American Nightmare

Our family wasn't exactly the “American Dream”, some would say it was more like an “American Nightmare”. We didn’t live in a pristine house with a white picket fence in an affable, family-oriented town; not by a longshot. We resided in a cramped hamlet in North Carolina by the name of Mecca, a place with a mind-boggling population of 204. The type of people who lived in that god-forsaken place were either debilitated and had lived there since it was a diminutive farm borough, or were adolescent parents with no where else to go. The houses there were predominantly duplexes like our own; essentially pulverized by time with chipped, dull navy paint and cobalt chain link barriers between each unholy household, effectively molding a prison-like atmosphere and tension between fellow inmates. This is where I had called home for fourteen years, fourteen years of pain, struggle and anguish.

I grew up too fast… Ever since I was four years old I had always taken care of Carl, my younger brother. With his crystal blue eyes and flaxen-blonde hair, he reminded me of my mother. My mother Judith, after whom I was named, was an affectionate, amiable women who twenty-two years ago began to age swiftly, all because of my father Robert Carrison.

In London, England twenty-two and a half years ago, my father married a beautiful woman: my mother. He charmed her with his suave looks, comical personality and his desire for a better future from what they had known in England. It was 1928 and the streets of England were rugged, malicious and cruel, no one knew comfort except the rich and my parents were not of wealthy families. My mother’s judgement of my father was amiss however. He shrouded a corrupted side of his seemingly benevolent nature. After movi...

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...he frosty, smooth barrel of his shotgun against my temple.
“Judith!” screamed Carl as he bounded into the clearing along with police officers and medics.
“Run Carl! Run!” I bellowed to him, but alas, it was too late. The shotgun had already went off straight into the skull of my beloved brother, and I knew that it was almost time for me to be dispatched of as well.

As the officials rushed towards my father to apprehend him, I looked towards my mother, she was already dead.
“Momma,” I whispered softly, “I am sorry, I could not save you...” Then I felt the piercing pain of a metal bullet entering my skull, and my consciousness began to wain. “Sorry, so… sorry.” I said inward to myself as the world went a deep, endless shade of ebony, and I finally experienced true peace for the first time since my birth; this American Nightmare had come to a close along with my life.