Day Of Melancholy

On the day of December  25th 2015, I died.

Just like every other day in the month of December, the seemingly soothing wind whooshed and overtook the atmosphere, cold swept around the room and all over the country and as I expected, families from different races and regions all over the continent would spend time together in laughter and celebration because it is that one time in the year, the time that everyone waited for – the day of Christmas. 

I wake up in the morning and look outside the window just like I have always done since the beginning of the month – though it is for a reason and the reason being that I love to watch the glittering of Christmas trees hung outside our home and other people's homes. I love to hear the sound of Christmas bells and the not-so-loud music playing from the background. The children made giggling sounds as they played with the snow, making snowballs and throwing it at themselves. 

Without a doubt, this day was very special because it felt different from every other day but  for some odd reason, I felt odd. I don't know what it was but I just know that an odd feeling swept through me. I tried to shove it to the back of my mind and it worked but the moment I stared into the mirror to look at my early morning face, the feeling came back. It was as though I was standing face to face with fear. There was no explaining it. It was right there staring at my face – instead of me, I saw a stranger and for some reason I began to imagine the faces of all my family members that were present with us at home at that moment. It was though I was getting a sign of an unfortunate event – that something was going to happen, something unforeseen but the question was; WHY?

My name is Maria Ortega and this is my story…

Coming from a very wealthy family, I can say that life blessed me. Not only was I from a rich family but my parents were loving – they were people that valued their children more than life and yes, I wasn't the only child as most people perceived, I was actually the last child but the only girl. My eldest brother Owen was in college and on this very day, we were all excited for his arrival. The second one, Dylan, was with us at home, well not necessarily at home. He had woken up very early this morning to go for his usual bike ride. A routine he never broke, a routine that even Christmas day wouldn't change. And then you have me, the only daughter of the family. I won't say that I am the most loved because my family loves us equally. But I can say that I was treated specially – maybe it was because I was the only daughter and the last born. My brothers would poke me in the head sometimes because of how special I was being treated. Especially the way my father treated me. But what more can I say? They were closer to my mother while I was closer to my father, and just the way they craved to be treated specially by our father, I craved to be treated specially by our mother. Though it's not something that we worry about – besides, every family experiences it , so it's a normal thing for us.

But one thing I was always grateful for was the fact that we were a happy family. We were very comfortable and lived in one of the finest manors in the whole of North America. But on this day of Christmas, we decided to go visit my grandmother(my mother's mother) and spend the special day with her. Her house is comfortable but not so lavish like the one that I and my family lived in. I can recall how many times that my parents had to beg her to move in with us or probably move her into a new house but she refused. According to her, she hated lavishness. She always liked it simple, even the car she drove wasn't so expensive – she had 3 exotic cars parked in the compound, one of them was a 2014 Lamborghini Asterion which my father bought as a gift to celebrate her 80th birthday, and another one was the RUF Carrera Turbo, and the third one was a Ferrari. 

Normally, she wouldn't tolerate the cars being in her home but because they came as gifts, she accepted it. She would say that she wasn't moved by the flashiness and the vanities of the world because she and my late grandfather went through hell to stay together. She wouldn't leave because her home reminded her of her late husband and she always felt that he was still there with her. The only thing that would make her leave her home for ours was simply because she wanted to visit us, especially us, her grandchildren. She would say that she values us more than life itself and would do anything to make us happy. My father would use us as an excuse to get her to visit us and she would come running if she heard that one of us was sick. And of course it was only a ploy to get her to visit.

We were actually enjoying ourselves – lighting up the house with decorative blinking lights, playing games and enjoying our meal. We were still in the middle of that when my brother Dylan came back and stormed into the house as though he was being chased. Everyone looked tense, especially my grandmother.

''Is everything okay, Dylan? Who is chasing after you?'' she asked – her brows had already contorted frowns and the once smiling face had faded.

''Nothing, grand ma! I just wanted to be sure that you guys haven't started eating without me.'' He replied. I watched as everyone's shoulders dropped in relief. Yeah, that was the typical Dylan everyone knows – he never takes life seriously. To him, life was nothing but fun. That was his own way of enjoying it to the fullest. He joined us at the dining table without wasting time and in no distant time, our surroundings were filled with laughter – we chatted and laughed at each other's jokes. It had been a while since everyone gathered together like this. It was a good sight to behold accompanied with a good feeling. Seeing the smiles on my dad's face as he wined and dined with us felt like a blessing . He was the story telling type – for every gathering like this, he would pick out a story from his past and tell it to us. This time around, he was narrating the story of how he was ridiculed by his male teacher who told him that he wasn't going to make it in life because of how poor his grades were – a story he has narrated to us one million times. Because of how frequent this particular story had been narrated to us, I mastered the sequence with which he was going to narrate it.

Just when he was about to narrate to us how he boldly stood up to his teacher, the unexpected happened – unfamiliar people barged into the house at that instant and they all pointed their guns at my father's face.