Ghost Bird Fanfiction: Sang's Lyric, The Story of Sang Sorenson's Mother

Kell's Point of View

I held the razor lightly between two fingers. I had taken it out of the Exacto-Knife that James stored in a kitchen drawer.

The junk drawer.

That was what he called it. It should be called the useful drawer, because I had found everything I needed in it.

I held the razor up to the light, watching it reflect and refract, shining onto the wall next to me.

I rolled up my sleeve, pushing it above my elbow. My mind was screaming at me, my desperation clawing at my throat and chest.

Lyric was leaving. She would be gone forever. She could never love me. I hated myself. I couldn't help her. I couldn't help anyone. I couldn't help my family. I would let them down. I would let her down.

I pressed the razor gently on my arm, watching the brown skin depress. One light swipe would make it all better.

"Kell?" Her voice echoed through my bedroom and I threw the razor next to the sink.

Her green eyes searched mine.

I could do this. I could feel this. I would save her. She would save me.

"Kell?" Lyric's voice pulled at me though I was far away.

I struggled toward her, to her voice, pushing away the heaviness burying me deep inside myself.

"Lyric!" I called to her and her face came into focus. I crawled toward her. She held out a hand to me and I looked down.

Blood stained her palm: pink, red, almost black. Another hand reached toward me. Darker, smaller.

"The blood," I whispered, trying to make her understand. "I can't."


The water closed over my head and I floated away. I followed the darkness, letting it surround me and suffocate me to keep the pain at bay.

"Kell?"

I stood in my kitchen.

"Papa?" I called.

No one answered me.

"Advika?"

My sister was always home when I got home. She went to work at seven in the evening at the nursing home and was back before I left for school. She took care of my father during the day and I took care of him all night.

My father wasn't well.

After an incident at a grocery store when my father threw oranges gleefully in the air, and then tackled the manager who dared stop his fun, my sister and I finally found the reason for his strange behavior: early onset dementia. It was a name that gave no insight into the changes such a diagnosis wrought. My once caring, logical, brilliant, and organized father was now unreasonable, irate, paranoid, and aggressive. I had bruises on my forearms and shoulders from protecting my head when he decided to swing his walker like a shotput. For an increasingly frail man, he was surprisingly strong when angry.

"Advika?" I called again, walking toward my father's bedroom. 

It had once been the living room, but as he became weaker and needed more care, we decided it made the most sense to keep him on the main living floor. 
I stepped in something sticky and sighed, tired and disgusted. My father threw his food at times. He couldn't chew and swallow whole foods now and was on a soft diet. It made him incredibly frustrated and meal times were some of the worst times in our house. In fleeting moments of clarity he begged for familiar foods.