Bang Bang.

You know what I always used to do before I went to sleep? I used to say good night to each of my stuffed animals. Back in the good old days, when I just had a few, Colors, Woof Woof, and all them. When I couldn’t go to sleep, I’d play out these whole scenes with them. Like, one of them was new or something, and some of the others would bully that one. Then there’d be another one who always became the new one’s friend.
The reason I think you’ll find this important is because that particular night, the night of the accident, I was doing that exact same thing. For the last time, I guess. So, I was playing around with them, oblivious to my sister’s snoring in the bed on the other side of the room. There was a commotion outside my bedroom door, but I just turned over, trying to ignore the yelling. It was my step mom and my dad arguing again, their high-pitched voices carrying through every pore in the wall.
Sissy, whose real name is Alexa, sat up in her bed, and through the muted darkness, I could see her rubbing sleep from her eyes. I looked over at the clock that sat on her nightstand. It was 12:27. “What’s going on?” She asked in a tired voice, I looked away from her towards the door. A loud bang caused me to jump, and I answered her in a scared voice. I was only about seven at the time.
“Lily and Daddy are fighting.” She sighed and got up, throwing open the door, and started screaming at them. She was almost 12, and even though she was hardly ever around, I idolized her. To this day, I still do. She the courage I never had.
I gathered up the soft Jerzee blanket around myself, waiting for her to trudge back in. She didn’t, and a scream came from lips that I suppose were hers. I looked around the room in panic. I hated it when they fought, and what had happened now? Had someone been hit? The screaming continued and sank back down into my bed, covering my head with the pillow.
I found out something later that I didn’t even consider. The loud bang, that’d been a gun. The screaming was indeed my sisters’ and my father was dead. I never saw him that last time. I just dozed off finally in my bad and was awoken around 3 AM to go to the hospital. Daddy was indeed dead.
Lily calls it ‘the accident.’ She said that Daddy was threatening her with the gun and then turned it on himself. The yelling I’d heard before, that wasn’t Daddy’s. It was Lily’s. “I’ll kill you Bill. I will.” Bang.
I never told anyone.