Arranged Revenge

Chapter 5

Elena had a vague throb behind her eyes, something very familiar which she wanted to deny for the last few weeks. She stretched her arms above her head, and yet the aching was still intact. It was not painful enough to call for attention, merely a faint, evasive throb that worked incessantly, albeit in a different lane altogether, reminding of something that had long since drowned in her memory.

With the passing hours, however, it began to creep in with drowsiness. Initially, it seemed just an ordinary tiredness, the long kind which comes as a result of everything,demands that seem to go on forever. But after many cups of coffee, her head felt foggier than ever. The headache had much worsened double wrapping isolation and making her feel revoking distant from everything, as though she were watching life from somewhere far away.

It was long after lunch hours, and Elena could not take any more; she sank deeper into the couch as heaviness weighed upon her shadowed lids. A minute had passed when she decided to close her eyes; that minute extended beyond her intention. The couch was by now nowhere underneath her.

Elena seemed to feel moments play as if they were real. Seeing events play with the same people as she saw in the photographs at her home.

“Turn on the stereo” Elena said to Beatrice Carlo “What would you like to listen to my love ?”. Hesitating on her response “I would like the di rigid”. Tunes began playing over the stereo.

Dancing to the tunes with her dad and brother not left out.

Noticed her dad’s sudden tension and uncertainty. There was a sudden raise of tension, and fear enclosed in them.

Mr Carlo seemed disturbed.

“it seems like we are being followed” Suddenly tension arose on her skin, she could feel it flush through her, leaving Elena confused and scared for her family. Mr Carlo accelerated at high speed to escape the unknown enemy, yet in panic as she held onto Bryne with a tense grip in the back seat leaving her mom worried and asking questions as to what and who they could be “Put a call to Uncle Dante” her dad directing the instructions to Beatrice, in tension and her hands trembling, dialing uncle Dante with no response “Again!!!” Her dad said, being furious, “he isn’t responding!!!”

Uncle Dante was the only one to be trusted to come to their rescue more like a light in shining armor. With confusion wondering what to do next as the only hope they had bailed.

Speeding to escape and find refuge from the unknown assailant.

Misplacing focus on the steering wheel, they were up against a rock, with Carlo trying to man over it. It seemed like the break wasn't responding, with tears in Elena’s eyes, shivering still holding tight to Byrne.

Heading closer and closer to the obstacle ahead of them still with failing breaks, couldn’t make it in time, Dad forfeiting control. The vehicle spun and spun across the road not in the realization of what existed nearly to be involved in an accident alongside the only people Elena ever loved still seemed like a Hollywood drama to her. Like the world was coming to an end still not believing it. Finally coming to a stop with the undercarriage facing up to the atmosphere.

With a blur Vision, in weakness.

Tires screeched, and smells- burning rubber, metal, and something else-almost a metallic scent-assaulted her senses. Heart racing, hands shaking.

Blood streaming out of her, broken glass, and fuming smoke, the body of her loved ones spread on the dirt, stretching to reach out to Byrne faintly, with tears falling across her cheeks.

lifeless forms of her parents and younger brother.

Glimpsing a man with a customary tattoo on his right wrist intending for her dad‘s rear pocket, taking out a key and the pistol from his back pocket, placing in a slug each in her parents, Elena fought to maintain her still so she was not noticed to still be alive though vulnerable holding in the scariest scream of her life.

The breath caught in her throat, and the heart beat achingly loud in the chest. Fog drifted away from her mundane mind, and the memories she had kept hidden surged back. Blinding headlights. Tires screeching. Panic. The sickening crash. As if the whole world had spiraled off into chaos, and somehow the girl herself was on the side of the road, battered but alive, blissfully, joyfully alive. The wrecked car. The blood. The screams. And they all returned in one sweeping rush.

She recalled that she had been calling out to her family. The husky wailing echoes liplessly dripped out the names of mother, father, and little brother, but there was no answer. No answer.

Leaving Elena in the most agonizing pain she has ever felt in her life. A profound emptiness, accompanied by shock, numbness with disbelief to the scene.

Slowly losing consciousness of her body, gazes shutting to the bright blue skies, birds in the air feeling like bait to be eaten by air creatures eventually, losing sight like a cold silent night on the Piedmont, Relais in Langhe.

Then those sirens rang. On and on they went, distant sounds that gradually faded to peculiar places behind the semi-consciousness as it began to shift into unconsciousness, darkening things with this shock of it all the pain parts simmering and fading into nothingness, to awaken sometimes later in the hospital, only to be told that she survived while everybody else in the world didn't, her family...gone.

The very painful memories came back to her memory, stinging her eyes with tears. She heaved in a deep breath, almost as if to say the whole weight of it all was seated in her chest while she jerked in pain. It had been clear to her that the accident had been orchestrated by an unknown person.

The drowsiness of the earlier had fled and was replaced now only by a sorrow heavier than lead, a hollow ache. She sat alone in her room, isolated from the silence inside her small apartment, trembling hands clasped tightly around one another..