To Start, A Story:

Instead of using all kinds of words and such to describe me, I'll let a story (still in progress) that I wrote at one this morning do the talking:
Story of my (After)Life

There’s really nothing left for me to say, here in Bliss. All of my life troubles were left as the empty bottle fell to the floor.
I can’t remember much before that day; I remember my decline into depression, I remember other important events, like the births of each of my children and my wedding day to the man I loved so dearly, and I can remember, though I wish I didn’t, the deaths of my favorite children.
I know a mother isn’t supposed to choose favorites out of the kids that she gave birth to, especially when a mother like me had four before thirty, but I did. They were numbers 3 and 4, Kaye Rose and Patrick Hollyster, fraternal twins. Preceding them were two singles, Ryanna Renee and Nate Benson. To sum it all up, before my twenty-fourth birthday, I had four children. However, this wasn’t the problem.
Ever since my teen years, I yearned for motherhood, and I had a boyfriend (who later became my husband and father to all four of these offspring) who yearned equally for fatherhood. We had agreed on waiting until I turned eighteen in June to start our family, but I became pregnant with Ryanna just three months before; I immediately called Graham when I could confirm this, and he flew down from his home state (we kept a long-distance relationship. Two states separated us.) on my birthday night to propose to me. We had gone walking in the park behind my house, and that’s when the relationship progressed. The second we came back inside, we announced both the engagement and the pregnancy. Somehow, my mother was thrilled.
Graham and I set our wedding date to July fourteenth to mark the five years we had been dating. Everything was perfect, just the way it had been pictured for years in my mind. Nothing could have made me happier, except for the anticipated life of the child I carried.
Sixth long months later, on December twenty-second of the year 2013, our baby girl came to us; this process wasn’t as easy as one could think. No, Ry had been stillborn, after thirteen hours of labor pains and pushing and contractions, and I was devastated beyond normal. The old demons of self harm flooded back as I could see the lifeless child in front of Graham and me. Then, in that same moment, her previously bluish skin became normal color, my paleness, and a wail filled the room. Tears ran down my face, and my husband’s.
Then, about eight months later in August, Nathan was conceived; the whole pregnancy, I knew he was going to have some powerful legs for a sport of some kind. May sixteenth, 2014, we had our first son. Two children in the apartment we had, and so we took a small break from kids (Graham and I talked and agreed that we shouldn‘t give up the pleasure of our sex life for kids, so I got put on birth control) to save money for a small, 3-bedroom house in Columbia.
Around the area of the home, actually only two months after Nate’s birth, I snagged an AP English teaching job at a local high school, seniors. Keep in mind I was nineteen with my teaching degree; yeah, that’s right. Surprisingly, however, my room was an advanced one, so only those who selected it could get in; I got all girls in every one of my classes, seventeen and eighteen, and never a class bigger than fifteen kids. One even had a simple seven.
Now, Graham also had a teaching gig at that same high school in AP Biology. In fact, we had some of the same kids, and every year we always had one class be the exact same as the one before it (but aren‘t I getting ahead of myself?). This went on for about a year before we purchased our perfect home; the next kids came around shortly after this.
In September of 2015, I noticed that I was a bit “bigger” than I should be for a pregnancy in its third month, and this is not to say that I was fat. No, I mean my pregnant belly was a tad more round; I scheduled the first ultrasound for this round of kids.
Doctor called twins, each in their own respective amniotic sacs. It gave me hope for our family to expand even wider than it already had. In my sixth month, sexes could be determined: a boy and a girl.
I never figured out why I loved the twins more than the others. Was it because of the slim chance of the conception and the way it happened? Was it because ever since I learned about the probability of twins, I knew that I wanted just a boy and a girl, twins? What about the names Graham and I had picked out in advance; was the fact that the boy, Patrick Hollyster, carried the same name of the singer that saved me so many times before I even knew about Graham?
Questions raged through me, and the worry that I would ignore the other children got the best of me; early labor at the beginning of the eighth month.
Kaye Rose and Patrick Hollyster came via C-section, which I would have no other way, at one in the morning on a brisk February the tenth, 2016. Graham and I thought we were done then, all joyful for our family and our careers which panned out so well, thought that life just couldn’t get any better and nothing could bring us down. We stayed that way for about four years. Until two things started at the beginning of the ‘19-’20 school year: our happy “accident”, and Alyssa.
Yes, this is where Jasper Seth comes into play, where the positive bathroom pregnancy test told me I was going to have my fifth (or possibly sixth as well) child. I was ecstatic, as I always was; children could never be a burden or a nuisance to me. In fact, after the twins’ third birthday, I just quit birth control (a married couple with kids need their sane years) for another, but I just never told Graham. Which is why he wasn’t nearly as ecstatic as I was when I told him I was pregnant.
“You‘re what?”
“Pregnant. I can spell it if you want me to.” He started pacing back and forth a bit.
“Just…how? How is this possible?” I looked at him, head cocked to the side a bit and eyes gazing up at him. He grinned and laughed lightly. “Not that how, honey. Weren‘t you on the pill?” That’s when I made my mistake: biting my lip. It’s my guilty calling card.
“I….uh….am.” I turned from him so he wouldn’t notice. He did; I don’t give him nearly enough credit sometimes. After all, I was but twenty-four, and he nearly twenty-five.
“Luna, what did you do?” Graham came up behind me and spun me around; I examined the floor.
“Uhm…..” He put a finger under my chin, our eyes meeting. Have I ever said what his eyes did to me? What that deep black-brown made me think of? To sum it up in one word….orgasmic. And mysterious, for two words. My eyes, however, didn’t have that mystery. Nope, he figured me out in a second flat.
“You went off the drugs without telling me first?” His hand dropped from my face, and I could tell that he wanted to start yelling louder at me but knew he couldn’t because I was pregnant. Instead, he spent the night in Ryanna and Kaye’s room, because he knew they wouldn’t bother him if he wanted to crash on the floor. Me? I graded papers that night. The whole night.
This brings me to “lovely” Alyssa, who is the cause, besides me, of me in Bliss. She was eighteen, had deep green eyes, and slightly wavy dark auburn hair. Though the school slut, and said to be incapable of love, she was a fantastic writer. And an even better biologist, apparently.
Remember me talking about how Graham and I would, every year, manage to get the same exact class right after each other? Well, that school year, that awful year, Alyssa, along with only nine other kids, was in my class right before Graham’s. And damn was she a kiss-up.
I wasn’t blind. I knew what some of the oldest girls thought of my husband. It didn’t surprise me; I thought the same of him. Utterly gorgeous, sexy and seductive eyes, deep laugh, thick hair. The whole works. I thought I knew everything about every one of our students. Guess I was wrong.
As my pregnancy with Jasper progressed, I noticed that Alyssa was no longer my “teacher‘s pet” when it came to writing. At home, while I would talk somewhat negatively about her, such as when she refused to speak with me after class, Graham’s share of her only improved. Said she was participating even more than she used to, and that now he had less grading to do because of her, because Alyssa was his smartest student. In fact, to me it almost seemed that he was attracted to this girl somehow, yet it never occurred to me that it could be her attracted to him.
You see, Alyssa was extremely clingy when it came to the male sex. Any time she got a new guy, it was only a matter of days before he would sleep with her, as the rest of the school says, and dump her. If I had bothered to read her file, I would have known that her father disappeared with another woman when she was but five and it left her longing for a fatherly substitute or any attention given by a guy. I would have known that, while she had received mental treatment, she was still prone to acting on impulses to get the man she “loves” to stay.
This is why I nearly freaked out that, about two months before the twins’ fourth birthday, my favorites were missing. There was a note stating that I needed to, with my husband, meet at the old church to see my children and “decide”. It was signed by Alyssa.
I called Graham, voice overrun by tears, and we went together where she said to. The authorities were notified of our locations and a time to rush. Our code word, twilight (very long story. Don‘t get me started), was to alert our allies (the police) to rush in on us.
Alyssa had tied our kids back-to-back in chairs, so tight that circulation was pretty much gone. Not hazardous, however, to their health, just bad enough to knock them out. I cursed her then to die.
She had a gun; of course she had a gun. Why wouldn’t she? Graham and I locked hands as she sauntered to him, a plastered seducing grin on her face.
“Well look who showed,” she cooed, licking her lips and wrapping her free arm around his neck. He flinched, and I was about to pull him closer when she swung the gun towards the children. I backed off until she was satisfied; that left me in a corner, the farthest one from my babies.
“Mr. Howell has a choice, Mrs. Howell,” she stated flatly, still eyeing my love. “He can only get one of the groups, you know. The twins or you and that baby you‘re carrying.” I gritted my teeth and looked up at Graham. His eyes were glassy with fear and a few tears spilled onto his cheeks.
“Or,” she said, noticing this. “He can sleep with me, and do as I say, and you all go home just fine.” I looked at him, nodding. If saving my twins, Jasper, and my life meant him sleeping with that whore, then I hope he’d take that option. What right does he have to play God?
He seemed to nod too, and also got a seductive grin on his face; a fake one. At least, I hoped it was a fake one.
Graham placed one hand behind her neck and the other behind her back, dipping her and mouth moving close to her throat. I don’t know if she knew we were both wired with mics and earpieces. Mine was yelling to get out while Alyssa was distracted, but I was staying put. I needed to know the decision he made.
“Alyssa,” he inquired. “Did you ever see Twilight?”
The rest came way too fast.
All at once, cops swarmed in one-by-one, breaking windows on contact; each had a firearm aimed at Alyssa, but loosely. She wasn’t stupid, and she had enough of a conscience not to shoot me; that’s when she turned the gun towards my twins, two shots. She had perfect aim. My babies were dead, and I had watched it happen. Which triggered my early labor, and I screamed, fainting. Before my eyes shut, Graham rushed towards me and I heard one last shot.
I woke up maybe two days later, my head spinning and noticed I was no longer pregnant. Graham was at my bedside, holding my hand. The heart monitor beeped every second.
“What happened?” His eyes were off; red rimmed them. Something awful.
“Do you remember any of it?” His thumb was light on my fingers. I shook my head.
“Alyssa…had some issues. Some really bad ones. She ended up being completely jealous of you because of me. She had claimed to be in love with me.” He wiped a tear that had fallen. “The police came in and it scared her. Baby, I am a horrible father.” I wrapped my arms around his weeping form the best I could.
“You are not. Don‘t say that. You have four children to go home to.” Me saying that made everything so much worse.
“There are only two now, Luna: Ryanna and Nate. Alyssa shot and killed Kaye and Patrick. Not only that, but we lost Jasper, too.” And that’s when I started crying every day until the end of my life.
I was released into the care of family a few days later with a prescription for a bottle at a time for antidepressants. I started thinking then, but not completely seriously.
There was no way I could face home, and Graham understood. Which is why he had gotten a hotel room for my mother and me that would last as long as we needed it to.
I told him to resign me from the school, my reason being that there was no way I was going back there. I never did.
My mom and I talked during the night, every night, for a few hours after doing stress-free activities in the day. This mainly consisted of lounging around in the room and eating, sharing stories.
Now, after she had gone to sleep, both in the night and day, I pulled out a friend I hadn’t seen in years. Like, about ten years. A shiny razor never lets you down.
I started slow, like I always did. Just two long ones, three lines each. Blood pulsed crimson out of the pink paleness and fell down my thigh to gather around me. I never bothered with a towel. Then things started to get interesting.
I let myself go all out; any piece of skin besides my face wasn’t left untouched. At least, as long as clothes could cover it up. I ended with somewhere around twenty cuts each night, always practically soaked in my own blood. My skin had even started to stain before I turned on the shower.
My mother only stayed for a week and then I went back home. No one was there, and this was my last chance and I knew it.
With two children killed by another woman’s hand and one dead because of underdevelopment, I folded. I knew exactly where all the antidepressants were in the cabinet, and a half-bottle remained. Apparently Graham was sneaking some while I was gone.
A clear glass was filled with water to chase the pills down, taking four at a time to quicken the madness to follow. A smooth, rhythmic shaking started in my hands, and slowly worked its way throughout my body until the glass I had been holding shattered against the tile floor.
I had enough control left to pick up the largest of the shards to pull hard and fast against each wrist; the scarlet flow thickened like I never knew it could. The last, alive thought I had in my head as my blood stained my clothes, and hearing Ryanna walk through the front door, was if I would be able to watch my family go on. All I heard was my first-born’s scream.
But then I was watching the whole thing, like an out-of-body experience. Except it must have been ten minutes later because Graham walked in to see this beautiful dead woman on the floor.
Wait that was me?
Her hair was light dirty blonde with red undertone, skin pale white. Her eyes had been left slightly open; deep blue contrasted against that natural white.
Was that really me?
It must have been, because Graham shooed Ryanna to her room to mourn over me. Salty tears cascaded down his cheeks and landed on the fresh corpse’s face. He pressed his lips to her (my?) forehead and wrapped his arms around her (me?) to pull the cold body to him in a last embrace. Somehow, I could hear his thoughts.
I’m never going to feel her warmth again. I’m never going to be able to kiss her again. I’m never going to be able to hear her singing voice, never going to tell our children goodnight. I’m never going to hear her say again that she loves me.
Then all at once he put the woman down and the thought process changed; depressed tears changed to upset ones.
Did she love me? Could she really have loved me if she did this to herself? Didn’t she know that we were going to get through this together? Did she feel that I was there for her? Then my love noticed the rest of the glass shards on the floor by the body. A slow, half-smile crept up onto his face and I moved closer.
She’s gone. I can’t without her. I can’t face Ryanna or Nathan without her…..
I rushed at him, trying to scream at him to put the glass away, that he needed to be there for Ry and Nate like I wasn’t.
“It‘s bad enough they‘ve lost their younger siblings and a possible newborn. It‘s bad enough they‘ve lost their mother now, too!” I was crying with him. “They don‘t need to lose their daddy.”
Yet it seemed Graham couldn’t hear me. At all. He hesitated above the prominent vein in his arm, and as I could hear him yell at himself to just get it over with, I slapped it from him; the glass piece flew across the room and hit the wall. Graham just stared straight, amazed.
I was amazed too, to be honest. Did I really just do that? Then I wanted to know what else I could do.
I stood up, leaving Graham there in shock, to find paper and pen in the drawer; it was a snap. A simple message was scrawled out and put in front of Graham.
I don’t think you can hear me, hear my voice. You can’t leave them here, sweetheart. You can’t. You need to be strong for them, strong for the ones that are left here. I’m here for you if you need me. I’m listening to you.
You should’ve seen the look on his face.