They were falling apart.
Funny that this insight came from an eight years old girl.
Monika wished that Charlotte was here, so that she could tell her this realization. Charlotte would laugh, for sure, and somehow it would make this seem less intimidating, more bearable.
Right now, there was nothing remotely funny about this thought.
Falling apart-this little gathering of two ghosts, a moody teenage boy, a drug lord and a young girl.
The gang, as her father so aptly named it. A gang of murderers and criminals.
Falling apart not as a result of quarrel, rather, it was about the conflict of interests. The gang, working together, had led to the compromise of its members' own principles. Working together had been a bad idea from the start. She knew that, always did, but of course no one listened to her.
Marcus was mostly concerned about wealth, power and his reputation. Sarah, with her violent but quiet threats, only wanted to keep her son safe. Charlotte wanted her old life back. Or at least some imitation, an echo, of it. She was not sure if Daniel knew what he wanted, or if he even wanted anything. He was always aimless and distracted.
How clear their motives seemed to Monika. Perhaps only because she was detached enough from the situation. Everyone seemed to forget her presence, and in the midst of action, she was always shoved aside. For her protection, they claimed, like she was a fragile porcelain doll.
Perfect, innocent, something to be displayed and admired.
Could they not see, when they looked into her eyes, that she stopped being naive a long time ago? Were they blind to the emptiness in her, the absence of any remorse or pity, when she pointed the gun at Daniel and prepared to pull the trigger?
Or, as she suspected, they choose to deceive themselves. Pretend that she could still be a child.
Ridiculous.
What did she want, then?
Many things. To belong, to be safe, to be loved, to keep the gang together, to avenge her brothers deaths. She was wanting too much. She was too greedy.
The greedy ones, she recalled, that she had read about in stories, always ended up with nothing.
Like the farmer who had sliced open the goose that could lay golden eggs, finding a tragic, terrible world of scarlet.
And nothing else. Nothing but the warm blood coating his hands, the still-beating heart, the overpowering smell of death.
Her descriptions were getting...
She knew who was responsible for that.
Father should have killed Daniel, and proceeded to kill Charlotte's parents, she thought savagely. They could have had revenge then
With a scowl that was rarely seen on her face, Monika snapped her book shut.
No comments:
Post a Comment