Blood Storm

The Waves

Mom suggested that we go out to dinner that night, and I obliged. I was so sleep deprived that I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t sleep walking— but the last thing I wanted was to crawl into bed and sob all night again. Hopefully if I kept putting off sleep, I would finally just pass out when I went to bed tonight.

There was a little diner up by the docks that Mom said had “fantastic fish sandwiches”. I wasn’t a huge fan of fish, but I guessed I was going to have to start liking it, since fish was in no short supply around here.

I threw a beanie on my head to try to protect me from the freezing cold and pulled my heavy jacket on top of my hoodie. Mom was bouncing and happy as we drove to dinner— yapping on about some high school friend of hers that worked at the diner that she couldn’t wait to see. It made me want to plug my ears. My emotions were now at the point of becoming explosive from lack of sleep, and I worked hard not to bite her head off the whole way there and just let her ramble on.

I ordered one of the fish sandwiches mom was raving about. Her friend she spoke of turned out to be an older lady with huge hair and red lipstick. She smelled faintly of cigarettes and looked very different next to my small mother. They laughed and joked and told stories. I tried to tune it out and push my food around on my plate.

“Not hungry, girl?” My mom’s big haired friend asked me.

“Not really.”

The woman was sitting in our booth now, which irritated me further. I didn’t want to have to play face with anybody when I could barely keep my eyelids open. “What’s brought ya back to town, Rach?”

My mom stammered like she didn’t quite know how to respond.

I don’t know if it was the sleep deprivation or my irritation at this lady, but I couldn’t bite my tongue. “My dad died and now she can’t handle being at home.” I blurted.

My mom gasped, and the lady froze, a look of shock and embarrassment on her face.

My mom kicked me under the table. “Colette! Mind your manners.”

Rage boiled up in my stomach, and all of the emotions I had kept on a tight leash today seemed to snap all at once. “Since when is telling the truth bad manners?”

“Oh, Stacey, I am so sorry,” my mom apologized to her friend.

“You’re apologizing to her because my dad died?” I snapped.

I couldn’t stop myself. I felt out of control. I knew I should rope my emotions back in— but they were flowing so freely now that my nerves felt like a live wire.

“I think I’ll give you two a minute,” the lady murmured, rising up from her seat.

“How incredibly considerate of you!” I shouted. “At least someone knows how to be considerate of others.” I glowered at my mother.

“Colette, hush—“

I slammed my fist on the table, her shushing making me even angrier. “Why should I? All I’ve done since we got here was shut up and try my best to like this place, whether it be at the stupid library or the stupid coffee shop, or this stupid diner with this stupid fish!”

I was shocked at my own immaturity right now, but I was way past caring. I felt alone. Every step I took since I got to Rockport, I felt helpless and alone. I did a lot of the isolating to myself— but my anger spawned from the fact that my mother just seemed so happy to be here and away from everything my father built for us. It made me so angry that I was clenching my teeth. No matter how hard I tried to be happy for her, to act like I was okay with this, the facade always slipped. Heat was coming off of my face in waves.

“You aren’t giving any of this a chance, Colette—“

“I’m not giving this a chance? When did you give staying home a chance?”

My mother’s face flushed, and for the first time tonight, she looked royally pissed off. “I was suffocating, Colette! I could not breathe without your father. Being surrounded by all of his things and all of our memories—“

“I can’t breathe here!” I shrieked. A few other tables stopped eating to listen to the scene I was causing, but I didn’t even care. “You are trying to erase him!”

It was cruel. My mother looked like I had slapped her.

I flitted my eyes across the room, the blood draining from my face as I realized that everyone in the room was staring at us, even the cook behind the counter.

My mother was hysterical now, tears flowing down her cheeks. I simply grabbed my coat. “I’ll see you at home,” I snapped.

And I all but ran out the door.

I didn’t know where I was going. It was dark out, and almost nine at night. And not to mention, it was freezing— the heat on my face and neck kept me from realizing exactly how cold it was. The occasionally icy rain drop landed on my face as I darted down the sidewalk as fast as I could.

I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore. I didn’t recognize myself. I had never, until recently, been intentionally cruel to anyone.. and now I couldn’t stop. I was hurting so badly that I just wanted everyone else to hurt too. I wanted them to feel even a fraction of the pain I was feeling.

I felt like someone had shattered me into a million tiny pieces, and tried to tape me back together, but the pieces just never fit back together properly. Something was just off with me, and always would be. I fought against my tear filled eyes as I made a beeline for the docks and red buildings.

I thought I could survive here for one more year, and then I could leave my mother here and go back to North Carolina for college. I thought I could paint a smile on my face, and eventually just accept that I was stuck here until then. It wasn’t going how I had hoped.

I stepped into the icy dock, hoping that my mother would drive right past me, thinking I had made my way home. I slipped slightly across the ice, and then continued trucking down to the end.

I barely made it before the sobs started tearing out of my chest. I gasped, trying to catch my breathe around them, and then finally slid into a sitting position against the wall of one of the buildings, kicking a fish trap out from underneath my feet.

The ocean waves were violent tonight, the wind causing them to crash wildly against the wooden docks, spraying water up on the planks. I couldn’t help but compare what I’d called my waves of grief, now violent as ever, to the aggressive tide. It was fitting that they seemed like they could take this place over, just like mine were overpowering me right now.

I wrapped my arms around my chest and cried and shook for what seemed like a very long time. I thought it might not ever stop. And then, I wasn’t sure that I ever wanted it to stop. I felt like if I stopped grieving for my father, everyone else would forget about him, too, and what hope did we have of getting justice if he was forgotten? If everyone just moved on with their lives as if he’d never existed, then who would be left to fight for him? I thought that maybe that was why I couldn’t bring myself to let go. I was so far from getting any answers here— I was states away. I watched as my breath came out of me in little quick puffs as it hit the cold air.

I knew that answers wouldn’t bring my father back to life. It just seemed to cosmically f****d, that whoever did this to him was just walking around enjoying the rest of their lives, the thousand dollars or so they got off of my father’s body was a dim memory to them, the money already spent on something so fleeting. That’s how much my father’s life had been worth to them.. two hundred dollars and a Rolex.

I fought and fought with my waves of grief for a while, trying to push them back into whatever hole inside of me my dad had left behind. As I finally got them at bay, I was slowly beginning to realize that I was probably on the verge of hypothermia. My teeth clattered against each other, vibrating my entire jaw. My hands were numb and pale.

I pulled myself up from my position on the side of the building and tried to gather myself. I fixed my beanie and adjusted my jacket, and used my sleeve to wipe the tears from my face. I forced myself to close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. I knew I needed to go home. No matter how much I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t have a death wish. Not yet, anyway.

I opened my eyes and squinted across the dock, trying to figure out where I was. I could see the faint light of the main road I had come from pretty far in the distance, and I was shocked I’d ran this far out onto the dock. The dim yellow lights on the dock didn’t offer much comfort for me, making it difficult to see if there were any patches of ice in front of me, and the loud crashing of the aggressive waves put me on edge.

I walked slowly and carefully along the dock, trying to keep my eyes low to watch my footing. It was so painfully empty out here. I was slipping and sliding all along the dock.

I reached the part of the dock where the path to my left led between two of the red buildings. The pathway beside me was very dark, just one light flickering down it. I slid painfully as my feet got confused underneath me and my left foot caught a patch of ice, and I fell to the ground on my butt with a thud.

“s**t,” I cursed. I was beginning to get really nervous— I wasn’t sure how I’d made it all the way out on the dock without falling on the way here, with all of the ice and the waves from the storm. This must be one of the docks they didn’t use much, because I didn’t see any salt on it. I rubbed my bruised hip grumpily.

I carefully— and not so gracefully, I might add— clambered to my feet, trying to get a foothold. I huffed when I successfully managed to hoist myself up.

And then something growled at me.

My brain couldn’t register what the sound was at first. My breathing hitched, and the hair on my neck stood on edge as my eyes nervously scanned the walkway in front of me. Something in me— I wasn’t sure if it was some long buried survival instinct, or just intuition, told me to look down the pathway between the buildings to my right.

And there it was.

I froze in place as I made eye contact with a ginormous black wolf.

I couldn’t make out much about it. I’d seen wolves in movies enough to know that this was one— but all I could see was a long, black snout full of snarling teeth. It’s red eyes glinted at me dangerously in the darkness.

Panic sank in as I stared at it and it made a raspy snarl, snapping it’s powerful jaws in my direction. Suddenly, my blood didn’t feel hot for once. It felt ice cold. My breath came in gasps.

It maintained eye contact with me for what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a few seconds. And then I noticed all of the muscles and ligaments in the beast’s powerful body were tensing, and it was in a crouching position. It’s going to kill me, I told myself. It’s going to kill me, and tear me to pieces.

“There’s a lot of carnivores around here,” Jax’s beautiful face, worried and trying to convey a warning, was flashing in my brain as if to tell me to run.

I didn’t move. Something in me told me that if I even so much as twitched a finger, the thing was going to lunge at me. It ran its tongue across its massive pointed canine teeth. I tried to remain as still as I possibly could, trying to gauge what the beast was going to do. There was no way I could run. I’d fall on the icy dock, and like all the nightmares I’ve ever had of being chased and not being able to run quickly, it would eat me.

The wolf was so tense now it seemed to be shaking, it’s head still hanging low to the ground. The street light above it flickered just enough for me to see the saliva pouring from its mouth.

It snarled one last time, and then it lunged towards me.

I screamed. I screamed as loud as my cold lungs would allow as fear melted my frozen form and I scrambled backwards, trying to get away from the wolf’s quickly approaching form.

Something went wrong, though. I felt air beneath my feet as I slid on a patch of ice— there was no dock under my feet now, and I plunged deep into the freezing water below.