be there, drowning her, suffocating her, slowly killing her until there was nothing in her life left. She would never be able to escape it, just like her mother hadn't been able to escape whatever had killed her, just like her brother hadn't been able to escape the monsters after all, just like her father hadn't been able to escape her.

There was no escaping anything in her ravaged life, not even the blood on her skin or the guilt in her heart.

That was why, when she finally heard the wailing of the police sirens in the distance, the girl smiled.