When it’s shut, the old generator kicks up and turns on the low lighting we have down here. Since a lot of families with Killjoys in the Zones live here and all of them are Killjoy sympathizers, they created a little cavern below the suburb to hide Killjoys trying to infiltrate Battery City or ones who were escaping. After the issue with my dad though, Killjoys stopped coming, so it turned into a meeting/town get-together hall. With five feet left on the ladder I jump and land on the north side of the cavern, it’s a basic rectangular space, about ten feet high, fifty feet wide and stretching out as long as the suburb’s road, and lining the length of the cavern on the north and south sides, each leading up to a different house, is a ladder. I weave my way through the cots the people had set-up as beds for the Killjoys, basically old mattresses with thread-bare blankets, it was all they could get down here undetected.
I reach the ladder directly across from the one I came down, behind the ladder is a door, posted up on it is a sign in my mom’s handwriting that says, “MUSIC ROOM”. Through that door is our basement—our little music room, she had it open to Killjoys in the past who wanted some music while they hid down here, she said she didn’t want any of them getting bored just twiddling their thumbs. I give a little smile, but then I hear the sound of someone pulling our trap door open, I look up to the ceiling and through the little tunnel that goes the other ten feet to our laundry room. I shield my eyes as the brighter light from above blinds me, and then I hear her.
“Mom! She’s over here in the laundry room!” It’s Jen, using the phrase we established when we’re referring to somebody being down here. The smile leaves me and the realization of what’s happening hits me hard as its replacement.
“What on Earth are you doing!” she shouts as I see her head take the place of Jen’s in the trap door opening. I signal for mom to come down so I can explain, she gets the point that this is really important, so she tells Jen to keep an eye-out upstairs while she and I talk. She moves her feet into the tunnel and gets a hold of the rungs, when she’s almost under she whispers for Jen to shut the door, then continues on when it is.
Mom heads about half way when she tells me to move, I step aside because knowing mom, she needs clearance when she jumps the ladder. She lands perfectly from her ten foot drop, still fairly agile from her Killjoy days.
“Music room, now,” she says sternly, pointing at the door. I nod and go to open the door for her, I step aside so she can go in first, once she’s in I follow after her. “Alright explain why you’re home early, why you came home in a patrol car, and why you went to the Grimard’s and through the cavern to get here?” she says the second I turn to face her. Leave it to mom to get down to the point.
I give a troubled look and open my mouth, but nothing really comes out so I close it. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and it all comes pouring out when I open my mouth again.
“Mr. Vamp managed to convince the other kids in detention that they didn’t have to be there and that I had too many major offences to leave, so when they all left, he started saying all this weird stuff and nearly killed me, but I hit him on the head with a globe, and then he leaped at me and I hit him again and I ended up killing him.” As I said, it all just came out, really summed up actually, but I start to break down again at the memory and looking at mom’s face doesn’t help because she’s just staring at me like I’m something terrible.
“Please mom, I didn’t mean to,” I say sobbing, and I realize, I didn’t mean it. As bad as the BLIs, especially Mr. Vamp, are, I don’t think I could have intentionally killed any of them. All of a sudden I feel over come by all the guilt, a gut-wrenching feeling that makes my feel like I’m gonna be sick, no wait—agh!
Mom just looks crestfallen when I fall on my knees and puke up my guts, “Oh, honey,” she says, tearing up at my wrecked condition. Crying, oh my god, she’s crying.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” is all I say as she pulls me away from where I puked, she holds me close as we both cry and sit on the dirt floor.
“He deserved to die,” she says, “But not by you. No child should kill, and you can feel why.”
And I can, I still feel it gnawing on my insides, feel the poison of guilt course through me. I killed Mr. Vamp, and my conscience was paying big for it.
“You need to leave,” she says into my hair, the same choppy black hair as hers, but a heck of a lot more unruly than her well kept ponytail, mine being too thick and short to do anything but leave it down.
“Mom,” I say looking up at her tear-streaked face, mine probably similar.
“You know you have to,” she says taking my face in her hands.
“No that’s not what I meant,” I say taking her hands, “I want to know what Mr. Vamp was talking about.”
Part 9: http://www.mychemicalromance.com/blog/zone-specter/danger-days-part-9
