I was born a killer. No matter how many times Claire told me it wasn’t true, I couldn’t help but feel like my mother’s death was all my fault.
My father had always resented how his wife had died giving birth to me, I didn’t know any better when he would lock me in my room unfed for hours. As a tiny seven year old, I thought it was normal. After I had been let out I would always run to Claire. She was my big strong fourteen year old sister, the heart of our family and my best friend in the whole world.
“But why doesn’t daddy like me? What have I done wrong?” I would whisper to her.
“You don’t need to have all the answers, Wren,” She’d reply as she combed my short blonde hair. “Don’t worry about the past… Your bright future is ahead of you.”
I knew her future was bright for sure. Out of the five Nilsen children, Claire was the most cheerful and smartest of all. The eldest daughter of my parents had never ceased to get good grades and help with her siblings in our small beautiful home in Norway.
Our neighbors lived far and few between the hills of green grass winding down to the center of town, but our house was fixed upon a large cliff that overlooked the beautiful deep blue sea. Often times I would have petrifying dreams at night and would crawl into Claire’s bed in my pure white sleeping dress. She would whisk me up in her arms and carry me to the large cliff, letting the ocean crashing against rocks below soothe me to sleep. She was the only other girl out of all my siblings, but to me she felt almost like a mother. Claire had raised me since the day I’d been born and never resented me for anything unlike my father. The traditional nighttime bonding we had was the only thing that made me happy, I knew with my big sister I would never have to fear anything…Until the day I killed her.
On that dreadfully terrible night, we had gone to the cliff so I could calm down after my horrible nightmares as usual.
“What did you dream of this time?” Claire said as we sat in the soft grass under a sky full of sparkling stars.
“Daddy got rid of me… He always says he’ll do that in real life, so why wont he do it already?”
My sister kindly laughed and cupped a flyaway hair out of my face. “Wren, don’t say that! Dad says a lot of things he doesn’t mean. He’s kept you for seven years, don’t forget about that, silly.”
I wasn’t so sure, Daddy was always putting his anger and stress from work onto me. Everyday he had a long commute to the city where he programmed games and websites for people, but when I got home from elementary school he would usually be on the couch drunk with some type of drink or another. He said he did this because it took the pain away from my mother’s death, but my little head didn’t understand what he meant… how could a drink take sad memories away?
When he was in this state, I would quietly tiptoe to the back of my room and wait for my brothers and sister to come home from their school so we could all play in the fields behind our house, forgetting about Daddy’s problems.
“Hey cutie pie,” Claire snapped her fingers and my thoughts vanished into thin air. “Did you hear me? It’s gonna be okay. You always have me to run to if you need anything, got it?”
I nodded and tried not to stare into her bright green eyes, she could tell how anyone was feeling just by a simple glance. As I suspected, she saw I still hadn’t taken our father off my mind. Claire grabbed me by my hand and pulled me off from the soft ground.
“I know exactly how to distract you, baby sis.”
“How?”
“Let’s play tag!”
My sister grinned as she swiftly tapped my shoulder and bounced away in a different direction. It wasn’t odd for us to play games outside in the dead of night, we often did this when Claire couldn’t talk me into going to bed. I’d soon get tired of running around the landscape and collapse into her arms so she could take me back inside, her ideas were pretty clever to be honest.
“Hey! Get back here!” My cheeky high-pitched voice ran out as I tumbled through the grass in my sleeping dress.
Claire whooped and giggled, always staying out of reach from getting tagged by my tiny hands. I felt as free as a bird soaring through the clouds as I ran to chase my sister behind our house.
One minute…
Five minutes…
Ten minutes we played tag by ourselves as the moon smiled over us. Claire was running out of energy, she wasn’t as small and energetic like me. She kept stopping to gasp for air but leap away just in time before I tagged her, which made me frustrated but laugh out of the thrill nonetheless. This time my sister had stopped for breathe at the very edge of the cliff. Her bare feet were standing on the last piece of land that jutted out to the sea, sharp rocks and painful boulders lay below as waves harshly rammed into them… I had never been down there for that exact reason.
“I’m gonna get you this time!” I hollered as I fanatically waved my little arms through the air.
Claire snorted and wiped sweat off her forehead. She knew to a seven year old girl with lots of spirit that this game wasn’t taken lightly. I ran so hard I thought my heart would burst, my hands outstretched to touch my sister.
“You’re… almost…there!” My brain told me. There was no where for Claire to go, she simply stood and watched me knowing she would finally be caught.
“TAG!” My excited yell echoed through the night.
It took a moment for me to realize that I had just done somethingso terribly wrong everything became slow-motion in my eyes. Claire’s face was filled with pure horror, and when I looked down…
Her feet weren’t on the ground… my sister was falling.
So happy and excited I had won the game, I accidentally hit her so hard I knocked her right off the edge of the cliff. Time froze as my big strong sister didn’t look so brave anymore, she reached out to grab me but it was too late. The slow motion had stopped… everything became faster than lightning as I watched what I had done.
“CLAIRE!” I screamed in horror. She continued to fall down the slope of the ledge, her whole body slamming into the piercing boulders below. I saw her lifeless heap finally reach the bottom where her head hit one last rock with a “THWACK”. That’s how I became a murder for the second time in my life…my poor mother and my beautiful sister were dead because of me.
The silence on the cliff was more painful than anything I could ever imagine. My eyes were stuck to looking at where Claire’s body was being pounded and dragged my the numbing waves. Suddenly my body began to tremble, It was as if the coldest winter of Norway had just arrived.
“Claire,” I began to sob in a terrified quiet voice. “I-I’m so sorry… Claire, please come back…”
I shook and shook in the field above the ledge, but nothing was ever going to make me stop looking at her… that was, until I heard the house’s front door slam open.
I jumped from the loud noise and turned to see who was coming. Striding through the tall grass came my father, he had brunette hair and green eyes like my sister. One of the reasons he had hated me since I was a baby was because I looked exactly like my mother. She had once had a beautiful pair of crystal blue eyes and wavy blonde hair that reached down to her shoulders, or so I’ve been told. Daddy didn’t like to look at me directly in the face because he said I reminded him too much of her, but now he came towards me with the force of the wind, a shotgun loaded in his right hand.
“What happened?” His firm deep voice ran out like one of an army commander’s. I looked up at my tall ginormous father and stuttered so quietly I couldn’t even hear myself, the night had become eerily soundless.
“D-daddy…” I cried as I turned away from the shore’s bloody scene below. “Claire’s gone…”
ns18.222.183.102da2
