To Kill A Problem; Use A Handgun

By: HiTanner85

Chapter 1: She's the ringing in my ears

Lily was a girl when her sister came home crying from school, gasping about some older boy bullying her after recess. She felt her arms grow light as a feather, her eyes fill with angry tears. She ran toward the, mostly empty playground, and pointed to the boy, her finger shaking with fury. She screamed until the boy cried, belittling him and demanding he apologized. And he did, later that day, taking the long walk of shame to the young girls door. Lily smiled as he cowered, looking oddly friendly in doing so. Her sister smiled bashfully, accepting the apology and running to hug her older sister. Lily was a beautiful wonderful sister. She was loved.

It was sunny the day mama was buried, tiny yellow flowers littered the gravesite, moss covered concrete angels said constant prayers. It didn't feel right, standing there in my itchy stockings and hand me down dress, too short at the wrists. It felt like there should be torrential rain, flash flood warnings should be echoing throughout the town. There should've been a hurricane ripping the city apart, but there wasn't anything of the sort. The weather was fine, the sun pleasantly warm, the sky was cluttered with a dozen or so wispy white clouds. I made an effort to stay still, my ten year old hands itching to pick the flowers, to grab my sisters hand. I glanced toward my older sibling, biting my lip at what I saw. She seemed entirely too brave for thirteen years old. She held her chin up high, her white blonde hair, twisted in braids at her shoulders, appeared like silk in the sun. She wore a hunter green dress and white stockings. Her hands, the ones I longed to reach out and grasp were held primly in front of her. She looked more like royalty than the small town girls that we were, that our mother had raised us to be. But Lily had never really wanted to be like us. She wanted big things, handsome men and dangerous adventures laced with romance. She wanted money and power and mystery. My mother had wanted the exact opposite. She longed to be content. She didn't mind if that meant a little excitement thrown in, but the scheming Lily had talked about turned my mothers cheeks a bright pink and hot. Lily was only thirteen but her intelligence wasn't something to reckoned with, and I think that scared mom. Nonetheless, she wasn't the same after mom passed.

The day it happened, two days before the sunny funeral, something broke inside of my sister. I watched her stand at mom's bed, with an expression on her face that could only be considered angry. Her dainty hands were in tight fists at her sides, her lips pursed in sharp pout. I was standing directly behind my older sister, only able to catch the angry bruises covering most of my mothers arms, the shiny needle barely visible through her damaged skin. Her eyes were closed, her expression almost peaceful in the dimmed light.

I wanted to be brave like Lily but the tears kept falling, making shiny paths down my cheeks. I wiped furiously at my eyes, gritting my teeth the conflicting emotion. Lily was mad. I could tell that from her tense shoulders. Just as quickly as I had figured that out, she had turned completely away from me and left the room, leaving me alone with my mother. I stepped closer, the lamp light making her look more like a ghost that someone hugging me the day before. I shook dangerously, reaching forward to touch her hand. It was cold on contact, like the chilly tiled floor on a winter morning. She didn't move though and that scared me more than the icy feel. I only jumped at the sound of yelling in the background. Lily had already began to change, her tone loud and obtrusive in the reverent atmosphere. I heard my father grumble in reply to her outburst and a door slam. I closed my eyes, moaning with pain and fear and something else that seemed deeper than the two. My body sunk to the floor, my head dropping heavy against my mothers unmade bed. I had let go of her hand, suddenly oddly aware of how not there she was. Lily turned her music up loud and my father stormed from the house. "Why did you leave me?" I asked quietly, knowing very well I would never get a legitimate answer. Why does anyone get cancer? Why does anyone leave their children? I heard my father' getting into his car. It took him three cranks before the engine turned over. Like an angry lion being prodded with a stick it roared to life, clanking before fading into background noise. I didn't understand their kind of love then, completely overwhelmed with my daughter sort of love. Man Woman love didn't make sense. It was talked about in fairy tales but I was more interested in the jokes. The kisses were something to giggle about but true reason behind those deep connections were lost in a sea of cartoons and silly crushes on the nerdy boy that everyone else made fun of. I didn't get then, how utterly heartbroken my dad was. I blamed him for not being there. I blamed him for turning on us when we needed him. I blamed him because that's what Lily told me to do. She didn't exactly point and demand hate, but with every eye roll, screamed curse and slammed door I hated him. I hated him more than anyone else before.

Years later, when Lily turned eighteen, we moved out together, to an apartment in the city. My father had complained at first, standing in his business suit at the edge of the driveway. He had made lame arguments about how we wouldn't be able to take care of ourselves. We had been doing that since that fateful day. He kept on griping through every suitcase being thrown in back of the old car, through three lamps and a dozen or so boxed up books. Our furniture would stay in the house, because she wouldn't expect any help moving the heavy shit anywhere, especially if it meant help from him. Lily had refused money from him throughout the years, only speaking to him when absolutely necessary. As much as I had grown to dislike the man, I became the mediator in a house full of hardheaded people. Daddy spoke to me in passing, patting my head and passing me a twenty for lunch. The day we left he seemed beaten. We had finally got to him. I turned around and watched him as we drove away. He wasn't looking at the car but at the driveway under his feet, his hands deep in his fancy italian pockets. I thought about waving but he never gave me the chance, so completely entranced by the splotchy gray cement. He only looked up when I was much too far to see his eyes, but for a moment, I thought he might just be crying.

Lily went wild in college. By day she worked and studied, at night she partied until dawn. I wondered sometimes when she slept, being so busy with her insane lifestyle. I was seventeen when I first picked her up from a random bar, so drunk she had to be dragged to the car by some random man on a good Samaritan trip. He looked worried at me driving, my face much younger than my years. I shrugged, slipping into the car and buckling the unconscious Lily up for safety. The city lights shone in sporadic patterns across her face. For a moment she woke, looking at me with a dreamy smile on her face. "Momma," she whispered. "I had a bad dream. You had died," her smile faded. I couldn't speak, just gulped down my words and kept on driving, allowing her to believe that our mother was still there. By the time I was eighteen I felt my nerves were on edge again. I buried myself in schoolwork, focusing on getting into a good college and refusing to have any sort of a social life. It was when she was twenty-three that Lily found the man of her dreams. His name was John Jacobs and he was a tall blonde with mint colored eyes and large arms. He worshipped Lily. Her big eyes and honey colored hair sent him into a frenzy. There wasn't a minute he wasn't around.

Then when Lily graduated college she went away on a trip. When she came back there was something different about her. Her mood randomly shifted and she became increasingly unpredictable. And then it happened. There wasn't anything special about that night. There was nothing that made it stand out amongst the rest. She had gone to work at her new job, just like she had in the two weeks before. She came home, we ate takeout and then went to sleep. But it was around twelve that I first heard it. A shot, clear and metallic rang out through the night. It pulsated in heavy waves that hit hard against my rib cage and dug claws into my ears. My eyes watered then, even before I knew anything. And for a moment I didn't move. I couldn't move. But I needed to so I tried to get out of my bed. the covered had tangled around my pale feet and were now a pair of incidental shackles. I struggled against them, pulling myself free as they grabbed at me, pulling me back down until I felt was heavy and hopeless. And then I was free, just like that. I had been released and let go. I was able to run into the living room and see what I had heard.

But I didn't.

I had stopped just short of the room, my hand resting against the door. I couldn't force myself to move. I was frozen with fear of the unknown, blind with vivid thoughts and green with nausea. I couldn't move. I couldn't. I could barely breathe. I knew outside that room something was happening, something I wasn't ready to see.

But then I did move. Just two more steps and I was in the room. It was funny then, thinking that two steps had kept me from seeing it all. The light blue room with the mismatched furniture and green lamps from our old home, it all looked the same except for one small thing. It was covered in red now, random splatters of scarlet decorated my favorite chair. Thick, syrupy cherry colored blood leaked from my sisters head, staining the green walls, the yellow rug, my favorite chair. She had done it and in the living room of all places. If I had any clue, any sense, I would've moved. But I couldn't. It was sad to think what was going on in my mind. I couldn't piece everything together at once. All I noticed was the way the blood felt under my feet, the way crying felt so wrong, the way the room smelt of vanilla and copper. It was choking me now, killing me too. I leaned down, staring at her face with a strange obsession. We looked so much alike, apart from the hair color and heigh difference, we could've been twins. It was like seeing myself dead, looking into my own empty eyes, feeling my own blood under my feet.

People rushed in around then. Our neighbor Mrs. Fielding and her husband barging in the front door, forcefully. It turned out I had been screaming. I had screamed, so loud, I woke them up through four thick stuccoed walls. I had only came back from that crazy place of wake dreaming when I felt her arms around me. Mrs. Fielding had wrapped me in a hug, pulling my face into her neck and dragging me from the room. She was talking, telling me the police were on their way but I only remember pieces of that night. The flashing lights, the blanket being wrapped tight around my shoulders. "It's such a shame," Mrs. Fielding was telling one of the policemen, her arms crossed across her chest. "Lily was such a lovely girl." But she really wasn't, I argued in my head. She was angry and bitter and so many things you don't want to be. She killed herself you idiots! Didn't anyone realize she had done this...this hadn't been done to her. She had done it to herself.

Two weeks later I had left. I refused to go to her funeral, too angry to wear uncomfortable clothes to something I didn't believe worth going to. I skipped graduation, ignored the college I had been trying to go to and made a call to some family overseas. I wasn't interested in my life anymore and opted to make a new one.

"You can't run away from your problems, pumpkin," my grandma had told me at the airport. She had come down for the service and stuck around till I had to leave. The thin gray haired woman was the only one I seemed to love anymore. She sat by me near the terminal, playing with my ponytail and making comments about the random passersby. "They will always find you. Even over that big ocean, they'll find you. They'll just be plum angry having to swim all that way."

I had laughed at that, the first real giggle in weeks. I leant over and gave her a big hug, shaking my head mentally at her adorable analogy. "I have to get out of here, grandma," I smiled, pulling away and giving her a meaningful nod.

"I know, darlin," she sighed exaggeratedly, pushing my fringe away from my forehead. "I know."

The plane ride was fast and over quick. An older woman talked to me about her daughter the entire way over, flipping her short gray bob into my head constantly. She spoke of trivial things and I felt for the first time an annoyance with a complete stranger.

I was greeted at the airport with a gust of cool clean air. I had noticed the seemingly endless fields of emerald green from the sky above, smilingly slightly at how smooth it all looked, how easy. At the door stood a handsome man. He seemed to be around twenty or so, with piercing blue eyes and sinewy muscles. He wore a thin coat and ratty black pants, ripped at the knee. Behind his ear stuck a cigarette, perfectly content to be so close to such a good looking face I was sure. He leant against the wall like some old movie star, his eyes scanning every person that walked in from the ramp. He barely moved as I walked past, just asked if I was Alexis Glendale. I nodded dumbly, staring at him as if I might recognize him. Of course I wouldn't. I had never seen him before but something about someone knowing your name made you do that. With lengthy fingers he reached out and plucked my bags from my hands, walking from the building without another word.

I caught up but found it very hard to stay with him. His legs were long and his steps quick, pushing me to a near jog in the process. I found it refreshing at how rude he was. As strange as it sounded I needed it. I was tired of everyone running after me like I was some damaged china, looking to glue me back together and pass me off as brand new. They all needed to be my savior. Not this man. If anything, it looked as if I were a bother on his perfect life and I would've followed him anywhere. He threw my bags in the car, reached over to open the door for me and lit the cigarette. He didn't bother removing the thin white fag, simply left it hang from his mouth as he puffed. The thick curls of smoke carried throughout the car, into my nostrils and stuck in my hair. I didn't mind though. The brand he used was soft and silky against my nose. It almost smelled sweet. He kept the window down, but it really did no good. The smoke was stubborn and refused to venture far from his lips. I didn't blame the smoke at all.

"Who are you?" I found myself asking. He didn't look at me. Those long fingers stay gripped at the steering wheel and showed no sign of moving an inch.

"Connor," he replied finally, after minutes of oddly placed silence.

"Are you a friend of Aunt Neals?" I asked next. he laughed quietly, the cigarette bouncing with his chuckles.

"Yeah," he finished. "You could say it's something like that." He was laughing at me and it was obvious. He managed a glimpse at me, sighing. I didn't really understand the humor in the situation, but then again nothing sounded particularly funny anymore. Soon my mind was elsewhere, my eyes following the scenery. There were sheep, huge fields of bright green and fences made of stone. In the distance were more fields, branching off into hills and then a cool gray sky. The day was starting and the sun adhered to the middle of the sky like an oddly placed quarter on a table top. It was all very charming.

"Want one?" Connor asked. He asked, this too, without looking at me. I wondered if there was something remarkably hideous or boring about my face.

"What?"

"A smoke," he tapped his pocket where a outline of a cigarette packet was. "A fag?"

"Oh no," I mumbled quietly. "I don't smoke."

This he grinned at. "Not yet anyway though yeah?"

And it as left at that. Shortly after our little conversation we came up at a long driveway. At the end of the never ending gravel drive was a small house with a grass roof and maroon walls. I inhaled sharply. Connor jumped from the car, grabbing my bag and walking toward the door. As if in a movie my Aunt Neal appeared. My mother's sister was a lot like her, with long mousy brown hair and big green eyes. I got my looks from them, at least my coloring. I watched quietly from the passenger seat as Connor held my bag with one hand while hugging Neal with the other. They engaged in a short, yet very passionate, kiss. I was lost in it, the look of it, the realness of it. I had never been kissed like that. I had never been kissed at all. And suddenly I couldn't remember why I hadn't found myself a boyfriend. School had taken up most of my life. Lily had been there, making jokes and keeping me distracted and disinterested with her horror stories about sex and men alike. I had never wanted to before then. But seeing it in its raw perfection was a mind changer. I was shook from this as Neal came bounding toward me, her red dress blowing in the wind. She swung open the car door, dragging me out and into a tight hug.

"Oh my god, Alex! You look beautiful. You're not a baby anymore," she fake pouted, running a calm hand over the back of my head. I recognized her voice, the soft melodic tone that she shared with my mother. It gave me butterflies in my stomach. There was no denying she was my aunt. I smiled at her, shrugging my shoulders and glancing at her entirety. I noticed the was barefoot but that wasn't a surprise. I remembered stories from my childhood about Aunt Neal and her supreme dislike for shoes. My mother had laughed about it at the time, shaking her head and tying a rather large and embarrassing bow in my hair. "Neal is just a free spirit. Shoes take her one more step away from frolicking in the woods with the fairies." Neal pulled me in for one more hug, crushing me tight against her bony body. I thought I might just pass out.

"How are you sweetheart? How was the plane ride?"

"It was good," I cleared my throat. Connor was five feet away, puffing away on his cigarette, staring at us both curiously. "I was worried that you wouldn't be able to find Connor."

"It was easy," I replied quickly.

"Good, good." She grinned, clasping my hand in her own. "Let's go take a look inside okay? Okay."

The house was different than ours back home. Inside it was as if we had stepped back in time. It was filled with antique furniture, silver beads hung from the ceiling and brightly colored dishes littered the kitchen table. Wilting flowers were dying in a crystal vase, worn quilts fell over the plush sofa, big comfy pillows lay scattered about the floor, and a hundred or so books fell in various places about the place. The kitchen was bright and barely visible from my place at the door. Upon closer inspection, I saw the checkerboard table and geese salt and pepper shakers. The sink was full of dirty dishes and the counter was covered in, what looked like, toast crumbs. Apart from that the house was clean and smelled of honeysuckle and cinnamon. In the center of the table sat a glass vase filled with daisies, murky water swelled inside.

Through the entirety of the tour, Aunt Neal looked at me as if I might break. She kept touching my arm or my wrist, leading me giddily through the house with silly explanations of every item in every room. Finally, at the end of it all we stood in, what would be, my room. It was a light purple with white furniture. It seemed it was the only room in the house that looked like my dads home in suburbia. There were dark purple flowers stenciled along the top of the wall, mint colored vines twisting about the dainty petals. There was a bed, with white sheets and beaded pillows. A vase sat on the dresser, a puff of bright purple tulips exploded from its top. I threw myself into unpacking, tossing my bag on the bed and unzipping it quickly. "Alexis. I'm here to talk whenever you want," Neal started, still standing politely at her place at the door. "I know you've been through a lot and you're probably very confused."

"Not so much," I answered quietly, picking up a worn sweatshirt. "I understand it all perfectly."

She stayed quiet, probably wondering exactly what was going on in my head.

"It's not so hard to figure out that my sister gave up on life and didn't care who she hurt in the process," I shrugged. "I'm just glad to be out of there. Thanks for letting me stay."

I turned around to say the last part, tacking on a small smile. "I really do appreciate it all."

"It's not problem," Neal smiled fully, standing up a tad bit straighter. The dress she wore was red with tiny yellow flowers and ivory buttons. Her feet were oddly pale for being so rebellious in their shoe wearing. Her hair was tied in a low braid, thrown over her right shoulder. "Connor's fixing up the old truck for you. It's out back if you ever want to go take a peak," she explained, obviously avoiding the touchy subject of Lily's suicide. "The bedding is new too. I didn't want you have to smell Connor all the time. That smoke sticks to everything." I didn't tell her I loved that smell now. Then she smiled but it wasn't like all the ones before. It was like one you'd give after being shot down three times in a row. It was the kind of smile you'd give to a rude stranger. She then told me dinner would be done around six if I wanted it and that'd we be having spaghetti without meatballs. She left then, shutting the door quietly behind her. I was suddenly very tired. Pushing my bag off the bed, I fell into the fresh sheets. Despite their newness I could still pick up a faint smell of cigarette smoke. I assumed the sneaky vapor had slipped in under the door. I fought the urge to cry, feeling oddly alone in my new home. Closing my eyes and burying my face in the pillow, I slept. I slept and I didn't dream at all.