Bury Me(65)

I failed when I was five and they sent me away.

I succeeded at eighteen, only to be chased out into the rain and hit over the head in the hopes that I would die for my sins, resolving them of theirs.

It’s a pity they had to learn the hard way that you can’t kill evil. Not with torture, not with guilt, not with lies…maybe it’s not something anyone can physically stop. Maybe it’s not something that can be bashed with a brick to the head, and it’s definitely not something that can be covered up with lies when that brick doesn’t get the job done, in the hopes that it won’t remember the truth.

Evil always remembers the truth.

I already know what my eyes are going to find when I get to the bottom of the hole. The tornado in my mind has suddenly ended, dropping all the pieces and parts, fragments of memories and bits of conversations into all the right slots, and I see everything now. I remember it all, and I finally have the answers to my questions.

It really is amazing how the mind works, and Dr. Beall was right. A person’s mind will stop her from remembering certain things until she’s ready. Until that shattered and broken mind is healed enough to finally see the truth and accept what they tried to make her forget.

I lean forward and I see.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Nothing will ever be good again.

It will all be bad.

Bad.

Bad.

Bad.

“My name is…”

I stop in the middle of my sentence, forcing myself to hold the rest of the words in a little bit longer as my eyes come to a stop at the very bottom of the hole. Now that I can see, now that I can remember, I wait for the anticipation to build once again. When I say the truth out loud, I’ll finally be free and I want to savor the excitement.

I stare at the girl with the long black hair, forever pulled into a tight braid. My eyes move over the dress that will never again be a bright shade of pink but an ugly, dull brown caked with mud and forced to dry with stains and streaks left behind by the dirty water that filled the hole. I look into the wide-open green eyes that now look just like my real father’s, and mine—dead and empty.

“Do you see?” he whimpers behind me. “Do you finally remember what you did? RAVENNA! OH MY GOD, MY BABY! I LOVE YOU. I’M SO SORRY!”

He screams the name and his words of love as loud as he can and now I know he’s not talking about me. Just like my mother wasn’t talking about me when she apologized, told me she loved me, and begged for me to wait for her.

They never loved me. They never wanted me. It was all for her, the girl at the bottom of the hole, who got everything that should have been mine. She was the good one, and I was the bad one, and that’s how it would always be.

I failed when I was five and tried to drown her in the lake.

I succeeded at eighteen and finally got my revenge.

“It’s my turn now, Ravenna,” I say to the girl at the bottom of the hole. The girl who looked just like me. The girl who had the same blood running through her veins.

The girl who was good, when I was nothing but bad.

Standing up next to the hole, I turn around and pick up the piece of wood lying on the ground in between the two men, one still unconscious on the right, and one still sobbing into his hands on the left. I hold the wood with the rusty nails protruding from the bottom tightly in my hands and lift it above my head, trying to decide if I should bring it down to the left of me, or to the right.

Either direction will make me feel good, so it’s not like it matters. The one on the left is more deserving, but it’s almost more satisfying to know he’ll go on living out the rest of his days in complete and abject misery. The one on the right gives me pause, but I know he’ll never be able to accept the truth of what happened down here and what I did. It was nice pretending I could be normal for a little while, but I’m finished pretending.

“Ravenna, Ravenna, Ravenna,” my father intones in between sobs.

“Ravenna is dead. Ravenna doesn’t exist,” I say with a smile.

I slowly lift the wood above my head and then quickly slam it down, knowing I made the right decision. Yanking on the wood to pull the bloody nails out of the skull resting against the floor, I open my mouth, finally setting myself free as I lift the wood again and slam the nails home.

T means death, death means T. Remember T. REMEMBER!

“My name is Tatiana Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, and I will never, ever live in a prison again. I finally remember. I’m finally free.”