16

I tried not to think of all the times she hurt me. In-between my final memories of my brother. I started doing my exercises. Making myself busy so I wouldn't have to think about my pain. I knew it wasn't a healthy way of dealing with it, but right now I really needed to get my focus off feeling like a terrible human being. 

I allowed myself to cry freely as I worked out. No one was there to watch me so who really cared. I could cry my heart out, and no one would say a thing. I just sobbed, and exercised until I had no energy left. Completely exhausting myself over the course of a full day. 

The salt of my tears, and the fact that I'd rubbed the wetness off my face had just made my whole face feel swollen. It was well past dark. I sat down in my cot, and listened to the two messages again. I had no more tears left to spill over so nothing came. I just wanted to hear my siblings voices again. 

I only had this little lifeline to my youngest sister. I felt incredible guilt over the fact that I hadn't gone to them when shit started hitting the fan, but then I looked over to the sleeping boys. I thought over the events of the last month slowly. I came to a realization. The only way I would have been able to go to my family right away was if I abandoned these boys. 

I knew this wasn't a good place, and I couldn't just leave a couple of kids to their fate. Nothing I could have done would have changed anything. Even if I'd rushed to go find my family I probably wouldn't have found them. They would have been fleeing their own home when things finally went bad, and with phones only kind of working there was no way for me to get a reliable message through. I would have gone a different way then them even without the boys. 

It was instinctual for me to avoid them after all the mental damage my mom had done to me. Sure I was working on it once I got away from her, but that didn't just cure all the problem. Awakening had accelerated my healing process, but that didn't magically heal me. I still felt like a had a good sized hole blown into my chest whenever I thought about my mother. It was significantly smaller, and less painful then it used to be, but it was still there. 

I laid down in the cot after pulling the blankets up on the boys. Making sure they were both safe before going to sleep myself. It took a while for me to fall asleep. My mind was whirring. It was hard for me to fall asleep when my mind wouldn't quit. 

I sighed heavily as I rolled around in bed a few times. Eventually my exhausted mind quit. Allowing me to fall asleep. My sleep was short, and fitful. I woke before dawn after a little over three hours of sleep. 

I got off the cot, and looked at the still sleeping boys. A pang of jealousy flitted through me. Then the events of yesterday hit me. My brother was gone. My sister was upset, and crying about how things were going. 

My dad had gone through the effort to call me. My dad never called so for him to reach out things couldn't possibly be good. He wouldn't have called if he didn't need help. I made sure to plug in my phone before heading out on the short run. Johnny could tell there was something wrong, but pain from people dying was a common thing nowadays. 

He probably knew why I was hurting right now. At least I had family to go back to. Even if that family had damaged me. What family didn't leave some scars behind nowadays? The run was quiet. 

It was the first time we'd gone out without having a problem. No monsters, but there were a few human corpses. I stopped going through the house once we found them. There wasn't much left. The remains didn't even really look human anymore. 

I grabbed a blanket, and laid the pieces out in a blanket, and went into the backyard. Cutting over to a shed in the backyard that looked like it had tools in it. I found a shovel, and took the shovel to a secluded spot in the yard. Digging a hole, and throwing the remains in before filling the hole in. There was no way for me to mark the grave, and no way for me to know who these people were so I just patted the ground down. 

Packing it down the best I could knowing full well these people would never get a proper burial. Their names would probably never be known again. The cruelty of such a fate wasn't lost on me. I was a little startled when someone started talking to me on the way back. 

"That was kind of you," One of the weaker people turned their attention to me. 

"I can be incredibly kind when I want to be," I kind of dismissed him, "I used to be an unbelievably kind person, but I've been taken advantage of a few too many times. Now my kindness comes with terms, and conditions."

My tone switched from dismissive to threatening in just a few words. His expression changed from appreciative to shocked. He hadn't expected me to be so blunt. I also overshared a bit. That was pretty typical of me, but I hadn't talked enough for anyone around here to know that. 

I simply didn't want them to know more about the real me. I didn't even know the real me. I'd recovered a good part of myself since leaving my parents home. I was still missing big pieces of myself. There was only so much I could patch up, and replace.