Things that Go Bump in the Night

Chapter 32: For the First Time

Chapter 32:

The Monster did not come back that night. I hadn’t expected him to, especially not after the way he was acting. Especially not after what he had said to me when he left. After he had been gone for a few minutes I dashed back into the bed room to pull a shirt over my head before I went to my sister, making sure that she was comfortable in the guest bed and was still breathing. I'm sure it would have given my prudish sister a heart attack if I ran into the room in just my underwear and she was awake. She wasn't. 

Her breathing was smooth and even and her pulse rate was normal. The only thing that seemed to be wrong with her was a slight bruise and lump on the side of her head. I just sat there and stared at my little sister while she remained unconscious until the sky began to become lighter in the small view from the window. She just looked so peaceful in this state that I couldn’t bring myself to wake her. When Chey was awake her face was always pinched somehow, like she was looking at everything around her with slight disappointment. It was an inherited expression that was always on her mother’s face every time that I ever saw that woman. But in her comatose state Chey’s face had finally relaxed, allowing me to look at my sister without being bothered by the resemblance she bore to my former stepmother. Cheyenne was actually very pretty. She had her mother’s slightly curly hair texture mixed in with the dark brown color that came from our father. Her cheekbones were high and regal looking while her chin was jaw was soft. In some ways I thought that her beauty had been what made her the way she was. Always thinking that she deserved something better than what she had in this world.

I sighed and gently pushed a random lock of hair back from her forehead and behind her ear. I hated that she was here. That she had to be part of this.

I hated what she had just had to see.

I knew she was eighteen but still.

In my mind she was still a child; in many ways she was. She was too young to have to live with this kind of sick bull shit. To have to sit by and watch your own older sister be hauled into some back room to be used as a semen receptacle while you are helpless to stop it. Didn’t know how to try to stop what was going to happen. Afraid to even try.

I took her hand and squeezed it in mine quietly. I didn’t blame her for not trying to stop what was going to happen to me in that instant. I didn’t blame her for passing out in a time of need. The truth was she couldn’t do anything and if she had tried she could have been seriously hurt.

In short, I had never been so glad that my sister was a chicken.

I really don’t know what I would have done if she had tried to be brave.

Being brave had always been my job in our sisterhood.

I was the one to hit Maverick Daniels in the face in the first grade for shoving Chey into the dirt. I was the one that made sure there were no monsters under her bed. I was the one that killed all the spiders that had the misfortune of falling in the tub when she went to take a shower. I was the one that made all the arrangements for my father’s burial when my stepmother was too distraught to do so. I was the one that had to tell Chey that her own mother had tried to kill herself at work.

I had always had to be the brave one.

If Chey had to be the brave one now….what did that make me?

I leaned forward in my seat beside Chey’s bed suddenly feeling very nauseous. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t know how to keep my sister safe. And I sure as hell didn’t know how the hell I was supposed to try to act like I knew.

Thinking about it literally made my pulse audible in my head. I groaned and leaned my head against the side of the mattress. What was I going to do? What was I supposed to do?