This will be a better life. It has to be. At least here we won’t starve.
We take the next hour to settle in before Mom announces she needs to get to work. She tells me I’m allowed to explore the main house, and the owners, a Mr. And Mrs. Black, have a son around my age I should go introduce myself to.
No, thank you.
I’ll stay here and lock myself in my new room and decorate it. I’ve never had my own room before, and although I don’t have any paint or decorations to style the room with, I have paper and crayons that will have to be enough for now.
Mom leaves, and I get to work coloring pages various pinks to line my walls. I can’t paint them pink, but at least the pages will allow me to pretend the walls are pink.
I’ve colored twenty pages when I hear the noise. It’s a sound I know all too well when we were living on the streets of Miami.
Gunshots.
No!
I saw the walls surrounding this property. I saw the men who guarded it. I saw the security cameras watching us as we pulled up. This house was supposed to be safe.
We were supposed to be safe here.
I don’t think; I run out of the room and out of the small guest house.
I know better. My best bet at surviving is to hide under the bed or closet until Mom returns. But she is all I have. I have to make sure she is okay.
I hear more gunfire, and instead of running away from it like I should, I turn toward it.
I find the door and enter the creepy house. It’s too big, too dark, and too old.
More shots.
I run up the stairs.
“Mom!” I shout, hoping she will pop out at any second and then we can run away from here. I’d rather starve every night than deal with the threat of guns in our own home.
I don’t see her anywhere. “Mom!”
And then I hear a different voice, that of a boy’s and he too is crying for his mom. His cry is different. It’s louder and more panicked than my cry. He doesn’t long for her to be found; he longs for her to be taken. Because he too feels the pain that looms in the darkness of this house.
I creep quietly toward the door, needing to comfort this boy more than I need to find my own mother. I’ve never heard or felt such pain. And it draws me in even though I know how dangerous and stupid it is.
When I reach the door, the sight I see terrifies me. The door is mostly closed, only open a crack, but it’s enough for me to wish I’d stayed in my bedroom and never left.
I see a man with demons in his eyes, standing over a boy who can’t be much older than I am. The only difference is where I have scrawny arms; he already has muscles. But those muscles are marked with bruises and scars. Scars I have no doubt the man standing over him caused.
But that’s not all I see.
I see a woman lying on the floor gasping for air as blood oozes from her body.
“Are you really going to make your mother suffer?” the evil man says.
The boy’s hand trembles, and I see the shiny black metal gripped in his hand.
No! His father can’t be serious? He wants the boy to shoot his mother. He can’t.
But I look to the woman who is already so broken and bleeding so profusely. Even if the boy doesn’t shoot her, she’s going to die. He might as well put her out of her misery. The pain in her eyes is unbearable.
“You failed her. You were supposed to protect her. To save her. And you couldn’t. You weren’t strong enough to protect those you love,” the vile man says.
I need to do something. Either go inside and try to stop it or run and get help. This is wrong. But I do neither. I’m frozen watching the catastrophe in front of me.