Second Story Window

Satsuki's POV

Childhood was never too pleasant, especially when the flood gates of war had shattered and war had soon reached our country. Our father had died, I not know when, but it was after Nui, and before our mother had gone insane. They claim postpartum depression but it was inherently clear that it wasn't that. She had some sort of psychosis and she blamed us. That was all not too many years ago and nothing had really changed, except Nui is no longer with us. Of course, she was so little and, as a child, I made my first sacrifice by abandoning her at an orphanage and tricking our insane mother that she had died. She never did know that I was lying but her mind never did tell her otherwise. It was better that way, as Nui was barely a few months old and it was already too late for Ryuu. As we grew up, her bouts of madness were starting to get to us.

We were trapped with her like dying caged birds, especially when we moved to an old house. It was a big old house with two stories and had some disrepair. It used to be a shade of greyish-lilac in terms of paint. It was often infested with mice, rats, and spiders, along with latters' feces and ensuing cobwebs. It was surrounded by dead grass and few flowers, along with the remains of trees. It was the kind of place that people would claim to be haunted, which made sense, as it looked the part and our mother's cackling from within its walls can be heard for miles. We often never had visitors.

I remembered the beatings we had taken so savagely and how so very frequent they were. Whenever she found herself overcome with delirium, she would pick up a rod and start beating us with it, calling us "wicked children" or "hell-spawn", being so quick to beg for forgiveness once she had finished. We had remembered to hide where she could never get to us but, this was to soon change. We were hiding from her once again and we holed up there for about a few days. She was rampaging, hounding us with a rod, the which she was to beat us with. In was in the year that fear made the secretary hang herself and the room in which we were hiding still reeked of her corpse, fear, blood, and despair. Of course, the cook noticed that we were in there and told her of our hide n seek game. We would find out about that when we heard her coming up the stairs. They were slow and labored but loud and menacing. The room we were in was the last in the hall, at the very end.

She was up the stairs now and Ryuuko had broken free from my arms. Something in her knew I couldn't protect her from this but what she's done next, I hadn't expected. As our hiding room was being neared, Ryuu whispered, "Fly away." and forced the window open. She then turned to me and said, "Bye-bye, Satsuki, I'll miss you."

She leaped out of the window, hitting the ground below. She had attempted the easy way out, just like Rei. She leaped from a second story window, preferring to end her short life of five years. I was snapped out of my shock when the door swung open and hear hellish voice boomed, "Come here, now, Satsuki." I found myself soon joining my sister, hoping to end my life and get out of here.

The next thing I had known was I had awakened in a bed, next to my sister, to whom, surprisingly, survived her suicide attempt. To much surprise, our house was abandoned and our mother, our poor insane mother, was nowhere to be found. Since then, we were taken in by a new family with an odd little girl and were reunited with our little sister Nui. We never did find out what happened to our mother. I heard tale that she had committed suicide since the incident with the second story window and others say she committed herself to an asylum outside of town. Either way, we never did find out and we had never seen her again.

Yet, we do yearn to see her again.