Before My Eyes

For Bill - who knew I could do it.


Gabrielle Morgan was old enough to know that nothing or no one was perfect, but she thought her life was the great exception to the rule. She was the only child of a prosperous lawyer, and he was the ideal father, spending more time than usual with his beloved twelve-year-old. The time they spent together made Gabrielle come to idolize her father, who seemed like the epitome of good.
Her mother stayed home, and took care of her and their three story house, which was settled in the heart of Pittsburgh. Her mother possessed all the motherly qualities. Gentle, kind, beautiful and nurturing, everything Gabrielle wanted and needed in a mother. Her life consisted of a comforting daily routine.
That daily routine consisted of Gabrielle seeing her father off to work, then hurrying to school, and after school, hanging out with her friends till dinnertime, then rushing home right as her father pulled into the driveway. The family was close-knit, and Gabrielle couldn’t imagine living a life without her parents in it.
The routine began again, one Friday morning in late October, Gabrielle didn’t feel any different, though her dearest friend, Emily, said that something was going to happen, that she could almost sense it in the air. Gabrielle thought about it and then shook her head, life was going too perfect for her, and she was convinced that it would remain that way.
She walked home, as she saw her father’s Park Avenue driving down the street, she waited for him at the door and he stepped out of the car and hugged his “little girl.” They walked inside the house which was filled with the aroma of spaghetti cooking. Christopher, her father, embraced her mother, Tamara, and gave her a loving kiss.
“How was school, Gaby?” Tamara asked as she handed Gabrielle some plates to set the table.
“It was fine. Can people actually sense change before it happens?”
Christopher looked at his wife, and they shared a look, “I suppose they can, sometimes someone gets a feeling that they know that something’s going to happen. Why do you ask?”
“Because Emily said that she felt like something was going to happen, an whatever it is, it’s going to happen soon.”
“Do you feel that way?”
“No, I feel as if things couldn’t possibly change,” she whispered, but as soon as she heard those words come out of her mouth, she knew that the possibility of things changing, was not only very real, but inevitable.

***

The conversation at dinner turned quickly to that of school, and the upcoming play that Gabrielle was playing the lead. The excitement about being the star in “The Sound of Music,” completely enraptured Gabrielle, and she talked about rehearsals, and the songs she had to sing, which made her forget the worry about things changing.
After dinner, the family went to the living room to watch a movie, as a storm started to brew outside, making a tree’s branches eerily scratch the window. Gabrielle stared at the window, then there was a knock at the door… her heart started pounding.
Her parents exchanged a quick look and her dad stood up and walked over to the door, and opened it. A man dressed in a black suit, pushed his way in, and closed the door and locked it behind him. He shoved Gabrielle’s father into the living room
Gabrielle screamed, “Daddy!”
“Shut the fuck up!” the man pointed the gun at Gabrielle, she fell back against her mother, who wrapped her arms around her.
“Please, you don’t want to hurt us!” Tamara screamed, as her husband scrambled up towards them and hugged them.
“How do you know what I want to do?”
“Who are you?” Christopher asked, turning his daughter’s face towards him.
“That has nothing to do with this…”
“What are you doing?” he questioned, and the stranger was silent. Christopher hoped and prayed that he could talk this madman out of hurting his family.
“Down in the basement!” he screamed, but the family didn’t move. Becoming annoyed, he rushed forward and grabbed Gabrielle, who screamed a violent scream.
“Let me go!” she screamed terrified.
“Gaby!” Christopher ran to grab her back, but the stranger pushed a cold, hard gun against the girl’s head.
She whimpered and started begging, “Oh, please, I don’t want to die… oh, please…”
“Now, down in the basement…” he ordered and her parents fearfully headed towards the basement.
The stranger pushed the shivering little girl against the wall and she curled up in the corner. She pulled her knees up to her chest and continued her sobbing, praying as strongly as she possibly could that everything would be okay, that no one would be hurt.
“What is it you want?” Christopher questioned the ruthless criminal, while holding his shaking wife.
“Shut the fuck up!” the man yelled, lifting his hand in the air, to silence them.
“We don’t know you…” he stated.
“I said shut the fuck up! I’ll kill your fucking daughter if you don’t!”
“Oh god…” Tamara whispered, clinging to her husband.
The criminal got frustrated, and started yelling, making Gabrielle’s terrified parents kneel on the ground. He put his pistol to her father’s head and pulled the trigger.
“No!” Gabrielle screamed, tears flowing down her eyes. “No!” she kept on repeating it over and over again.
He did the same to her mother, and her mother’s body fell against her father’s, and silently they laid, completely lifeless.
“Daddy!” she screamed, but it came out only as a whisper.
The large man walked over to her and aimed his gun at her. She stared at him with her innocent eyes that were full of complete hatred and grief.
“Your life will be punishment enough,” he whispered and walked up the stairs and out of the house.
Gabrielle sat there, in her corner, staring at the bodies of her parents, as they laid in a puddle of blood. Tears slipped down her cheeks, her lower lip was quivering.
“No!” she screamed as loudly as she could, she crawled on the floor to the bodies and shook them. “God, please! Make it go away! Make it stop!” she prayed. “Dear Lord, help me!”
Silence.
She bit her lip, “He can’t hear me.”
Footsteps.
She whimpered and crawled to the stairs and hid in the cubbyhole underneath them. She continued to bite her lip to keep herself quiet, between the steps she could still see the bodies of her parents. The footsteps approached the steps and started going down, she saw several pairs of legs walk down the stairs.
“Shit…” she heard a man’s voice say.
She peered out, and saw that there were three police officers, one woman and two men standing around her parents. “The neighbor said they had a kid.”
The woman looked around the basement with her flashlight, peering behind boxes and furniture.
“Execution style…” one of the male officers muttered. “Sick.”
“I don’t get it.”
A bright light beamed on Gabrielle, and she squinted and hurried deep as she could in the hole she was in.
“Sweetie, I’m not going to hurt you. He’s gone… he won’t hurt you anymore,” the female officer reassured her.
Slowly Gabrielle emerged and hugged the officer and started crying harder than she ever had. “He took them away…” she whispered.
“You’re going to be okay,” the officer told her.

***

“I’ll be okay…” Gaby whispered, looking in the mirror at herself, she had aged four years, and her life had slipped completely from her grasp. She laughed then sighed, looking down at the sink. She looked up again, her once auburn hair had been dyed black, and now flowed around her shoulders, her makeup was dark and she hid behind it. She shivered, she continually realized how alone she was.
Her life was an unusual and troubling one. Filled with darkness, fear and unimaginable inner pain, she had no idea on how she could improve, and so she ran as fast and far as she could from the pain, only to have the pain come back more agonizing than ever.
She even lived alone, a feat that was far more difficult than she thought, only a question of knowing the right people. She pretended to be an incredibly promising and intelligent young lady, when her own secret lifestyle proved to be different.
She was almost seventeen years old, and saw no future ahead of herself. She walked into the living room where she usually slept and fell down on the couch, and laid there staring at the ceiling. She felt like she was a waste of air and space. Afraid to close her eyes, for if she did she would see her parents falling to the ground again, the cruel killer looking at her. Why did she survive? Was it pity? Was it cruelty he had upon that little girl crouched in the corner, screaming and crying in her fear?
She was still that same little girl, still hiding from the man who took her parents from her. The fact that the man was now facing the death penalty in prison, wasn’t satisfying the pain she felt. It was an annoying and pressing gnawing feeling. Constantly there, and constantly unfulfilled. She finally drifted off into sleep, owed to the fact that she had to take several sleeping pills to achieve it. Her hand fell off the couch and gently hit the floor, revealing to the ghosts in her mind, the pain she felt inside, which mirrored itself on the outside, in the form of cuts, bruises and burns.

***

She felt a nagging feeling inside her when she woke up, her wrists were throbbing, from the constant cutting she preformed upon herself. Her whole life was one dark nightmare, and the pain was beginning to be more than she could bear. She knew no one understood her, how could anyone understand why someone was locked inside herself? No one could comprehend why she would take her internal pain on the outside. She felt she had to give up, because everyone had given up on her.
She stood up and took an unstable foot forward, she wandered to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, black makeup ran down her face, washed away by the tears that she could never end. She closed her eyes and then reopened them to exam the damage she had caused. She traced the cuts with her finger, and felt that throbbing feeling again, making her body crave for that moment of euphoria, when she cut.
She tried to scream, but she couldn’t, the demons that continually plagued her mind, were once again beginning to haunt her. She felt herself becoming enraged, she took her fist and hit it towards the mirror, shattering the glass. The glass fell all around, as she stared in surprise, blood rushed down her arm, and dripped onto the white porcelain sink.
She looked at her reflection in one of the broken pieces of glass, and started to cry. She stumbled out of the bathroom and towards the apartment door, holding her wrist that had blood dripping down it. She opened the door, and saw before her on the floor, a newspaper. The headline read, “Morgan Murderer Sentenced to Death.”
She saw the blood drip on the paper, and screamed, she didn’t quite understand why she screamed, but for whatever reason it was for, if it was in complete surprise or agony.
She covered her mouth with her hand and walked back into the apartment and sat down on the couch, her hands throbbed, she stared ahead at the blank wall. Desperately she was dying for help, for an outstretched hand to hang onto.
She suddenly stood up and went into the kitchen and opened the drawer and pulled out a bandage and began wrapping her wrist, she glanced at the drawer again and saw the revolver resting in it. She felt hatred seep into her mind and reached for the revolver and stared at it.

***

She knew she was running, but she couldn’t feel that was running. Her feet moved swiftly on the street as she ran straight for the courthouse that doubled as a prison.
Tears mixed with the rain as she ran up the steps, a mix of death penalty opposers, police officers and reporters crowded the steps, as she pressed her way through the crowd. The big doors opened, and her eyes filled with anger and hate towards the familiar man who slaughtered her parents and murdered the happiness she had known.
She pushed past a barricade and held the revolver with a steady and firm hand and aimed it at the killer. “Do you remember me?” she asked him, an officer tried to approach her, but she pointed the gun at him. “I want to know if he knows who I am!”
“You’re that girl…”
“You took everything from me! You took my life from me! You don’t deserve to die a painless death. You deserve to suffer as I have suffered…”
She cocked the gun and aimed it at the man’s chest. “I want you to die knowing that you destroyed everything I ever loved…”
“Miss…” an officer stated, “this isn’t the answer… give me the gun.”
Tears slipped out of her eyes, “I hate him…”
“I know… but this isn’t the answer…”
“No, it’s not…” she whispered, she lowered the revolver and then pointed it towards her head.
The officer made a move and grabbed the revolver from her, it went off and she stared up at the sky as she fell to the ground. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes, all she knew was she was falling. She hit the ground and she closed her eyes, her last thought was knowing that the true enemy in her life was herself. That she had long ago robbed herself of a life that could’ve been full of endless possibilities.
In life we can achieve wonders, in death we achieve silence.