Cassie // Mitchel Cave

12

Cassie's POV
[1st Person]

The motel rooms are dusty and small, and the bed looks like it could falter right there in this moment.
I sigh and lean against the doorframe, whose paint is slowly chipping off.

The others left a while ago, going out to buy groceries in a town a few miles away.
I wasn't feeling well, I told them, so I stayed here.

I circled the room, not sure of what to do now.
My eyes then fixated on a portrait of a family on the wall, four of them, Father, Mother, Sister, Brother.
All of them smiling, all of them happy.

I had a brother, Jacob, he died on his 5th birthday. That was almost 5 years ago now.

He was my everything, he still is.
I never got over his death.

„Cassie", his giggle echoed through the hallway. „Cassie, wait", I turned around and stuck my tounge out, my eyes landed on the partyhat on his head. Five was his favorite number. He was the most excited turning five. „Catch me if you can", I giggled and opened the door, running across the street in the forest, like we always did.

I hid behind a tree, carefully watching Jacob running over into my direction. Just then, I saw a car.

Screaming, mine? Jacobs? The drivers? I ran, my lungs ached and tears, hot, salty tears streaming down my face. I stumbled and flesh ripped off my knees, but I didn't care. Blood ran down my legs, but the sting of the wound was almost a numbing feeling. It felt good to feel.

Please survive

Survive

I was still screaming, so loud, my ears were hurting, my lungs felt empty, like they might collapse, but I didn't stop. He needed to be okay, he needed to tell me to go away, he needed to hit me, he needed to tell me I suck and that that wasn't fun.

He needed to tell me anything, anything at all, anything to stop this

I reached the car. The driver of the car was already at his side, hysterically talking to someone on the phone.

I fell to my knees next to his side, my little brother laying there on the street, his head was bleeding.

„His head is bleeding we – we need to." My voice broke, I did too, every single thing I've ever known broke down. Right there. I left myself on these streets, the only me I ever knew.

His funeral was two days later.

Tears were forming in my eyes, tears that didn't belong there, however I was too tired to fight them, too tired to feed into that hole in my stomach. It was an empty feeling I was left with, sitting in a small dark room, having nothing but myself and feelings, nothing to distract myself with, but being awfully aware of the quietness this room carried with itself.

In ways it reminded me of my room back with my dad.
Sure, there was clothing laying around, and a few school things, though I dropped out a while ago, he seemed to never have noticed.
Not that he would have cared anyways.

In a fair world, I believe, she would have cared, you know? At least cared enough to stay and help her daughter survive.

But she was way too far gone, she was focusing way too much on surviving herself – I guess she had forgotten.
But that's okay. I think.

She wasn't the usual Mother. I had no one to help me when I started my first period, though at that time she was already gone.
I remember, she used to tell me, I grow up too fast, and she'd always laugh afterwards, playing it off as a joke, although it wasn't one.

She missed the little me, baby me, I guess. She missed having someone to actually care for, someone who depended on her.

I don't think she realized, I still depended on her at that time. I think she thought I don't need her anymore, but fuck I did. Why couldn't she just see that? Why couldn't she realize I needed my mother so so much? more than ever.

She thought I was a monster. At the end of the day, it was me, who was responsible for her angel's death, her own daughter, who killed her son.

She changed after Jacobs death. She refused to talk to me for months, she stopped making food, it was just me and my dad after that, if you didn't know her better, you could've thought she was braind dead.

Not moving for hours and hours on end, not talking for days and weeks.

I tried to kill myself the first time when I was ten.

Maybe it wasn't a completely conscious choice when I picked up the bottle and swallowed the pills: I tried to fit in every single one.

I was helpless.

I turned around and saw her standing there, watched me swallowing the pills.

She turned around, left me in the cold bathroom.
It was my dad who found me unconscious on the floor a few minutes later, driving me to the hospital.

I needed her warmth and her songs, I needed to hear her voice, I needed her to care.
Why, why, why couldn't she care? What did I do to make her leave me?

Why couldn't she be better, why? Why love me when you'll leave me anyway?

But you know, don't speak ill of the dead, I guess.