Fiction: “This Sinister Inheritance: Chapter 5”

Walking around our streets, this suburb is different. Everything is gloomy. Sure, people laugh and smile, but only because the rot is deep within us. The rot lingers around the school children - our kids and removes the safety from our homes. A man was recently arrested for breaking an entry, scaring the kids, at my son’s school by telling them the legends I’ve been relaying here. This created a divide in our society - that something like this could happen in our small, tight-knit community, which has been around for years is a shock. After all the evidence, the books, crime scene photos and even the surviving victim impact statements, do they mean nothing? Are their lives not worth justice, even though it was over a hundred years ago? Are they not still human? They deserve justice.

I sit at my desk looking into the abyss.
“I could've missed something.”
I say, to my husband, who sits weary-eyed, watching me obsess over these many files.
“Put down those files. Fuck’s sake, Maura, you're going crazy!”
“I’M GOING CRAZY!? YOU’RE THE ONE WHO BELIEVES THAT SONS ARE BEST. YOU DENY OUR DAUGHTERS BECAUSE THEY ARE MERELY DAUGHTERS!”

He moves closer to me as I flinch from his cold touch.
He grabs my wrist and whispers into my ear.

“They are daughters, not human beings.”
I stare at him wide-eyed.
“I can’t believe you’ve just said that about our children! You’re still their father whether you like it or not.”
He strikes me quickly, not wasting any time to discredit my defiance.

I decide just to leave it; it’s not worth the trips to the hospital, the constant feeding of lies, and even trying to reason with him.

I walk away relatively unharmed, but I am damaged. I am like a rose with its stem cut off, unable to grow without support and nutrients. He doesn’t pour water on me to help me grow; he pours acid into my roots, which travels throughout my body, leaving me withering and broken. The vase in which I sit is my shattered body. The stem has been like a nerve cut from my heart.

“I’m just not in the mood.”