The Breath Of His

6. Stop playing the game of freeze or die with the raccoons outside the window

I pushed the stray piece of tomato aside from the guacamole on the baked potatoes with my fork into a small bunch of them at the side of my plate. I hated them for some reason, it made me want to jerk my entire body in disgust.

"Snow, you are not eating the tomatoes again," my dad sang from the end of the table.

"Because I hate them," I grimaced at the idea of even smelling them.

"But you eat ketchup," he pointed out.

"Ketchup doesn't exactly taste like tomatoes," I countered.

"But it is made up of tomatoes," he argued.

"Shouldn't you be happy that I eat ketchup even when it is made up of tomatoes? Why exactly are you complaining?" I retorted.

"Stop it, both of you," mom scolded before sighing in annoyance, "you father-daughter go on every single time you sit down for a meal.

"We do not," dad and I said in a synch before looking at each other and laughing. My mom only shook her head smiling.

"You have a check-up tomorrow with the doctor and they might even remove the cast then. I've informed Teddie and he said he will submit your leave application for tomorrow," mom supplied taking a bite of her salad. It's been around four months since the accident and two months of me missing school and I couldn't rejoice more at the news of getting rid of the crutches.

"I can't wait to get out of this damned cast," I murmured to myself.

"Language, Snow, language," dad lectured making give that sorry-not-sorry apology making dad grumbling something alike 'kids now-a-days'.

Finishing the dinner, I hobbled up to my room from where we can see the sea. Ours was a simple two storey beach house with a hip and valley roof. Actually three storey if one counted the attic. My room had a sea view on the second floor and one could even see the lighthouse situated on the top of the cliff at the far end of the lane. The lighthouse had stopped functioning many years ago, it just served as a landmark now, nothing more.

I frequented to that cliff for some alone time, especially after Jackie's death few years ago. Initially, the lighthouse helped distract me from her memories, the closeness to water, away from everyone. It felt like another world. Later it just became a habit of mine to sit there for hours together, staring at the waves crash into the boulders. And occasional fish jumping above the wave.

I stared out the window sitting on the windowsill seat, into the cresent moon above the sea. The waves were unusually higher tonight, and I couldn't help but recall the night at Louis's house, the previous year.

It was a night like this and the waves were higher than usual. I was the party, surrounded by a crowd but still very much alone. There was something wrong with the fancy named drink that I had gulped down was definitely wrong. I clearly remembered specifying to give me a non-alcoholic one. It was buzzing in my ears and making me warm.

The house felt suffocating with so many people making a noise for the sake of fun. Not to forget the speakers blasting in my ears.

I headed to the backyard for a breather, the cold air cooled my warm skin as I closed my eyes and enjoyed the moment. I don't know how long I stayed like that, living the moment. The only time I opened my eyes when my skin buzzed and my accident detector went off.

I looked ahead to see two boys standing in a waist deep water, one of them was wearing a hat, both of them were facing away from me when all of a second a wave hit them and the very next second, they were gone!

I blinked once, it took a second for me to understand what had happened and before I knew it, I was screaming and shouting, "oh my gosh! Did you just see that? Somebody help them!"

Hearing me shout, people started to assemble around me and asked what happened, "oh my gosh, I just saw two boys drown in the sea!"

I pointed to the sea and as if to prove my point, the hat that one of the boys was wearing, washed ashore.

I looked around for anyone to take any action, to call the authorities for help when I looked back at the sea to find the torso of a person above the water. The waves hitting his back and the darkness hid his face.

The only thing I could see about him was his pale platinum hair in the light of the moon and the glowing light eyes on his dark silhouette. He was at the same place where the boys had drowned and stood there, staring at me with those inhumane yet gorgeous eyes of his. I could tell every single detail about them. The eyes surrounded by thick eyelashes, the glowing silver that could compete with the moonlight, the pupil in his eyes expanded like a band to look like a cat's pupil as the small black and dark grey lines appeared all over the iris. The eyes were hypnotic to look at, resembling a desert sands under the moonlight.

The side of my head slid down the window pane waking me up. The tainted morning sky and the fresh breeze, made me sigh in delight after taking a deep breath.

I seemed to have fallen asleep by the window again and dreamt the same dream the frequented me almost every night after my near death experience. The sea looked serene in the morning, the water splashing on the shore and I heard my mother shouting at my father to stop playing the game of freeze or die with the raccoons outside the window.

I could say how much my dad fell in love with the squid games, just didn't kill those raccoons so that he could play with them the next time...

Nah, he couldn't kill a fly if he had to. Or maybe, he could kill just the flies and not anything else. I knew that much about him.