The girl pulled him down with her flinging both of them onto the ground. Groaning in pain, the man realized that he had landed on top of the girl. His clumsy attempts at scurrying to get off of her only made it worse and he pressed down on her open wound. Valena felt the air knocked out of her as the man landed on her, gasping while he started panicking. Seeing that the man was fine, she relaxed for a moment before the thought of her parents trapped somewhere sprung into her mind.
Shooting up, Valena didn't feel any pain as her feet and adrenaline carried her through the wreckage. Her voice hoarse from the thick smoke was unable to be heard above the sirens and screaming. Surprised by the girl's sudden burst of strength, the man moved to follow her but was held back by a paramedic, and he watched the flames swallow her. He couldn't explain it but hearing her desperate muffled cries ripped his heart to pieces. After searching, for what seemed like forever, Valena found her parents on a blanket by the totaled taxi they were riding in.
"Mom! Dad!"
Her parents were covered in blood with cuts and bruises all over their bodies, to the point of being unrecognizable.
"Miss, do you have any relation to these people?"
A paramedic stopped Valena from reaching her parents as his stern voice sounded loudly in her ear.
"They're my parents!"
She shouted at the man who was just trying to do his job. Pushing him out of the way, she kneeled beside her parents. She reached out but couldn't bring herself to touch them, it was as if they were made of glass. In an instant, Valena was brought back to a recent memory that she wished she could lock away in the deepest corner of her heart, and everything around her faded as she was dragged into her memories.
The day was slowly moving on like the normal it had become for the passing month. Mom and Dad went to visit Grandma and Grandpa, while I watched to kids at home. It had become what was expected and without fail, they would come home, then leave to go see them. I didn't think things could change much more than they already had, but life just loves to prove me wrong. My Grandma had stage four breast cancer. That was the harsh reality that I needed to come to terms with but continuously brainwashed myself to believe that it wasn't true.
I had known this for three years now, but it still wasn't any easier to bear. I had gone through the loss of so many, that I thought my heart was immune to the pain that came with loss. I had hoped so much that I wouldn't lose another person that I held so desperately close to me, but the underlying fact was that it was all just hope. Everything around her faded and Jin Valena was dragged into her memories.
"It's December first"
Mumbling to myself while up in my room, when my younger siblings yell,
"Mom and Dad are home!"
Racing down the stairs and out the door. I didn't make it past halfway down the driveway when I stopped. Seeing the grief on my parent's faces told me all I needed to know. They looked at me with my smile still frozen on my face and surreptitiously made their way into the house. They called us and told us to sit on the couch. No one dared to speak, we knew what was happening, and we had seen it before.
Dad opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Looking at both Mom and Dad's puffy, red eyes I could see that they had been crying a lot. The overwhelming soundlessness had become unbearable by the time he finally regained control of himself. And the next thing I knew, the words that terrified me, kept me awake at night, and filled my dreams with nightmares, came out of his mouth.
"Grandma went to heaven this morning."
Dad was barely able to get the sentence out. It was at that moment time stood still. Though I knew it was futile, I couldn't help but ask silently ask myself,
"When will she be back?"
I knew they were talking and trying to explain, but what was there to explain? Could you bring her back? Could you give me a few moments with her? Could you tell her I'm sorry? Could someone tell me this was all a nightmare?
But no, it was true, and I felt the last tiny bit of light drain from my world. I wanted to leave, but I couldn't move, it was like my body was frozen. I felt like I was seeing things outside my own body, and I didn't know what to do to save myself from this overwhelming black hole I was being sucked into. My siblings realized she was gone one after another, and the tears came down like river rapids. I saw them, but I wasn't there. I heard them, but I wasn't listening. The world I lived in became monochrome, and I saw it for what it was. The grief I was feeling was slowly seeping out of my heart.
Silent tears streamed down my face and knew it couldn't be true. I was dreaming, and I would wake up soon. That was what I tried so hard to convince myself of, but I knew the truth, after all the evidence of it was all around me. When Dad's arms came around my shoulders I wanted to push him away. I wanted to scream. I wanted to break something. But my face looked colder than ice, I couldn't manage anything else.
I knew I was crying while seeming insensitive and mute, but I didn't care.
"When did she pass?"
I heard my mother's voice crack as she spoke. I lifted my head ever so slightly to see if I could find anything that would show me that everything I had just heard was not true, that it was all just a crude joke.
Snapping out of her thoughts, she saw her parents trying to talk, and her dad's muffled voice was strangled by the blood caught in his throat.