2: LOST IN THE NIGHT

“DON’T!” my mother shouted in the middle of limping from pain. She attempted to get up writhing in pain but her eyes glared at the men that shot her. “She’ll be the fiancé of the Rajiv clan’s first son! They won’t spare your lives if you kill her!”

I hugged my mother as she shouted at them. She was doing her best to keep speaking but every bit of her body was already shaking. I tore a portion of my shirt to cover her wound on the side of her stomach. I pressed on it and she squirmed. She’s losing so much blood!

“Please… what do you want? Why did you do this to my mother!”

“Darling…” my mother’s hands caressed my face. She was still lying on the floor.

“Hey!” I shouted again to the men in masks but they did not answer. “Are you robbers?! Do you want our money? I will give you a lot of money…” My anger melted into tears and my pretentious anger dissolved.

This time I looked up to them, begging. “We always keep some money on the bolt. You can have them all. Just let me call an ambulance for my mother.”

The men looked at each other. But one of them aimed his gun at me. He raised it high until the nuzzle almost touched my forehead.

My mother moved… “Please… please. Don’t. She’ll be married to the Rajiv family in no time. She’s promised to their first son.”

The man pointing the gun at me hesitates when he is about to shoot the gun… I’m not sure if it was because I conceded to give them our family’s money or because of the name that my mother mentioned.

Looking at the blood scattered on the floor, I was shaking and in a state of panic. From a distance, my Dad’s room was open. I could see a glimpse of him lying on the bed while me and my mother struggled for our lives here in the living room.

I don’t know who these people are. Why are they doing this? I just lost my father tonight… and my mother just got shot! I can’t lose them both.

Two of the men saw me looking through Dad’s room and they immediately went in there. Their footsteps echoed in the whole house. Their boots were filled with mud that their footprints marked on the tiled floor.

Three gunshots echoed from Dad’s room.

“DAD!” I called out, my voice breaking.

They just shot my dad. Three times. Oh, god! They murdered him even after already dying. I clasped my temples as I took in everything that was going on. This can’t be real, this can’t be real.

“He’s dead,” announced one of them. Like it was what they wanted after all. They still didn’t walk out of my father’s room. Several minutes have already passed by.

“What are you doing in our house!” I shouted if only I could do nothing. If only I would know what they wanted. If only I could give it to them so my mother wouldn’t endure another gunshot.

Instead, I received a loud groan from the man who refused to remove the gun aimed at me... “Shut your mouth!”

The door handle of the room beside my parents moved. As if there was someone in there. I held my breath as the man focused on the door. “Don’t move!” he shouted at us.

My mother’s cold hands held my shoulder as she whispered. “You have to leave before anything happens to you,” she said, her eyes filled with worry and desperation. “She then mumbled names… and an address. “Get there. Whatever it takes.”

I bit my lips as I shrug my head. “Mother, I can’t leave you right here…”

Her gentle eyes pierced at me with seriousness. Her hair was disheveled and her once lovely dress now covered with blood. “You. Have. To. Leave.”

“Mom…”

“Your dad and I owe you so much, Esmé. The truth and the secrets we kept for so long. We love you.”

Tears fell harder on my cheeks.

I held my mother’s hands, never wanting to let go.

“You need to leave. Grab the door and run,” my mother hissed. The two men were still inside my parent’s room, and the man who was looking out for us kept walking to the door. Our dog stays in that room. If the robbers open that, it would be the end of him.

“There’s still a way, Mom.”

My mother just looked at me, caressed my cheek then mumbled. “There’s no other way.”

She gripped my hands and helped me get up. Slowly she stepped in front of me and covered me as I walked towards the door.

The man opened the door where our dog stays and it immediately ran free and bit his arm. “Arghhh!”

There were commotions as the man struggled with breaking free from our dog’s aggression. My mother did not falter as she used herself to cover me. I immediately unlocked our front door. And it created a click sound. The man looked at us.

“Hey! Hey! Shit!” shouted the man who is now getting howled by my dog. His gun fell to the floor.

I looked at my mother’s eyes one last time before I ran towards the outside. It was still raining hard and in the middle of the darkest, I started running and running. Rumbling steps one after another, I repeated my mother’s words inside my head.

“Rajiv’s residence. Westbent Street. The biggest mansion I could see in front,” I whispered to myself as I kept running.

The wind blew in front of my face. The cold seeped through my skin. I was shivering but I didn’t stop running and walking and running. I don’t have anything with me. But only the words of my mother were inside my mind.

The streets were almost empty, but there were a few cars that passed through from time to time. But there was no taxi! I held onto my chest as I started breathing heavily, from running and exhaustion. My parents were left at home. My dad’s dead body and my mother’s bleeding from a gunshot.

It occurred to me that I should call the police. But I remember we don’t do that. We always had a couple of guards since I was little. We had a family doctor. But when my father got ill, our wealth slowly disappeared as did our bodyguards. My parents always kept cautious whenever we left our house. One time I saw a gun hidden under my dad’s pillow. They don’t tell me why. I did not dare ask. Our house has always been the only place they feel safe in. I always feel safe when I am with them. But not anymore, since those men rushed inside … and shot my mother in her stomach and put gunshots on my dad’s body who had just died.

Tears streamed through my face and I stumbled several times onto a hard cement road. Figments of what had happened at home filled my head. It kept breaking my heart. Weeping. Sobbing. Helplessly crying out in darkness.

A sharp pain jolted on my knees but I kept running. And running. Until I stumbled in front of the road and a taxi stopped in front of me.