Emperor of Mayhem

t w e n t y - s e v e n

TWO WEEKS LATER

"Attention, please!'' The echo from an invisible speaker in the airport lounge snapped me out of my reverie. "Good afternoon, passengers. This is the pre-boarding announcement for flight 21C9 to Rome. Passengers with small children or any passengers requiring special assistance are invited to begin boarding. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready. Thank you!"

I flashed a glance at the boarding pass in my hand even though I wasn't going to Rome. Then my eyes deflected to scan the busy room as the ones going to the said Rome began to scurry around to get themselves ready. I even saw a woman hurrying to shove the last bite of burger down her throat while struggling to hitch her duffel bag over her shoulder and still lock her fingers around the handle of her suitcase.

A heavy sigh left my lips again and I sank further into the not-so comfortable chair I was sitting on, counting how many minutes left for my flight in my head just to distract myself from thinking again. I just wanted to leave Russia. Why in the world did they think it was right to shift a morning flight all the way to 2PM? Why?

The jacket draped over my lap began to vibrate and I lifted it off, searching for the pocket I had slipped dad's cell phone into. Since I didn't have a phone, I had been using dad's second cell phone, the only one whose password I knew. I wouldn't have resorted to using it but I needed to be able to communicate with the only family I had left.

"Gracie!" Grandma's worried voice bounced off the speaker before I could even open my mouth to greet her. This was the tenth time she was calling me since I journeyed to the airport. But then again I guessed her care was justified. I was as good as the only family she had left just as she was mine too. We were the only ones we had.

She had particularly been so worried about me because I was left all alone in Russia, mourning by myself since she wasn't able to process her Visa in the space of dad's death till now to come over to me. I had to grow a few maturity bones way too quickly when it dawned on me that I was as good as alone in my father's land and I had only me to stand for me. I would have been able to stay behind and just finish high school first since I was an adult and was allowed to live on my own. But I couldn't continue to handle one sympathetic gaze or the other nor my ability to keep my mouth shut seeing how they found it hard to trace dad's killer while knowing who exactly the killer was. I decided to just leave Russia. Not completely though. I will be back some day. Perhaps when I had the courage to end the man that killed my father.

"Gracie's, are you there? Can you hear me?"

"Yes, ma." I said weakly, clearing my throat and sniffling a bit to steady my voice. Crying for two weeks straight had almost made me lose my voice...and hopefully not my eyesight too because these days, my vision isn't as sharp as it used to be before. Perhaps I would ask granny to take me to an ophthalmologist when I get to Nigeria. Maybe there was something like a tear film and it was probably covering my lenses due to how bad I had cried every time I remembered he was truly gone and that too because of me. He died because of me.

I could never really get it out of my head. The image of his empty eyes as they seemed to stare directly at me as if they were accusing me. I shuddered every time, choking on sobs remembering how cold he was when I touched him, his lips purple, while blood pooled around the spot where he had laid on the bed, his head on the keyboard of his laptop. He was booking me a flight to Nigeria when he got shot.

I had sat there in shock for approximately five minutes before I could make a blood curdling scream tear from my lips, alerting the neighbors to the direction they had heard a loud gunshot from. I wasn't the only one who heard it. As I said, it was pretty loud.