Page 2 of The Games of Madmen

“Run, Zane!” my mother screams out from her sprawled position on our kitchen table. A different man is above her, holding her down, and she’s bleeding from the nose and mouth.

“Mama?” I choke.

My eyes dart to my brother who is tied to a chair bleeding from facial wounds. He’s slumped forward, but is watching with tears in his eyes as our mother struggles with the monster man above her.

I step backwards and scrub at my eyes to make it all go away. This isn’t real. It’s a bad dream. I’m tired and cold. My brain is just frozen and playing tricks on me.

There are men all around now staring at me and talking in that stupid language I don’t understand.

“Run!” my father bellows and I jump.

Turning to flee, I hit a wall. A broad shadow creeps over me like a wave at the beach where we used to live, swallowing me up. Before I can do anything, a fist holding a gun comes down toward me.

Fear gets stuck in my throat. No screams escape from me when pain explodes down my face and darkness drags me backwards into nothingness.

When the light finally makes it back into my eyes, there’s no sound around me apart from the roaring of my own heartbeat. Panic smothers my body, making me sit upright.

Flinching from pain above my eye, my fingers dab there to find sticky blood and the memory of being hit with a gun springs into my mind.

“Mama,” I croak.

Scrambling to my feet, I search the space before me.

I don’t want to see. I wish I didn’t wake up.

Blood, pools of it, cover the entire floor of the kitchen like it was made to be there.

My mother’s broken body lies still on the table, her clothes gone. Red swollen slits are all over her chest and vacant eyes stare at me. It’s not my mother’s stare. She’s not there anymore. I’m going to be sick.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi…

My brother is nowhere to be seen. Maybe he got away?

Who were those bad men?

Would Dad think it was just a bad thing and not bad people now?

As the thought passes through my mind, my eyes find his body.

No. No. Noooo.

His head isn’t there anymore.

The darkness is coming back, chasing away the light. I’m falling.

Two weeks later…

Looking down at the pants swinging around my shins, I sigh and try pulling them down.

Why I couldn’t bring my own clothes with me here, I don’t know, but their clothes make my skin itchy and don’t fit right.

There’s one girl in this orphanage that speaks the language I do, and she only speaks to me to tell me I’ll never be adopted because of my ugly scar that I got when the gun hit me.

She’s probably right.

I have no one now. I’m stuck here with these people until I’m a grown up and can leave to try to find a new home.

My mother’s face haunts me here. No one will give me answers when I ask who hurt my family. Only that they’re gone now and the bad people will be caught.