Chapter 13
After lunch with Sigrid, we leave to go back to the castle, and life goes on. Months pass by quickly, holiday after lonely holiday, and before I know it, it's summer break. It's that time that everyone says goodbye to each other, that time when some will never be seen again. I give my friends my number, but I don't hold much hope of them contacting me, as I'm not that good of a texter. I'm given three weeks' vacation from work, and at first, I'm excited. I get to spend time alone, in a dark room, getting fat off of cake and video games. About a week passes of this before I realize I can't do it, so I decide to go to my local Asgardian library.
Looking around on the shelves, I run my fingers over the many books, eventually settling on a light yellow tome. Pulling it gently off the shelves, I sit at one of the many tables and dig in. When I finish the book, night has already set in.
I close the book quickly, but with the snap of the cover, a cloud of dust flies into my face, causing me to sniffle and fall into a sneezing fit. It ends as quickly as it began, and I wipe at my blinded eyes.
A cold breeze hits my skin, causing me to shiver and open my eyes. The scene around me is odd. I'm home, but everything's broken and covered in frost. The mudroom couch is split in two, the stuffing spilling out like entrails. Fear grips my heart.
"Mom?" I whisper, and a feeling of dread floods my body, causing me to become rooted to the spot. My hands begin tingling, and I look down and see blue-green sparks flying from my fingertips. A muffled cry causes me to slowly walk into the living room, but the sight I walk in on makes me shriek.
A giant blue man stands with his back to me, gutting my father. He digs the knife into my father's chest, then rips downward, creating a gruesome zipper mimicment. Dad's entrails fall to the ground like bloody garland, hitting the frost and blood-coated carpet with a splat.
The trash man stands against the wall, cleaning blood off his knuckles with a handkerchief. When he looks up and sees me, he smiles and throws open his arms.
"Welcome, Asta!"
Cold hands close around my arms, and I scream harder, trying to wiggle free, but to no avail. My father looks at me with a pleading look and opens his mouth. Before he can say anything, the giant jerks his blade up and into my father's heart, his eyes twitch and roll back into his head.
Guilt and loss cloud my head. "No!"I scream, falling to my knees. The giant holding my father drops him and I watch as his empty husk of a body hits the ground with a horrible thud. The cold hands on my arms tighten as I struggle to get free, but the man's voice makes me pause.
"Now child, do you want your mother to meet the same fate as your father?"
"Don't you touch her!" I say feeling anger and fear rising in my belly. "Haven't you done enough? You've obviously come for me, and here I am!" I try to plead, but the man just laughs.
"No, we didn't just come for you. No, no. We can here to...tie up loose ends. You see, these people that pretend to be your parents, well," he chuckled darkly, "they are the ones that told us you had arrived. You see, they slew their own child when they found out she was not you, they murdered her, knowing that the day would come you would return to your birth universe. They knew that their daughter was the spitting image of you, the second half of you, so they had attempted to give her to us, but were outraged to find she was not the one. And here you are, groveling for murderers!"
The booming laughter of the giants echoes throughout the room, and I feel it vibrate in my chest. The laughter continues, and the murderer of my father swings his blade around, completely severing my mom's head clean off, and lodging the blade into the wall.
Everything slows as her head falls, the vibrations become more violent, starting in my guts and moving throughout my body.
I feel myself yelling, but the sound doesn't register in my ears. A painful ripping and scraping feeling shoots through my chest, and I look down to see a blade sticking out. I look up to the giant that slain my fake parents, my hate growing by the second. Murderers or not, they still helped me, they are this universe's version of my parents.
I look him dead in the eye, and something in my expression makes his grin disappear. I feel my yell turn to a gurgle, and everything snaps to black.
When I come to, I find myself lying on the ground. I sit up and feel sticky and wet with blood. Beside me lie two piles of...
"Oh, God." I retch and stagger to my feet, and try to ignore the piles of bluish hamburger meat.
"Oh no. Don't look don't look don't look." I repeat my mantra as I cross the room, each step a sickening squelching sound of my feet meeting the ruined carpet. I sink down the blue-stained wall and onto the floor. My tears fall with me, and I sit at my mother and father's side and cry. I sob, big, ugly tears.
The Giants lied.
They lied and now they're dead.
The people that looked so much like my parents are dead. I am the reason for all of this death.
Me.
The realization weighs heavy on my shoulders as I pick up my mom's head and place it gently back onto her slumped, bloody body. With shaking hands, I manage to pull my phone from my pocket. My vision begins to fade in and out as I dial. On the other end, I hear a voice.
"Hello? Hello? How did you get this number?" The voice begins to sound continuously distant, fading into the background, and all I am able to muster is, "I need help, please. Please, send help." My body goes limp and my hand loses grip of the phone as I slide into quiet darkness.