#adele .

when she was a child, adele stole her families boat and went out deep into the swamp behind their community to find her brother after the police failed to do anything when he'd been missing for a week. when police were alerted to a young girl carrying a body down the street they arrived to find a 10 year old adele clinging to the mutilated body of her 6 year old brother finley. when they attempted to separate the two the girl became violent and feral, screeching and refusing to let anyone near his body. when they were finally able to detach them after their parents had been called to help, the police found it to be a miracle adele had survived at all, finding her covered from head to toe in small scratched and scrapes, with unexplained strangely shaped bruising littering her small body. they found what looked like a knife wound leaking blood from her shoulder but no matter what they tried she'd refused to talk or tell them anything that could explain what happened in the swamp. police, convinced by a child psychologist that what must have happened was too traumatizing for her young mind to comprehend what she had seen, released adele to her family. they held finley's funeral three days later. it took years for della to return to something resembling normal, but the refusal- or inability- to talk about that night never changed. not because she couldn't remember what she had seen, but because she would never forget it, waking or dreaming, and she knew even then, nobody would believe her if she did. even now, she can't forget that horror she saw, feasting, lurking, waiting for her, even now. she drowns her mind in a bottle every night in hopes that the alcohol will knock her out quick enough to stop her from dreaming, but to no avail, and no escape, she sees those eyes every time she closes her own, haunting her- waiting to finish off the girl that got away.