Chapter One : The Haze
Dimitri
The kaleidoscope of blues and green was interrupted by the jagged swirl of the stark white colouring that ran through them, dipping and mixing them into hues of turquoise.
Every time I played on this rug - or under the table, Mama would be angry. Beneath the table was not a place one played - especially not next to the feet of others. But today was different because today Mama said that I must hide under the table.
“To play?” I had asked, and even as the question left my lips, there was a hardness in her eyes as she nodded a quick, brusk yes.
I sat beneath the table - my fort - imagining all the stories Papa had told me about his wars - how they had once bunkered down in the middle of a gun fight. I would be good at it - I would make the best bunker, and no one would find me.
The oceanic colours bled beneath my knees, the white linen tablecloth obscuring me from view, and despite my fort imagining abilities, this was not how family dinner usually felt.
Family dinners were sacred. Such sentiments had been drummed into me from birth. Family was built - it wasn’t simply made. It took work, effort, and loyalty, but when done right, it was beautiful.
Still, my fingers ran along the crashing waves, the frothing foam, as I soaked in the tapestry. That was the moment I heard Uncle Stan enter through the back door, watched his brown loafers squeak across the marble tiles as my mother gasped.
His shoes were always impeccably clean. He had once sat me down and told me that you could tell a lot about a man by looking at the things that most people overlooked - such as his shoes. Uncle Stan had played toy soldiers with me growing up, and for Christmas one year he bought me a miniature working train set.
I had heard my mother gasp on countless occasions. When my dad swept in behind her while she was washing up at the sink, his arm wrapped around her as he pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. That one time she received a letter in the mail, declaring her as the winner of a pottery class - she came home with a set of new plates and Papa indulged her, even though she had bought new plates the week before. When she walked in and was horrified to find me practicing my leaps from the marble kitchen counter to the dinner table seated just next to the kitchen - the same dinner table I was currently hiding under.
And yet this gasp was filled with fear.
I wanted to go to her - to fight whatever was making her afraid - Papa had taught me how to punch - how to block - how to shield. I wanted to take her hand and drag her into my bunker with me.
But then Papa walked into the room, and suddenly the tension that sat in the belly of my soul seemed to dissipate because Papa was here.
“What are you doing here?”
I heard Papa’s words, clipped and precise. But he never spoke to Uncle Stan like that because uncle Stan was family.
Still, I didn’t move - because Mama had told me to stay - had told me that if anyone came early, I needed to stay. And so, I sat and listened.
The aroma of the bubbling tomato soup spread through the kitchen and somehow, even in the midst of the mounting tension, it was comforting because it still smelt like home.
Papa’s voice rose, and I struggled to understand what they were saying - what they were fighting about.
“No!”
Mama’s voice rang loud and true through the kitchen, followed by a loud bang that seemed to reverberate through the very tiled walls themselves. The fine glass bowl that Mama had been holding shattered on the floor. For a moment, I watched the glass splitter into shards of crystals that seemed to cover the tiles, some rolling onto those hues of greens and blues where I sat, as if they somehow belonged in my fort as well.
“You -”
My father’s voice was cut off by a second bang, and that’s when I truly saw it - saw them.
My father’s body crumpled forward, his face pressed into the tiles beneath him, his gaze fixed on mine as his lips opened and closed as he lay there gasping for air. I couldn’t move - I couldn’t order my body to go to him - to help him. I simply sat there, motionless, stiff and frozen, and watched him wheeze and gasp as I heard the sound of Uncle Stan letting himself out through the back door - as if he had simply stopped in for a coffee and was now off. A thief in the night, only this time he stole lives.
It took a long time for me to look away from him - even after the rise and fall of his chest had halted - even after those awful gurglings coming from his throat had stopped, I still could not look away. Because lying before me, only a few feet away, was my papa. My papa, only I wasn’t sure he was mine anymore.
Does someone cease being yours if they are dead?
I finally turned my head, the pins and needles throbbing violently in my feet, reminding me that I needed to move. My mother’s hand lay across the tiles, and while I couldn’t see the rest of her, there was a pool of blood that seemed to be growing - seeping beneath her, marring the cream chiffon of her sleeve.
It wasn’t red and bright like I imagined. The blood was much darker - ruby - maroon, even, and as I sat there, fully aware that everything was wrong, I could not move.
I didn't move - couldn't, even as the smell of home turned to burnt tomato soup, the bubbling liquid splashing and popping - as if that was the sound that was too loud, as if it somehow didn't belong here.
The housekeeper found me like that - hours later when she arrived for cleanup after the family dinner.