My mother's death was not accidental, and it had something to do with the strangers who visited our house two days before my mother's sudden passing. But I could never tell my father that. He'd deny me with a booming fist against his desk, nostrils flaring furiously as he demanded me to get out of his office. Then he'd leave the house, rendering me alone. And even though my father's presence in this house was worth close to nothing, I couldn't bear the thought of losing anyone else.
My head rang with the terrible sounds of the machines beside her bed. It came and refused to leave as soon as the door to her hospital room slammed shut the last time I saw her alive. The sound of the heart monitor surrendering.
I didn't sleep most nights. But when I did, I dreamt of my revenge on those strangers. My hands ached to doing things to someone that they'd never dreamt of before. Violent, inhumane things.
Meanwhile, my father shuffled around the house, blank-faced and exhausted. The very definition of zombie-like. I'd never seen him so… death-like. A thought in my mind told me to go to him, say something, anything. But I couldn't.
Less than a week after my mum's funeral, I fell sick, too.
My father watched, finally horrified, as my health deteriorated as much as my mother's had. Our shuffling came to be in tandem the first two days I was sick, and then I couldn't walk more than a few steps without toppling over. My brown hair littered the floor, my eyes were bloodshot, and with the falling of the sun each night came a burning fever, slamming my head. My father visited me sometimes, and he told me to get better. That I had to get better. The wet cloth pieces that were plastered to my forehead grew hot quickly, and I ate nothing. I threw up the water I drank, and shook my head at every medication my father bought and brought to me.
On multiple occasions, my father had stared at me, muttering nothing under his breath. He was going to ask if I needed him to take me to the hospital, but he never asked. But so be it, because I would've said no with no hesitation.
I wouldn't go, or I wouldn't return.
I was not dying. Not without avenging my mother.
Weeks passed and I was dunked head first into a pool of unforgiving pain. My stomach ached, my eyes screamed, my limbs cried, my lungs stung, my heart tugged viciously at the walls of my body. I could feel the blood in my veins, pumping to every corner of me. My father accompanied me most of that time under the fluorescent glow of my bedside table lamp, but he remained a blur in my vision, eyes glued almost shut with mucus.
I really thought I would die. I wasn't eating, I wasn't drinking, and whenever I did, my stomach would kick in the towel, refusing to hold anything down. I really thought I'd never see anyone again. School would commence in a week and I would never show up.
But then the fuzzy curtain over my eyes withdrew. My fever died down. My abdominal pains receded. I could take in food and water. I could walk around the house without collapsing from dizziness. And a week later, I returned to school with nothing more than a minor headache.
But the fact that everything had returned to normal was far worse than anything that I'd ever experienced. Because three weeks had seen the arrival of my father home after six months, the sudden and unpredictable death of my mother and the only person I held so close to me, and then my week and a half of hell lighting up inside my body. What made it worse was that my father was losing it.
Zombie-like, he shuffled aimlessly around the house, brewing at least twenty cups of coffee a day, rarely cooking dinner, apologising to the walls and inanimate pieces of furniture he ran into. A month passed of this same cycle. And his depressing daily routine kept me busy.
Wake, make breakfast, tidy the house, do the laundry, make my dad lunch, go to school, purchase more coffee on the way home from school, complete any homework, whip up dinner, ensure my dad swallowed at least two bites of it, wash the dishes, then retreat to my room to bathe in the artificial cave-like darkness as I scoured the internet for something interesting.
For the next few months, I'd get glimpses of joy from my friends, at times, my conversations with my father, but mostly from the blood that would rise from my skin after slashing through it slowly, deliberately, expressionlessly. The way the crimson droplet would stay suspended on the blade made my heart flutter lightly, and the thought that with a single, brutal slice, I could join my mum, I almost left my dad the loneliest man on earth on multiple endless nights. And although I could've left whenever I wished, and risen to see the angel who was my mum, I remembered that the only way I would ever avenge my mother was by staying.
When my eyes caught sight of the hidden link, I had no idea that it would lead me to a page that would express desires that were exactly what I wanted and needed.
Reprisal: The organisation where amateurs cling to hope and where hope clings to the game-changers.