PART THIRTY

335 12 29
                                    

Part thirty = part tragedy

Word count; 2,882

Valentina

Monika Zhuk died a year and twenty-five days after her mother did. No-one knew what caused it, given the fact hospitals weren't too advanced in technology and neither were the people around her, but Alice was certain it was the Arthritis that Eugene couldn't treat.

Teo met me by the front door, sat on the stairs with dark circles surrounding his swollen eyelids. At a time when dinner would have the whole house engaged and lively, nothing pursued. Given no response when I questioned him, I ascended the stairs.

Everyone crowded around a room - Alice's room in specific. It was like when Ella and Hanna passed. Almost identical, really. I parted through the group like Moses splitting the sea. Alice was on her bed, Monika curled beside her. Knowing no-one else would, knowing I was the one to be relied on, to act as the head of this organisation like I always had, I stepped into the room. I crawled my arms beneath the girl, her skin frostbitten and drawn away from colour like her fingers had. Alice shouted, begged, pleaded for me to stop, to leave her. She said how inhumane I was, how cruel, sadistic, stoical. How it was my fault she died, considering I wasn't even crying.

We buried her in the churchyard next to her mother, planting bouquets of marigolds between their gravestones.

I wrote her name next to her mother's on my mirror. I recounted all the names.

I walked with Emilia to Monika's grave as, for the last couple of days, she would bake Monika's favourite biscuits and leave them right beside the fresh marigolds. 

On the way back, I told her to continue on without me.

I sat with my feet in the water by the peer, watching the sun rise. Somewhere, I hoped someone would find me, talk me out from diving into the current and anticipating to never see the sky again. No-one did.

The water shot a rush through my body. Dunking my head beneath the surface, I tried to float for a while but every couple of seconds, my feet would sink. I only raced back to the shore when my toes could no longer feel the pebbles of the lake's foundation.

I couldn't wait for the sun to finally overtake the mountains, everything shivering and red and pale. I wrung out my hair, a stick cracking behind me.

"It's way too early, Johnny." - a murmur.

"You think I don't know that?" 

"Maybe it's not even her."

"You're the one who knows German."

"She knows English."

"Does she look like she's in the mood to talk to an American? No."

"I'm American."

"Half Austrian, go talk to her."

Liebgott stumbled down the steep bank and onto the cobbled beach, his boots scraping as he walked. He rasped a slur, nearly stacking it and crashing onto the ground.

"Hey, doll." He spat onto the ground, searching his pockets. "How's it going?"

I sniffed, something very, very cold succumbing my centre. Joe looked behind him.

"Here," He extended his arm, a cigarette between his fingers.

I raised my head and, with the parting of my lips, he placed it into my mouth. He lit it with a match, not a lighter, and threw it into the water.

𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐞; eugene roe ✔Where stories live. Discover now