The Beginning
Nightmares and terrors of echo’s from a past.
~Micha Ragen
Tears stream down Mom’s face as I drag her into the hidden compartment inside the closet. It’s our safe place my big brother built and told me if anything bad started to happen within the walls of our home I was to take Mom and run to it and hide. To do it quietly and not ever make a sound. The safe room was inside the closet in his and father’s office that they shared for working on the family business.
The goddamn Mafia, we were the Mafia and hated by many, loved by few.
They said no one would even know, and they would never look there for us. We would be safe.
So, with my mom wrapped in my tiny arms, I tried to keep her safe and quiet like my big brother told me to do. You’re the man of the family if anything happens to father and me.
We can see everything happening inside the room from the peephole. Why would you place a peephole in there? It’s haunting but I can’t seem to look away.
They can’t see us, the bad men dressed in black, but I can see them. Each and every one of them. I burn their faces into my memory.
I never understood why we would need it.
Until now.
I run my tiny hands over my mother’s back calming her, trying to soothe her with my shhh’s it’s ok mom, it’s all ok. I said it over and over until she was sobbing quietly, the silent echo’s inside the tiny space mixing with the sounds of extreme violence outside the door. I watch the whole thing unfold and end around me.
The men in black came in with guns—the kind that are from the movies that my big brother watches in his room. I’m not allowed to, my mom said, but my brother used to let me lay in his bed watching with him in secret. Don’t tell mom he always said. She would have a fit if she knew. I was different, she said to father all the time. His mind is too brilliant to be wasted on violence. I never understood what she meant.
Big knives, they pulled big knives out with their guns and the sunlight hit the cool silver sending shards of light over the walls inside the office.
One man in black charged at my brother who has a knife of his own. His knife slices over the man’s right cheek. Blood drips from the wound, the flesh sliced open and that angers the man, so he wildly swings at my brother.
Another man comes up behind my brother wrapping his arms around him, holding him tight as he tries to fight him off. The man who he cut advances on him and stabs him over and over and over again. His pained grunts fill the room along with father’s angry screams. He’s begging them to stop. To leave, just go. My mom is begging them to stop and it silently echoes around me, while inside my head I am screaming at them to stop as well. Just stop! That is my family!
It hurts to hear my father beg and my mother cry. As my brother gurgles out within the arms you hate. This attack echo’s loud inside my head for vengeance will be had I will rise strong and I will reign a pain upon you and your Familia that not even god could withstand.
Something is happening in my chest. There is a pain, a tightness.
It’s hard to breathe as I watch them. They don’t stop. My brother is on the floor choking on his own blood as one man stands over him and shoots him in the head. The noise is so loud its echo is inside my ears as my mother’s nails dig into the flesh of my arm popping the skin.
With that one sudden bang, he’s dead.
He’s dead. They killed him, right here, in front of us, and they don’t even know that we have witnessed this attack on our family.
They have no idea that the monarch to the Walsh name is here behind the walls watching as they take out her family. The only living son and now heir has seen them. Watched and witnessed the attack burning their eyes into my mind.
Last words echo inside my head causing my anger to ripple over my spine. A fierce need to protect my father washes over me. He can’t die this way. He’s my father, my mother’s husband. I reach for the handle with no plan in mind, just a blind rage to hurt them like they are hurting us.
Mother’s sharp grip stops me in my tracks. I turn in the small space, my eyes searching hers, my chest caving with pain. My breaths are fast and splitting with a newfound pain.
I stare up at her with questions in my eyes. Shaking my head, knowing I need to do this. They need to die for this attack.
Doesn’t she want me to save my father?
To save us?
She looks broken, so shattered as she stares down at me with wetness coating her cheeks. Long, silver tears roll down from her sad eyes to her cheeks to her neck, finally landing on the pearls father just gave her for being the most beautiful women he had ever seen.
She slowly shakes her head, her hands on my shoulders holding me there mouthing a silent no.
My heart shatters in my chest when I turn back around and watch the rest of the scene unfold. I try so hard not to cry.
