Vada

As a girl, I once had a visit from a woman in red. Long, blonde hair stained with something that made her smell metallic, piercing eyes that seemed to tell her everything you knew, and skin so close to genuine porcelain that it seemed to reflect light. Save for the random moles and freckles riddling her arms, I would have thought she might have been a true doll. She was young, very young, likely 15, but she towered over my childhood bed, and would stroke my hair and tell me stories to sleep like a mother. These stories ranged from all sorts of places, cows jumping over moons to the boogeyman under my bed. Despite this I felt calm in her presence, and due to my youth I believed she was an angel sent to protect me. It is only now, in reflection I realize how truly wrong I was.

The last time I saw the woman, Lily, she called herself, I was ten years old. This night was different from the others, and I could tell by the moment she appeared. Her angelic glow was dimmed, her eyes not so piercing but more human, and her general demeanor made me nervous to hear what she had to say to me.

“My final story to you is tonight, little one.” She began as I settled into bed. In my mind I can still hear her, the voice of a child trying so hard to be maternal. “A story of myself, and my life long ago.”

That night, Lily told me everything. Now, as an adult, I feel that it is my job to continue this story to anyone that will listen.

Lily was born to Amanda Kesserman and Evan Kelser on the 16th of June. She was loved, very loved, but immediately was thrown into dysfunction when her parents separated in her infancy. From an early age Lily described feeling different from others, isolated and afraid to participate with her peers. She spent her recesses alone on swings, her lunches sat silently, and she remarked that she took comfort in it because it was all she’d ever known, until her 10th birthday. Come the day of her party she was given a phone by her mother Amanda, and though Lily knew that she shouldn’t, social media was one of the first apps that graced her downloading history. Finally, she had a community, friends that shared her interests and wanted to get to know about her. All was well in her life for around a year until she made the decision to meet one of the first people she had ever met: Samuel.

When she spoke his name, it sounded like a sin or a curse I was too young to hear. For once, instead of seeing all of my secrets in her eyes, I saw her pain, though it was masked quickly. I remember her saying, “I am alright. He is just a memory.”

Of course as a child she did not go into detail about the events that occurred while she was with Samuel, but she never mentioned going home, her parents, or even her two little cats again. She told me about the house he lived in, her pink room with a cat stuffed animal that he had bought for her, and him. His buzzcut brown hair, blue eyes, wide stature but not unfit. The hatred she bore for him didn’t need to be put into words, it was felt. As an adult I can remark on the pain she must have felt, the fear and claustrophobia of being trapped in that house with only him, and I feel the heartbreak in my chest now as I write this.

In her time with Samuel, Lily produced one little girl: Colette. She was only 13, but she loved that girl with every bit of her heart, and decided that one day she would escape just for Colette. She spent two years planning how to get out unnoticed, how to get home, what to pack for her toddler and herself, trying to figure out where exactly she even was, but eventually a plan was in motion. On that faithful September day, Samuel, now 23 was meant to be at work, his truck was gone as far as Lily could see from her window. Immediately she began gathering a week's worth of clothing for herself and her daughter, shoving food and pull-ups into a backpack and zipping it. She chose an inconspicuous outfit, red tank top and blue jeans (She described specifically), and darted out of the door with Colette in tow.

It was at this point in my childhood that Lily began to weep, hanging her head low. The following events of this story get incredibly dark, and I advise all that are reading to take caution.

Lily described the feeling as she ran down the street, barefoot and carrying a toddler and a backpack that was beating on her back- and she described it as closer to flying than wings could ever take her. She described feeling overjoyed, hopeful until the sound of a pop stopped her in her place. At first she looked around without thinking much about it, until her eyes caught a tall, blue eyed man standing with a shotgun pointed right at her. But she wasn’t bleeding, not even cut. Colette was.

She described in great detail the death of her daughter which I will spare you from, but know that the little girl did not make it past the road, and Lily was dragged inside. This time, she explained, handcuffed to a radiator, the backpack she’d packed for two sitting bloodstained and just out of her reach. Beside it mockingly sat the key to freeing her. For days Lily explained that she starved and refused to speak just to spite Samuel, and this lasted until autumn came in October. Finally she was left alone with just a plate of food and a fork, and she decided to use the opportunity. Grabbing the fork, she carefully dragged the key to herself and managed to break free. This time she did not run, this time she decided she would get the ultimate revenge.

Traveling out of the room she’d been trapped in, she explained that she very quietly snuck into the kitchen and grabbed the shotgun by the door meant to ward off intruders. Despite never having shot a gun before, Lily learned that it was a very self-explanatory act as she put a bullet in the skull of Samuel, who had been sitting none-the-wiser in his living room. Lily then turned the shotgun onto herself, and decided to be home with her little girl once more.