Kill Your Parents!

[NOTE: Story contains violence and death.]

Aaron, Celeste, Florence, Stella, Catharine, Alex, Ariana.

The eldest three tried to kill their parents when Aaron was fourteen, the others one and three years behind him. Stella, at nine, refused to help, but she grabbed Catharine and Alex when they ejected themselves from one of the four rear doors of their massive family car, pulling herself out back-first so that she took the brunt of the fall. A crack to the head landed her in the ICU while the younger ones suffered scrapes, bruises, and a broken finger. Ariana was in their aunt’s care at the time.

Aaron had read a manual on cars to figure out how to cut brakes. He wore his skateboarding pads under his hoodie and jeans and instructed Celeste and Florence to do likewise to muffle their fall. Stella never forgave him for not telling her to do so, but he maintained that she should’ve been smarter and done it herself. She never told Catharine and Alex about the plans, or the disregard, or the sound crunching metal makes when it crumples beneath another vehicle. Their parents had drifted into an intersection. They watched from the roadside, hurt but silent save for the younger two’s groans of pain.

After the parents woke up in the ICU alongside Stella, their children said that their father had instructed them to save themselves when he realised his inability to stop. The two couldn’t remember this, but they’d sustained severe trauma and accepted the story. If the damage to the brakes was discovered, their parents made no mention of it again, but they did mention often, sharply, the swell of bills they were then under, even with insurance. They recovered.

In the wake of a gas leak in their home, discovered only because Ariana had awoken wailing at the smell, the parents developed a weightiness, a sobriety in feeling they were cursed, that something was after them, some fixation from below. All of the kids maintained their innocence, even to each other. It had been five years since the car accident, and in that space they had learned individually they had no sanctuary in the rest.

‘When is Stella getting here?’ Florence said. ‘Kit, has she texted you?’

Catharine shrugged. ‘Said she’s walking from her hotel.’

‘Walking?’

‘She hates cabs. Says they’re too expensive.’

Celeste, shoved deep into the couch cushions like a gum wrapper, grunted, ‘She’s right. Have you seen gas prices lately? My taxi from the airport cost upwards of fifty quid.’

Aaron and Alex were playing cards, and the former asserted, ‘Stop talking like you’re still in London, it doesn’t make you sound cooler.’

She gave a boozy grin into a throw pillow. ‘Piss off.’

Ariana, settled on the steps, said, ‘It’s not like her to be late.’

‘Miss Perfect? The sun rises and sets on her schedule.’ Alex shook his head and threw down an ace with a certainty none of the girls understood; their father had only ever taught the boys how to play cards, as well as chess and billiards. ‘Dunno why she had to get a different hotel than us.’

‘She said it was cheaper.’

‘Mom and Dad are paying for it. Why bother being frugal?’

Celeste reentered. ‘They’re paying for the two rooms—only one for you and Florence’s beau, and a nice big suite for Florence, me, and your girlfriend.’

Her brother’s tone slashed across the room, making her flinch. Even at twenty-nine, his sudden temper cut her. ‘You can just call her Emma, y’know.’

‘I’m just happy you finally trust us enough to bring someone around.’ He made a face to imply that was untrue. Emma’s presence had been begrudging for him, the result of their mother reaching out to her directly with an invitation instead of going through Aaron. ‘Anyway, our Assistant Mother didn’t want to share with us girls.’

Ariana: ‘She’s always liked her personal space.’

Florence: ‘As if any of us had more than she did.’

Kit: ‘Well, Aaron and Alex did.’

Alex: ‘It’s not our fault they wouldn’t room girls and boys together.’

Aaron: ‘Eldest first.’

Celeste: ‘And youngest best. Ari, how long have you had your own room now?’

Ariana: ‘I didn’t ask to be the youngest.’

All but her: Some amalgamation of ‘shut up’, ‘we know’, and another ‘piss off’.

She wilted deeper into the stairs.

They were cooped up in the recreationally-intentioned basement of a rental house in the Florida Keys, a pastel villa that reminded them all, unspoken, of Easter eggs. There was an open-concept kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom upstairs decorated in an uninspired beachy aesthetic. Downstairs, the lounge cradled the Celeste-covered couch, a loveseat occupied by Florence and Kit, and a small table with two folding chairs for the boys. There was a straw-coloured rug atop the white tile floor, and the only natural light was from the egress windows. Otherwise, a sickly fluorescence cast a pallor over the room. An unsettling electric hum sizzled from the lights in the nautical half-bath under the stairs.

From her elevated spot, Ariana eyed everyone nervously. She and Alex, being only seventeen and nineteen, had been offered the spare beds in their parent’s vacation residence, while the others were expected to sleep elsewhere and obtain their own transportation and food. In their parents’ eyes, this was fair and reasonable, even charitable in light of the stipend they offered for hotels. The elder five had agreed, but she still felt that sitting before them was like lining the wall parallel to a firing squad. Like her privilege was a degradation of her character. Alex did not appear to carry any equal anxiety, but she’d never seen him carry much. Their parents registered him for his college courses and housing, organised his schedule of extracurriculars; he showed up. His presence was his virtue.

There was a clatter upstairs, a boisterous, ringing hello, a coo from their mother while their father, they were certain, gave a silent, sturdy embrace. Narrowed eyes on his paltry hand of cards, Aaron sighed, ‘Here we go.’

The door to the basement swung open, and Ariana twisted around, gazing up to the silhouette of her middle sister hemmed in the neon Floridian light streaming in from the wide windows upstairs.

‘What’s up, chitlins?’

Her voice echoed their late grandmother, the authoritative whip of her tone, as it had Stella’s whole life. Deliberate or not, the superiority in her voice had been the eliciting source of constant disdain from the rest.

Ariana wondered if her sisters left to be wanted back. Stella had moved responsibly at eighteen—not beating out Celeste, who’d escaped at sixteen to a boarding school on a miraculous academic scholarship, an opportunity she wasted after drinking herself into a flurry of dead-end jobs come graduation. Nonetheless, when Ariana was only just entering adolescence, she vanished.

She thumped down the stairs, ruffling Ariana’s hair on the way, and Alex rose to meet her. ‘Hey, stranger.’

‘You cut your hair!’

His sandy curls had been shorn down to a chic buzz cut, bleached and accented frequently by his smart outfits and ironic religious jewellery. Trendy and slightly effeminate, he reeled in partners at college like carousel, whirling them around before promptly spinning them away. A people person, as he once told Ariana, his primary confidant. Stella was a match for his striking style, but more extant, mocking the heat: a cornflower blue suede duster that flapped at her calves, flared jeans, leather boots, a high-collared blouse. They were vivid figures amongst the pastel surroundings, particularly in comparison to Aaron’s meticulously ironed button-up and trousers, Celeste’s grungy attire—intentionally reminiscent of Courtney Love—Florence’s eyelet lace beach dress, and Kit’s rumpled jeans and tee with the logo for the veterinary school she went to. Ariana wore a white top with a ruffled collar that felt tight around her throat and a dark blue skirt. Her parents bought it for the trip.

‘Y'all ready for the event of the season, then?’ Stella said, throwing herself atop Celeste, who released a gasp of air like a set of bellows fueling a fire.

‘Thrilled,’ Aaron said. His voice had grown sterile, clean and pleasant. He could only maintain his grumpiness for so long before it flipped unpredictably to equanimity.

‘Where’s your girlfriend?’

He pursed his lips. ‘Emma?’

‘Yeah, that one.’

‘At the hotel getting a facial.’

‘You don’t give her enough of those?’ Alex snorted, and Aaron threw the card box at him.

‘A face mask at the spa, you creep.’

She looked at Florence. ‘And Dick?’

‘Robert,’ she asserted. ‘Don’t pretend to care.’

Stella flicked a bit of faux-auburn hair from her cheek. ‘Don’t get sensitive, I’m just curious.’ Mischievous sympathy crossed her face. ‘Don’t tell me he couldn’t make it…?’

Florence, feigning and failing at nonchalance, began scrolling through her phone, acrylic nails clicking on its surface. ‘He’s at a cafe on a Zoom call. He’s still got work to do, even when he’s here.’

‘What a trooper.’

‘He’ll be along for lunch and the ceremony.’

Celeste finally shoved Stella off her and sat up, wincing at the ache at her temples. ‘Thank God, I thought I’d have to go this whole trip without a conversation on tech start-ups and stocks.’

‘Shut up—’

Aaron chimed in in a glib voice, ‘We might even chat again about how homeless people ruined the aesthetic of Seattle.’

Florence bristled further, dropping her phone into her Louis Vuitton tote bag. ‘You willfully misinterpreted that—’

‘That’s verbatim!’

‘Guys, really?’ Kit whined, curling her arms around Florence. Something about her earthy, unpolished lifestyle of birthing animals and farmland had always found solace in her elder sister’s clean lines and stay-at-home wifedom.

Florence was the only one who had no aspirations beyond the home. A thick shell existed between her and the rest of the world—for better or worse, their mother had once confided in Stella—and she found contentment in its confines. Only Kit saw the apprehension in her steadfastness.

‘Let’s not bring any politics into mom and dad’s periphery, not today,’ Stella said, hands up and palms out. The group, swelling up like a spiny pufferfish, began to relax. ‘Classist or otherwise.’

They descended again. Ariana propped her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand.

Stella held the picture above her slice of key lime pie. Her grip was delicate and cold, her eyes boring blankly into the mottled black and blue photo, a bruise in the bustling restaurant that smelled strongly of fish and hush puppies. Celeste and Alex, next to her, peered over either shoulder. The picture glared at them, a rorschach test.

‘Huh…congratulations,’ Alex said eventually.

It fell on deaf ears, lost beneath the enthused babble streaming from their teary-eyed mother. Their father smiled, refusing to make eye contact with Robert. Alex hissed into Stella’s ear, ‘How do you think Dad’s coping with photographic evidence that Florence is getting raw-dogged?’

Finally, she set the sonogram down. ‘Poorly,’ she breathed, empty.

She watched her sister and brother-in-law’s glowing, prideful faces, the insurmountable joy radiating from her parents, a fulfilment and fullness of life, and grew rigid. Her siblings had finally surpassed her in a race she couldn’t complete. She remembered her ex-boyfriend’s brutal disgust when she’d informed him of her tubal ligation: That’s horrific. Why would you do that to yourself?

Aaron met her gaze. She’d long-since believed her older brother lacked even the slightest awareness of her or her feelings, but a flinty resolve lingered in his expression, reflecting hers. People had started talking: No grandchildren? With seven children? Florence provided the much-needed end to the gossip. For all of Aaron’s professional gains, his high-end and neurotically clean double apartment, his respectable girlfriend (who had remained at the hotel with food poisoning)—Stella watched the metal in his face as he lost the chance alongside her to be the family saviour. Her efforts to hide her wounds and brief stays in the mental ward, keeping her record clean, had been needless. What was it all compared to a baby?

Kit seemed thrilled, as did Ariana, who’d never received the opportunity to dote on something. Stella found the urge overrated and had a scar along the base of her skull to prove it.

‘It’ll be an Aries,’ she said.

‘Fuck off,’ Celeste muttered. ‘Leave it to Flor to make the ‘rents vow renewal about her.’ 

She sunk into her gin tonic and plate of fries. Sandwiched between her increasingly accomplished siblings, all bolstered by professional, domestic, and academic success, she wondered if anyone would ever look at her long enough to consider her for motherhood. Adrift, she would scoff and moan and say yes to the first gentle grip that pinned her in place.

The ceremony was cream and azure. Beachside, sand collected in their sandals. They stood and sat as needed, bowed their heads as the priest prayed, squinted at the lowering sun, fanned their sweating necks as the thick, salty air swallowed them. Small waves crashed nearby.

It was a private ceremony with only a few close friends and relatives. Aunts and uncles disturbed the children—they squirmed at the reminder that their parents had once been siblings to others. It made no sense. But when you make your own family, you’re not really siblings anymore. Your parents fall from relevance; you occupy their outlines.

Florence, perched and beaming beside her husband—an only child, an abstract concept—realised this. Space distended between her and the others. She forced her smile. It hadn’t occurred to her, hushed in conspiracy at eleven years old, that the held hands of her brothers and sisters would pull away someday. She was the only one who fell asleep at the bedsides in the ICU, who once felt utterly unguarded in their presence. She convinced herself her own baby would love and never leave her.

Ariana saw a small family farther down the beach. The eldest daughter swaddled the younger in a towel and pulled her in for an embrace. She’d messaged Celeste once asking if their own family was different from others. She’d responded with slovenly typos asj Aaron aboo the axident. Ariana never did. She knew how to disconnect a gas line from a stove and regret it. Alex learned this once, but, jittery with cocaine, seemed to forget. He bore the weight of his older siblings alongside her but, like young men, shrugged them off to the nearest woman. When her parents were gone, the house became empty, occupied only by the ghosts her brothers and sisters left behind. She understood their remnants better than themselves.

The storm was a suckerpunch handled with a laugh. The festivities were winding down, and it seemed a charming end to sprint through the rain to the cars that would ferry them to their homes and hotels. The parents, Stella, Alex, and Kit in one car; Robert, Florence, Aaron, Celeste, and Ariana in the other. Their relatives and friends veered in a different direction, housed on the opposite side of the island. Fat raindrops swarmed the cars like riled hornets, each pelting thwack burrowing into Stella’s skin. Something about the commotion was soothing. A deep, quiet breath before a scream.

She had taken her brother's word and learned to prepare for things. A steady contraction in the air pressed upon her an acceptance of what was about to come, and she saw it before they did: the flash of silver. She wondered before the impact why she didn’t cry out to stop.

One vehicle from the side, and the car holding more of her siblings from the back. An inarticulable pain wrenched from her to relearn the sound of crunching metal and broken glass. Whiplash careened through Alex; the belt broke a rib. Kit’s head cracked against the window beside her. Sat in the middle seat, Stella was thrown forward between her parents without an airbag.

Behind, Celeste and Aaron curled together around Ariana, suffering fractured bones and gashes from it. Once the car spun to a stop, Robert checked himself before Florence, who had instantly covered her stomach.

The man who’d struck the first car slumped out and to the wreckage, first removing Kit while Alex, gasping, unplugged his belt and fell out his door. The stranger seemed unsure about the front seats, occupied by jigsaw bodies.

Florence shrieked her siblings into action. Heaving, scraping, they swam through the rain to the more crumpled car. Their parents curled over their deflated airbags, silent. They reached past to exhume Stella from the wreckage, delicate with her many shattered bones and weeping skull. They laid her on the ground, undulating around her.

‘Come on, wake up,’ Aaron shouted over the rain as the stranger called an ambulance. He smacked her cheek lightly. She coughed up a string of blood, opened her eyes. Florence tried to shield Ariana, but she demanded to look.

‘I forgot my pads,’ she croaked.

‘And your seatbelt, you dumbfuck, what were you thinking?’

Her eyes were locked on something far above them, even as they were filled with soot-grey rain. The rumbling puddles around her swirled with red. She said something nobody but Aaron heard.

Kit thought maybe she was talking nonsense, but Aaron grasped her face with something inexplicable, something made just for siblings. ‘I don’t give a shit! You don't get to leave!’

They all had a hand on her now. She grasped at them weakly, smiling. As a breath left her dad’s lungs, it filled hers.

When the downpour eased, a faded evangelical billboard near the intersection rippled into view, imploring drivers to seek out the saviour. Its graffiti spoke: God is dead!

The emergency responders found two parents in the vehicle, dry and broken; one man fearing the rain in the totaled car behind; one man sodden with guilt and vicarious grief; and seven siblings bearing the rain together, musing on the outcome of their efforts.