— When It All Started

There was something soothing about the view of the sea.

Maybe the way the tides come and go, or the way the waves laxly erode the sands as it wriggles their way gently towards the shore, or perhaps the rhythmic pulse it exudes which is unmatched by any other part of nature. Whatever characteristic of the sea it was, Pamela King felt soothed.

She was sitting still, her hands on her lap, looking through the window, lost in thought. She shut her eyes against the glaring hurt that welled up in her heart as if darkness would abate it. A tight and painful lump surged in her throat and she swallowed, trying to efface it. Without wanting to, tears started to seep down her face but she didn't sob. She reached for a box of tissues on a little table beside her and wiped her eyes. Her heart was heavy and sadness weighed her down.

She could hear approaching footsteps that were solid against the wooden stairwell just outside the door. She knew who it was so she didn't bother to turn around. All that filled her was prayers that the person coming would come bearing good news.

She returned her eyes to the sea that was buzzing with its dormant strength just as the hard mahogany door of her father's study creaked open and a blonde petite woman in her early fifties walked in. She was in her early fifties, but she looked ten years her age.

Pamela looked up reluctantly from the view of the sea at the woman that entered. It was her mother, Dorothea.

"Mother," Pamela said, almost in a whisper. That word conveyed a lot of things that Dorothea understood.

She walked slowly towards Pamela. Her face was white, her skin very pale and bags were under her eyes from lack of sleep, all telltale signs that she was suffering just as much as Pamela was. Dorothea took her daughter's hands in hers and squeezed them affectionately.

"He's gone."

Those two words softly spoken had a bomb blast impact on her. Gone. Her love, her best friend, her supporter, her happiness, her gossip buddy, her father, gone.

The tears couldn't come. It just couldn't. The news was not shocking, for he had been battling his life for a week since he was hit by a stray bullet. He was unfortunate to have been at the bank when trigger-happy masked men robbed - or so she was told.

She felt pain though. The kind of pain that renders one weak and speechless. The realization that she would never be able to see her dad smile or talk to her washed over her in alternating waves of more pain. The pain threatened to cripple her. She turned her face to the sea again, begging to be soothed.

"How did he die?" She asked quietly, her eyes still looking straight ahead. "Was it peaceful? Did he suffer a lot?" She turned her head to regard her mom. "Did he call for me?"

Her mom sniffled and wiped at her nose. "It was peaceful honey. He died a very peaceful death." Her face crumpled once more and tears started to seep down her face. "Oh, I'm going to miss him. I'm going to miss the love of my life."

"The love of your life Dorothea? Why then did you divorce him?" Pamela said, anger rising sky-high in her chest.

"Don't start, Pamela."

"Don't start what?"

Pamela's mother stood and walked towards the sets of paintings hung on the wall ranging from The Starry Night painting, Las Meninas painting, the portrait of Innocent X, and others. Her dad had been an art lover, and mostly had Diego Velázquez's paintings.

Her mother stood there and pretended to be studying them. "We've discussed that already."

"I just don't understand why you woke up one morning and demanded a divorce. I want to know why."

"I fell out of love."

"Oh, did you Dorothea?"

"Mother, Pamela." She tore her eyes from the paintings and turned to regard her daughter. "I'm your mother and you will call me that." Her voice was soft but firm.

Pamela sighed. She turned again to the window. "You'll always be Dorothea to me." She muttered bitterly. "You lost the privilege when you destroyed my father. Now he's gone."

Dorothea's voice broke. "I loved him, Pamela, and I still do." She sighed and massaged her temple. "But our divorce is another thing entirely, please try to understand."

Pamela opened her mouth to reply but a rasping knock on the door cut it off. Her bodyguard, Philip entered, looking so mellow, as if feeling sorry for ruining an intimate moment. Pamela almost snorted at that. She would prefer whatever it was that Philip had come to say to having another argument with her mother on such a sensitive topic.

"His body is about to be transported to the morgue, ma'am."

Her mother let out a heavy, forlorn sigh and buried her face in her handkerchief, and that made Pamela want to burst into tears. But she stood, head raised, chin jutted and all, letting off radiation that screamed composure. She walked to the mahogany desk of the study and grabbed her purse. There was no time to waste. Today, she would fill out the necessary forms for the internment and by tomorrow, her father would be buried.

"Lead me there." She said to her bodyguard and gave her mother a quick look. "You coming?"

She shook her head from side to side in negation. "You go ahead."

"This way, ma'am," Philip said and opened the door for Pamela and walked closely behind her. She had had a bodyguard since she was a kid. She remembered asking her father when she was six why she needed a guard. He had said simply,

"There are lots of people who are jealous of our happiness, and would do anything to take it away." He had ruffled her hair fondly. "And you, my dear Pam Pam, is all the happiness I've got in the world."

Well, that was twenty years ago. So far yet so near. She sighed. Time flew by when no one was looking. Her bodyguards were replaced every four years - her father's rules, but Philip was the longest she'd had, and that was six years.

When she got to the bottom of the stairs and saw the medical examiners preparing to place the corpse into the ambulance, her walking faltered. Seeing her father so lifeless and unaware of her presence made her pain skyrocket. The pain became so intense that she could feel her heart ripping into shreds. It dawned on her that he was really dead. Dead.

"Miss King?"

She was brought back to the present from her pain-clad reverie. She swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked tears from her eyes. "Yes. Let's go."

She raised her head courageously and walked towards the ambulance which was parked outside the King's Manor. Her father's body was in a cadaver pouch and the medical examiner unzipped it for her to take a look. She walked slowly towards the body, dreading the pain that would spill from her heart and the misery that awaited her by seeing his body. As her father's face came into view, her breath hitched and her heart became very heavy, as though lead blocks had been forced down her throat.

She mentally braced herself and went closer.

"Can I touch him?"

The Emergency Medical Technician who stood beside her nodded and handed her rubber gloves. She thanked him and put it on. When she touched his face, it was so cold and so lifeless. His facial expression was calm as if he'd been smiling when he breathed his last and that expression was frozen on his face for all of eternity. She couldn't have stayed with him as he passed even if she had wanted to; it would have been too painful to bear. She cradled his face between her palms and her eyes filled with tears.

But the tears hadn't rolled down her face when it happened, the first sound of a gunshot.

The whole medical team dropped to the floor for cover. Pamela, confused about what was happening looked around in disarray. More gunshots were fired and bullets started flying in every direction, and that was when she realized that she was being attacked, and the bullets were being fired at her house!

With a rush of panic, Pamela screamed and fell to the floor as a fusillade of bullets flew over their heads, breaking windows, and smashing headlights, and causing an overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety for her and the people inside.

"Stay down, Miss!" Philip yelled, corking his gun and shooting back at the black van that was attacking them. Crouching low, he ran over to where she was and returned a few shots then said, "I want you to run as fast as you can into the house - "

"No, I can't!"

"Yes, you can! Miss, listen to me, I'll cover you, just run!"

Pamela nodded frantically and swallowed nervously. Her adrenaline was so pumped that she would do anything to save herself at the moment.

"On my count, go." He stood and fired two more shots then crouched to the position where they were. He discarded the gun he was holding when he opened the shell and saw that the bullets had finished then reached for his pocket for another. He quickly checked if the gun was filled and satisfied that it was, said, "One, two, go!"

Pamela sprinted into a run as fast as her legs could carry her while Philip fired at them. She turned around to see if Philip was safe and instantly regretted it. Three masked men scrambled down from the van and started moving towards her with purposeful strides. No, they weren't moving towards her anymore, they were moving towards the ambulance van, at her father's corpse!

"Go, Miss!" Philip hollered bringing her back to the present. She heard Dorothea scream from inside as a window shattered due to the shots.

She crouched low in fear, torn on what to do. Her father's corpse was still there and she couldn't leave him. The least she owed her father was a proper burial. No one knew why those men were heading for her dad's corpse and as hard as Pamela searched for a sensible reason the three huge men would want a corpse, it triggered only one response - they could be insensitive people who wanted to kidnap the corpse and demand ransom. It riled her. Her dad's corpse will not be disrespected!

Her heart beating wildly, she scrambled back to the ambulance van. Suddenly, a hand held her back. Philip.

"Go back, Miss!" He fired two shots and ducked.

"No! My dad!"

"Ma'am it's just a corpse. Nothing will happen to it! You need to save yourself!"

She yanked her hands from his grasp. "Don't you ever call my father 'just!' He's important!"

Philip looked behind her and his eyes widened in shock. "Miss, duck!"

Before she knew what was happening, she was yanked beneath her feet and thrown to the floor while Philip covered her. He suddenly yelled. He had been shot.

"Philip?! Nooo!!" She cried.

She drew unsteady, ragged breaths as she watched him slump. She started to sob, her whole body shaking.

"Save yourself!" He struggled to a sitting position and aimed his gun. Blood had started to seep from his back and unto the floor where he sat. "I'll cover you, Go!"

Pamela screamed at the top of her voice as more gunfire exchange ensued between Philip and the men and ran frantically into the house. She went to a window and watched helplessly as more bullets were fired into Philip's body and he slumped lifelessly to the ground.