A small smile is drawn across the stony surface of my face. One eye crinkles in the corner to further the false sincerity of it. If there are any deficiencies in the façade they will be attributed to the headache still raging on against the side of my head. The pain they know and will believe.

But there’s another pain, one that is quieting the physical one that neither sleep, heat, nor medication had failed to do so before. It is a familiar pain, similar to the headache finally and deceptively subsiding. Similar in that it sneaks up at random times whether it be middle of the day surrounded by people or middle of night in the dead of sleep and alone.

My chest tightens as I inhale a small breath to keep the façade in check. The crinkled eye hides the tears threatening to slide down and reveal the lie. I could probably lie about the nature of the tear – blame it on the headache now squashed in the recess of my head. It is nominal compared to the pain now roaring forth.

To call it ‘jealousy’ would be another lie. It’s not quite that.

To call it ‘depression’ would be less of one, but still another lie. It probably doesn’t help.

To call it ‘crazy’ would be more of a truth. But that is not all of it.

It could be called ‘self-depreciation’. That’s not all of it though.

It could be called ‘masochism’. Yet I never asked for it. Nor is it satisfying. 

It could be called ‘anxiety’. But that is not all of it. 

Let’s call it ‘validation’. On the contrary, that is what is lacking.

When it comes to throwing inanimate objects at third-floor windows, there isn’t any good way of going about it. Too soft, and you may undershoot the window that is the target. Too hard, and you may either overshoot the window or break it. The most popular object of choice is rocks because of their variety in size and ability to stay true to their projected path. However, I can’t say I haven’t seen slippers or books thrown at my bedroom window in attempts to attract attention late in the evening. I can’t say either there isn’t any judgment of the prospective suitor down below by what they throw at the back window of my bedroom. Those that throw books are promptly reported to my older brothers who scare the poor boy off the property. Depending on the style of shoe – more importantly the cost of it, the shutters may open and they are acknowledged. The rock throwers are ignored until they wake my father who will fire his pistol three times around them to warn them off. He used to scold us for disrupting him while he slept, but that was before we found out he did the same thing to Mama when they were courting. After that, my twin sister and I were never lectured on disrupting him. The only ones that are successful in getting my attention and affections are those that don’t throw anything at the bedroom window. For they know I enjoy my sleep and are much more likely to gain returned affections in the morning over cups of tea. My sister however, prefers to answer anyone and anything that happens to knock on our window. If our brothers knew how often Alicia would slip out and down the trellis to the types of boys that waited below with their belts and trousers already undone, to say they would be unhappy would be an understatement. To also say that she didn’t just slip out of the window in her laciest nightgown to a new boy who showed up in only a bathrobe would be a lie.

I had just changed into my night dress when a small “pst” filled the air. “Annie, did Alicia just slip out the window again?” my youngest older brother Roger whispered.

“Yes, and from the looks of her it seems it won’t be the last time tonight”, I whispered back. Roger convinced our middle brother David to whittle out a hole in the wall connecting our two rooms together, threatening to tell Papa about how he would watch Miss Bilty from across the street undress through the holes he had put in her walls. Before, we would meet in the living area in the early hours of the morning, but Papa said it was inappropriate for a young lady to be out of bed and with a man even if it was her brother. People would find out, he said, and rumors would begin to circulate. Since then, we were all forced into our rooms by nine o’clock and weren’t allowed to leave unless it was an emergency. To some members of my family, anything related to sexual relations was an emergency.

A small chuckled escaped the space next to me, “Annie, why don’t you ever go down there?”

“How is she staying warm on a night like tonight? Never mind, I don’t want to know”. My voice trailed off as my sister let out a small squeal. By now I had pulled the silk and cotton covers up to my neck. It was a cold night and I didn’t dare close the window on Alicia. Even though Alicia and I are twins, we have never been that close. Her priorities always rested more with the opposite sex, as was obvious by the moans and grunts coming up from the ground below the open window in which she escaped from. Papa said it was healthy for a lady of our age to begin taking an interest in men; he was worried I didn’t show enough interest for a girl my age, but I had enough experience vicariously through my sister’s escapades. I don’t believe he meant this much interest either.

There is a second window in my little room, one that rested directly across from our large, white bed. It wasn’t as big as the side window that leads to the grounds out back that Alicia used as her mounting grounds, nor as decorative. The wood panels around the smaller planes of glass were rotted a bit and the paint had faded beyond recognition of color. There were little rusted handles on the inner panes; it didn’t open like Alicia’s. It still let in enough light from the moon and sun to let me see my books. Roger taught me how to read and write during those nights neither of us could sleep. It relaxed us both to focus on things besides the monster that plagued our nightmares. Papa said that a lady shouldn’t be interested in books and such things, that it clouded a lady’s thoughts and gave her ideas. I had always wondered if maybe Papa’s resistance to Alicia and I learning was because of Mama– that maybe these ideas of death were hidden in the stained pages. The last time Papa saw me with a book he burned it, right in my hands.

It was too cold to sleep. Even the warmth that was tucked in the blankets next to me had gone cold. I crawled slowly up out of the ruffled bed sheets to work on a poem my eldest brother Charlie was going to publish. He had been collecting my poems and said he would publish a novel of them, to show Papa that I was more than just a pretty face. This last one was going to be the finale, the longest one I had written yet. But it was gone. Normally, my writings were tucked in the broken arm of the chair that sat next to the window. The ugly yellow flowers that I had fallen in love with were worn away, the fabric sinking into the hollowed out arm and created an opening just large enough for my small fingers to slip in and out to grab the sheets of paper Charlie and Roger had tucked in there. Papa would have refused to let Alicia and I have a sitting chair if he knew what it contained.

“Annie...” my brother yelled through the hole. “Someone is coming down the hall”.

“Roger, why are you yelling? You will wake the others”.

“It’s Charlie, Annie. Don’t you know the sound of your own brother’s voice?”

“Charlie? But I was”.

Gunshots interrupted me mid-sentence. A scream matching my own rang up from the back grounds rather than the moans of pleasure that usually filled the night air. There was something scurrying up the ivy-ridden trellis outside the window. Light brown locks of hair with sprigs of grass were framed in the opening before a dark hand slammed the window that Alicia had opened. Another gunshot erupted from the grounds out back, but this time red splotches splashed up to the shut window along with pieces of light brown hair. My hand slowly reached up to grab my own light brown curls framing my face. The coldness that had sunk into my gown was quickly replaced with heat. My palms started to sweat but my feet were frozen in place. There was a loud knock at the bedroom door.

“Hold on, I’m not decent”, my eyes didn’t leave the shut window that had Alicia splattered on it.

My feet shuffled slowly towards the continued knocking. The image of the back window was all I could see as I reached for the lock on the door. More gunshots rang through the Old English house.

“Annie?!” came a scream from someone outside of my door, along with more knocking.

“Who is it?”

“Annie, it’s David. Do you kno...” More gunshots cut off the voice. With those last ones, that meant only Charlie, Roger, Papa, and I were left. I didn’t know where Roger went or why Papa hadn’t gotten up yet. I walked over to the hole and leaned my ear as close to the wall as possible to hear what was going on in the boys’ room. Charlie was crying. Charlie never cried, even when Papa twisted his arm so hard it broke.

“But but but...” Charlie blubbered to the unknown assailant.

“Shut up, you are worse than a woman!” I recognized the voice. The same voice scolded me countless time for sneaking out to the living room with Roger. My arms started to burn, although the long sleeves on my nightgown were fine. Papa had the same tone when he burned the book, and when he punished Roger for giving it to me. Another three shots rang over Papa’s overbearing voice as he screamed at Charlie to stop crying. The clicking of the firing pin was distinct to Papa’s old revolver. It was the only one I knew of to have that ringing when the bullet was released from the chamber. Even my brothers’ guns didn’t make that noise. Papa said it was because it had tasted human blood. I knew it was the truth.

“Roger...Annie...” Papa sang from the bedroom next door. “Where are you filthy children!?” Papa’s boots stomped across the wood floor and echoed into my bedroom. Small squishes of sound snuck through the hole in the wall and outside the room, squishes that must be from Charlie and David’s blood.

“Roger”. I turned to face the lump that was warm in my bed. A small strand of bright blonde hair peaked from under the white blankets. The blankets surrounding the bulge and lock of hair weren’t white though. Large blotches of red had seeped from underneath to the surface. It looked oddly familiar to the red splotches that covered the back window from Alicia. I reached my arm toward the top edge of the covers and gripped the seam. Slowly retracting the covers toward the base of the bed did I finally find my poems.

“Roger! Why are you holding my poems?” I swiped the beige pages from his cold, pale hands. “I told you, you couldn’t read them until I was finished!” Roger’s bright blue eyes had dulled by now, but were still sown open. His hair had gotten messed up from the sexual acts he inflicted upon me before I had enough of it and shoved the butcher knife I had snuck from the kitchen earlier that day into his chest. Not that the sex was bad this time, but it was so much better when I had control of the situation. I could twist and turn the blade in his rib cage and make him squirm just the way I liked.

“Look at what you did”, I turned away from the naked body of my brother still in my bed. “You got blood on the page! How is the publisher supposed to read this if it is stained?” I pulled the bottom of my nightgown up to try and blot the blood away from the title - Breaking Glass. “There, it just looks like tea was spilt on it now”. I walked over to my wardrobe to put on a clean dress. I had my favorite washed and dried earlier that day; a red silk corset with black fleur de leis embroidered in lace around it. The red silk skirt that complimented the corset along with black lace sewn in had been hemmed shorter- up to the knee. Papa would say it was inappropriate for a lady to show any skin, but he never said that when he snuck into my room all those times when Alicia had snuck out. The neckline ended at the corset unlike the other dresses that Mama had made us. My breasts peaked out from the top of the corset, along with my collar bone with the knife marks from Papa telling me to stop crying about the pain of him being on top. There were no sleeves on the dress either, the freckles and burn marks reflected in the moonlight entering from the side window. I took Alicia’s knee-high black boots, the ones she wore out when no one knocked on our window, and put them on without stockings. The pale skin on my thighs shined in the moonlight as well as the scars Papa had left when he said it didn’t feel good enough. Papa said that Mama had the same marks too, he called them beauty marks.

“Annie, Annabelle my love. Are you in there?” Papa used his master key to open my bedroom door and walked just far enough in to the light reflected in the setting mirror. His usual crisp white shirt was riddled with blood and mud stains. The light slacks I had cleaned earlier had dark brown spots from either mud or the poor boy in the bathrobe on the knees and in the hip area. He must have shown Alicia how it should be done after he shot her newest lover.

“Papa, how do I look?” I twirled in my new dress. The skirt floated up just enough to show the rest of my legs. I stopped and bent over like he always asked me too and reached to pick up my coat. It was a cold night after all.

“Annie you look tantalizing. Maybe...is that Roger?!” his tone switched from loving to furious. I had forgotten to cover my brother back up.

“I’m sorry Papa, but I thought I would get some practice in before we left”. I reached in to the inside pocket of my coat and walked slowly towards Papa.

“Practice, how dare you?! You filthy whor...” The knife went into his chest with even less resistance than it did with Roger. Maybe the fat from being lazy and making me be on top the last few years had caught up to him; or maybe because he was a heartless old bastard, who knows.

“Shh... don’t talk Papa. It only speeds up the process”, I placed my index finger over his dry, wrinkled lips as he slid down to the blood-stained carpet. “I should know, Roger wouldn’t shut up and I didn’t get near the amount of pleasure I was hoping for.

“It’s really all your fault though, you know?” I pulled the knife quickly out of Papa’s chest and watched the blood spray onto my red dress. I knew I had chosen these colors for a reason; it didn’t show the stains and only made the colors brighter. “If you hadn’t been so jealous about me being better in bed than Mama, she would still be alive and so would you”.

The look of disappointment in Papa’s brown eyes was liberating. I could see the life slip away from him and the pain as I sewed his mouth shut and eyes open like I had done with Roger. He tried pleading with me, so much as to agree with me. But there was nothing he could say that would have changed his fate. After I was well and done with him and all the life had left his old and crippled body I stepped over slowly with my coat and bag that held my poems. It was only a couple of weeks ago did I get the inspiration for my collection - as I sat in the old yellow-flowered chair writing one of the poems for Charlie I saw Papa digging and dragging Mama into what was a shallow grave. At that same moment, a young swallow had slammed into the center pane in the window and cracked it, its blood seeping in and dripping slowly onto my favorite dress.

I walked outside into the frozen air and stood on my mother’s grave, and looked back to the house to see my handiwork.

“That’s for you Mama”, I kneeled and kissed the decaying fingers that had snuck out of the dirt from the rain the night before. The final line of my last poem could still be seen from my old bedroom window, written in Papa’s blood:

‘Through breaking glass, I am finally free.’