Spectrum

Chapter 8

" WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN? " I heard a rough voice yell in the wee hours of the night forcefully shocking me out of my sleep.

As I sat up in the bed, I placed a hand over my heart which was cover by the thin material of my silk nightgown which was beating wildly as I panted heavily.

" STOP THE YELLING, YOU MIGHT WAKE HER UP. " Another, more feminine voice shouted, in addition, contributing to the noise.

I turned my head over to Mason's side seeing that his bed was empty which was a bit alarming to me as I tried to keep my composure.

I was a deep sleeper but simple noise could scare or shock me out of my sleep like a nightmare, which left me sometimes struggling to breathe and in times like this, either my father or my brother would be there to help me through it but I found myself alone at this moment as I reached over to the night table to get my inhaler.

My inhaler was there for times like these where I had no one to help calm me down or to help with opening my airways. I slid to the corner of the bed as I took a few more pumps of the medication. As soon as I was finished, I felt the anger surge through me.

I hated feeling like this, vulnerable and why in the world would you be screaming at the top of the lungs so late in the night and I could honestly care less about what they might have been arguing about.

I slipped off to the side, sliding my feet into my bedside slippers. I forcefully pulled the door opened looking down the narrow hallway before making my way to the stairs.

The voices became more hushed the closer I got to the living room. The sight before me was shocking, to say the least. The living room was trashed, the furniture was thrown to all sides of the room, newspaper and magazines were scattered all over the floor and a few vases were broken.

Riana and Mason stood to the side of the room watching the scene before them unfold, mother and Julius stood in front of each other, the veins in Julius' arm standing at attention to his balled wrist, my mother stood with a baseball bat tightly clutch in her right hand, which had no doubt something to do with the trashed living area.

" What is going on here, " The words came out of my mouth forced as I could barely make them out. It had seemed as if the time on Earth had stopped at that moment as everyone focused all of their attention to me, stopping what they were all doing before.

" Darling, go back to bed. " My mother said in a sickly sweet voice.

" It's not like I can do that with all the ruckus you're causing down here, " I rolled my eyes as I made m way to the couch to sit down.

The next thing she did, had me doubling over in shock.

She gripped my arm tightly as if to cause pain before lowing her face to mine, and spoke with gritted teeth, " Go back to bed you stubborn pretentious brat, " She spat, her eyes blazing with unquenched fire and I swear she had thought that she had scared me in the slightest bit.

A smirk drew across my face, even in my lowest moment, I never failed to show who really had the advantage here, despite her tightening grip on my arm, she really couldn't touch me and I had made a mental note to mention this interaction to my father later.

At the expression on my face, she drew a hand back to slap me but before it could make contact with my skin, her hand was grabbed.

" Don't you dare hit her, " Julius' said a bit too forcefully, pulling my mother by her hand.

" She's my child, I can do whatever the hell I want to her, did you see that look on her face, " She turned to look back at me allowing me to shoot her a skeeving look.

I couldn't help but feel betrayed somehow, my brother was going to stand and watch our mother strike me in the face, a complete stranger stepped in and defended me while all my own flesh and blood did was stand and look. I wasn't going to let my mother hit me, in fact, by the time her hand had lifted, my guard was fully up and ready for defence, I had never been hit in sanction by an adult in my life, and I wasn't going to let the first be the person I despised the most in the world.

I turned to stare Mason in the eye, reading the expression on his face. He had some connection to her, I could feel it in my bones because there was no absolute way that my brother, my flesh and blood, would stand and watch me be violated in any way.

There was something going on, there was something deeper than us just coming here because of negligent behaviour and it really was in that moment I had started to question everything that we had done and every single detail of everything started to make it's way back to me, there was a deeper meaning, there must have been and I had come up with a conclusion.

Mason had wanted to come here.

Down to every little thing, every party, every trashed car, everything, he had planted in my head, I was just the vessel and I had sunken with him, I had been truly manipulated and I was just now realizing it, it had taken me seeing the full-fledged amusement in his eyes to come to this conclusion. 

There was only one explanation for this and I didn't want to hear it from myself, I was too hurt at the moment to try to decipher what his true intentions were, but I didn't let it show, I was going to play him at his own game.

" I don't care if she's not my child Janine, I won't let you hit a child you didn't even care to raise pass in this house, she has no respect for you and you wonder why. " Julius' strong words made their way to my ears drawing my attention back to the scene before me.

My mother wrung her hand out of his grasp before angrily strutting out of the house leaving us with the tense air around us.

Julius let out an exasperated sigh before moving towards the kitchen more than likely to get himself a beer and Riana soon ran after Janine, Mason also leaving to wherever leaving me in the living room to my thoughts which were once again running wild.

I simply couldn't imagine my brother betraying me or my father in any way for people he's only known for a nanosecond, the more I thought about it the more things made sense to me and it lead me to wonder if he had been in contact with her for longer than I had anticipated in the first place.

Had he lied about being abused? I doubt it, he wasn't one to lie about serious matters but at this moment I don't even feel like I know who he is anymore, I honestly questioned our relationship, was it all a whim? was it fake? 

I felt my heartbreak at every question I asked myself, it was honestly too overbearing for me and I honestly wouldn't allow this to be my breaking point and if it was one thing I wasn't, it was a fool.

I channelled all my emotions into anger, I wouldn't allow myself to be played from here on out and I would make sure of it, I just had to play him at his own game.

I felt the couch dip on the left side allowing me to look over to Julius who seemed to be letting off steam as he took large gulps from his bottle of Hennessy as he stared out in space.

" Are you ok? " I found myself asking him, besides my own problems, he was going through a dilemma of his own and I wasn't one to ignore another's sufferings.

He turned to look at me before touching further into the couch and averting his eyes to the ceiling " You never know a person's true intentions until they don't get what they want. " He took another swig of his brandy.

" You can't trust anyone in this world except yourself because all people do is put more obstacles in your course, they don't want to see you thrive, no matter how much they preach it to you, " I honestly felt inclined to listen more to him.

Julius was one of those people, they knew what to say in every situation, relating to them or not. He was the type of person that when he talked, you just had to listen, no matter how you're feeling and this was one of the few moments that I had truly needed to listen, and that I did.

" Never let them pull you out of your element, " That was the last thing he left me with that night.