Dearest Death

The day started as any. The morning was bright, the birds were chirping and there I was! Laying in my mother's bed, clasping her sweater, inhaling the last of her scent.

The night was morbid to say the least. Tears had fallen from my eyes because my of my betrayal, naive self and the day before me. It all just seemed to fall apart, right before me.

"It can't get any worse" I murmur to myself as I get up out of the bed and walk to her bathroom. Glancing up to the mirror as I sigh, "Henry Burket?" I ask myself as the name sounded so foreign to me.

His name felt like a poison, something I shouldn't think about, but how could I not? I was raised my whole life to never ask about my father, the pain in my mother's eyes told me enough. Although secretly I always thought he was dead, but now to know that he was alive, well and I was now a bastard it broke me. But that would have to wait another day, today was the day I was to put my mother to rest, and I couldn't help but give her the best.

As I covered up my puffy eyes from crying with powder and my sadness with the brush of my hair. The words I'd never get to say through the gloss in my lips and the teardrops that dripped from my eyelashes with mascara. I had the perfect doll face in the mirror but it was only broken on the inside. Shaking the grief I slip into a black dress and walk down my stairs to the door, opening it to see Zela, standing there.

"What do you want?" I ask her angrily as she smiles.

"I'm sorry for the other night" she says as I don't budge.

"That doesn't change the fact that you judged me!" I say, walking out of the house and locking the door. "You jumped too fast! You didn't even let me explain or tell you my story! Because you have some messed up, preconceived life for me when in reality it's all falling apart" I vent angrily as I walk down the porch steps and into the street.

"AND HOW CAN I HELP WITH THAT! ITS NOT MY FAULT!" She claims as I can't help but want to strangle her right there.

"No." I agree plainly. "But you did play your part" I respond walking off as she stands still on my porch as I continue to the graveyard.

To me this was beyond the saddest day of my life. During my short life I had many, my mothers diagnosis, the day we were evicted from my my home for the first nine years of my life and when I heard I was the very reason my mom would never see my sister again. But this was beyond all of those. Compared to burying my mother all of it seemed like minor pain. But standing above my mother's open coffin, only three people in attendance I saw it. This was the most heart wrenching moment in my life, all due to a stupid curse I couldn't undo. I stood here and partly blamed my sister, partly thinking that my sisters treatment half dug her grave. But really it was nobodies fault but mine and the curses.

I couldn't blame a wretched curse! No matter how much pain it cost me, and what it cost in general. I couldn't help but think that maybe it wasn't worth it. The old woman's horrendous words burned into my brain, I only felt as if the branding should match the outside. "Nobody said the curse was easy" she warned as a single tear dropped at the thought of it all. My simplistic world coming to a catastrophic end.

"What have you learned?" I hear as I don't even have enough energy to lift my head, only moving my eyes to the voice as I see the old woman once again.

"That everything is as good as lost when it was never really yours" I say through my grief stricken heart.

"That enough is guaranteed" she lectures as I sigh, letting more tears engulf my face. "Enough is the sad reality you were living in Francesca" she admits as her words cut me like glass.

"But it got me by! My mom was more than enough for me! She was…." I say as I wipe my tears. "She was my home." I admit to her as she nods, from my side I could see her dropping her head in silence.

"Francesca" she calls my name as I twitch at her voice. "I only want the best for you. If you don't finish the curse you will become the next..." she explains as she suddenly trails off. "Before you become the next me" she says quietly as I finally see, she was just as much of a prisoner to the curse as I was!

"Francesca?" I hear somebody call my name as I turn around to see a black haired woman in a pantsuit in front of me to my surprise.

"How can I help you?" I ask the woman in front of me, cautiously.

"I'm your mothers attorney" She says as i shake her hand and a smile spreads across her face. "I'm guessing you know about the arrangement?" she ask me as I freeze.

"What?" I ask her through stifled sob.

"The agreement between your sister and mother?" she ask as the blank expression on my face must tell her all. "Your mother promised your sister half a million dollars" she admits as a piece of me dies. "Only to the terms that she take care of you until you reached the legal age of 18" she explain as I didn't wasn't to blame the dead, but part of me did blame my mother.

How could she? Why? All these questions bounced around in my head, only pushed further by the betrayal of my cold, dead mother and my selfish, conceded sister.

"She agreed" I assume as my mother's attorney pauses. "Didn't she?" I ask the women as she nods.

"I didn't come here to talk to you about that, I wanted to see you about what your mother left you." She confront me as I snicker.

Maybe it was the betrayal, or the fact that money couldn't compensate for the family I just lost.

"I don't want it!" I forfeit as the woman chuckles.

"You can't just forfeit a million dollars" she confesses as I suddenly am frozen in my tracks.

How could that be? Growing up we barely had enough money for lunch, where would she get a million dollars from?

"All you have to is, as your mother quotes" she says as she pulls out a note. "Live for me" she quotes my mother and that's where I finally feel something. My soul brightening at her words as I break down in tears.