Gen 3: And this is how it ends...

My story starts and ends the same way. With a tragedy. I'm not someone important or anything really to anyone. Even my kids don't need me most the time. People pretend that I'm important to them and I mean something, but as I lie in this bed alone, I realize how unimportant I really am to this world. 

You must be confused at why I'm saying this or what's going on. It really is kind of a sad story to end everything with. It was a normal day. I had aged the kids and needed to get some money out of the bank. So I left Nessie, Laura, and Rose in charge. I jumped in my car and drove to the bank where my little sister, Eden, works. She waved at me when I walked in but that's all I can really remember at that point.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in an empty room. I struggled to get up but managed to before realizing I was completely naked.  I tired to cover myself but nothing worked. I looked down at my body and instantly felt insecure. This isn't my body. I attempted to look at my naked back. The demon scars had to be there! But they weren't. I was instantly frantic because this body, free of scars, was beautiful and didn't belong to me.

"So, Ande, I see you've woken up. I've been waiting quite awhile." a man dressed in all white appeared before me in less than an instant. He grabbed my hands and held them in his.
"What happened?" My protective walls shot right up even though I was already naked in front of him. "What happened?"
"You protected your sister in that bank, Ande. You're paying the price for something that someone else did." He brought his hands out from behind his back and handed me a robe to slip over my body.
"I want to show you just what happened."

Instantly, I was back in the bank and the memories flooded into my mind. The fear and pain as that man grabbed my neck and held it too tight. Those eyes that I remember from all the days that I was locked in that basement, tortured and my spirit broken.
"It's Perry, isn't it?"
"Exactly right. Even if you didn't try to protect Eden, he would have known you anywhere. You had no way out of this either way, my dear."
The memory went on. Eden, behind the counter. Her hands were up but what he didn't realize was there was an earpiece in her ear. As he was screaming for all the money to be given to him, she quietly phoned the police.

"WHO CALLED THE FUCKING POLICE?" Perry screamed, squeezing my neck tighter as the sirens rang outside the bank doors. He didn't hesitate, the gun in his hand raised to my head and he was about to shoot. He whispered in my ear, something I don't remember but would still haunt me forever. The rest was such a blur, what had happened? Had he shot me and then got shot by the police?
The memory stopped again, the bank was filled with police. There was blood on the ground and a white blanket covered in blood over  what must have been a body. Was it mine?

"Who is that?" I asked, it was barley a whisper. My hands were shaking, my balance off. I turned to the man in white. "WHO IS IT?"
"It's you, Ande." My breath caught in my throat and he noticed. He shook his head and grabbed my hands. "It isn't real, I'm showing you what could have happened if Eden wouldn't have done what she did."
"What did she do?" Suddenly, the memory paused. The police man had lifted up the blanket and my own face looked at me. Cold, dead. I looked away, a cold feeling starting to overtake me. "Let me show  you..."

The memory changed again and I was there, being held by Perry. His face close to my ear. I looked away from the two of us and trained my eyes on Eden. She had a small gun in her hands, aiming. Even a bit off and she could kill me but she pulled the trigger right before Perry did. I crumpled in pain, his shot hit the middle of my back. Her shot, hit his heart and he was dead in an instant.

I was on the floor, withering in pain. An instant is all it took for everything to go wrong.

I woke in a hospital bed. I was all alone. The pain shot up my back from where the bullet hit me. It took milliseconds to understand that I would no longer walk. So, now I'm laying here all alone reflecting on my silly lot in life. I wasn't happy with my life anyway the way it was so why would I want it to go back to normal now?

I was curled up into a ball, whimpering, when Spencer came in the room. "You're not one to give up easy." I didn't look up at him. I just let the pain spread through my body in that fetal position. He sat next to the bed and sighed, looking through papers in his hand.
"Your spine is severed. It's possible that you could never walk again." He brushed my hair back from my forehead. "You're just attracted to trouble, and that's one thing that I can't really stand about you."

I rolled out on my back with a little yelp and even more pain but I was about to burst into tears in front of this man and that was one thing that I never wanted. But it was almost like I needed to. I needed someone to hold me and tell me that it was okay. I pressed my hands to my eyes in an attempt to keep my tears from starting up.
"Ande, please don't cry..." but it had already started and soon I was sobbing. "Oh god please.." he got up and sat on the edge of the bed and pulled my face into his shoulder. It didn't stop. The tears kept coming and he  kept stroking my back and I was having a full blown emotional breakdown right when my mom walked in the door.

"Oh...I'm sorry, did I come at a bad time?!" She froze in the doorway and Spencer let go of me and turned to her. "No, you're fine Mrs. Langly. I'll leave you two to talk..." He slipped out of the room and I could tell that I had made him emotional as well as I had made myself.
"Ande, Eden is a wreck...She thinks she's the one who hit you." Of course she would  be worried about Eden. "But there are more important things going on. Who's going to take care of you?"
"I'll take care of myself."
"Don't be stupid." I looked at her stunned. "You're paralyzed. You can't do this on your own Ande. You just can't."
"You don't know that."
"I know." And that's when something snapped and I started screaming. I wasn't saying anything, just screaming at the top of my lungs like a little child throwing a tantrum. Everyone rushed into the room and stared at me. Screaming, wailing.

"Now listen to me." I held eye contact with each of them. Mom, Dad, Spencer, Eden, Arley. "I want everyone to stop deciding my future for me. So I can't walk? So what? I'm good at being stubborn." They all stared at me. "I'm not stupid. I'm not delusional. Mom, I can't do your challenge anymore. I just can't. If I could walk, I wouldn't even think about it anymore. I'm broken emotionally and physically. Nothing you say to me anymore can convince me to ever have another child under the influence of that challenge." I looked at my hands and sighed. "I want to have a real life, for once."