It didn’t take long for the rainfall to turn from moderate into a full-on storm. They drove through the rural part of town, which was surrounded by open fields of rotting corn and the occasional barn in the distance. Evelyn was mostly focused on the road, head firmly locked in place, tension filling her shoulders. Though her eyes were watching the road, her mind was on her two children. Every now and then she couldn’t help but to glance at the rearview mirror to check on them. Chris was just sitting in the back, his arms crossed, looking down at the floor with a sour look on his face. Liah was leaning her head against the window, using the fog from her breath to draw smiley faces, then erasing them and doing it all again.

  Neither of them seemed willing to talk, this was typical after a fight and like every time before it was up to Evelyn to solve their differences.
“So…. who wants to go first?” No answer, not even a sound outside of maybe a single dry cough from Chris. “Guess I’m picking then?” she whispered to herself. “Let’s start with you Liah, what happened?”

  Liah responded with a million words a second, recalling her side of the fight, explaining that the whole thing started when Chris stole her key-chain, wouldn’t return it and that she only took the phone as payback. Once Liah was finished, nothing from Chris. Of course. He wasn’t the type to justify himself or his actions and Evelyn knew that, so once again she broke the silence.

  “Is there anything you wanna say?”  Asked Evelyn. Still silence “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  “What are you a cop now?” Chris snapped back.

  “Hey, so you speak. Now, are you going to tell me your side?”

  “What's the point?”

  Evelyn sighed, knowing where this was going and not liking it one bit. “Well, when that’s your attitude......”

  “Good, glad we got that settled.”

  “I would hardly call this settled Chris, but fine be petty” she was beginning to get annoyed. “Last chance Chris..... Well?" 

  “I took the key-chain because she hit me in the back of the head with it.” Said Chris, clearly irritated.

  Liah got defensive but before she could get a word in otherwise, she had been cut off by Evelyn. Chris continued to talk about her as she rapidly tapped her foot, looking as if she was about to burst. According to him, he wasn’t just annoyed with her restlessness after the game, but during it as well. She was running around the rink bleachers, disappearing all together at moments and throwing his focus off with obnoxious chants.

  Liah spun herself into a flurry trying to defend herself, claimed she never ran around the hockey rink and that the disappearances were bathroom breaks. As for the chanting, she was adamant that she was trying to get in the spirit and cheer him on, she seemed rather sincere about it too.

  “You call that cheering?” Chris asked, almost sarcastically.

  “I tried, isn’t that what counts?” Liah awkwardly looked at Chris, he stared back with a deadpan expression. “What? Don’t look at me like that” she continued “I didn’t wanna be there in the first place because, and let me be clear about this, hockey is boring!. Blame mom, she made me go.”

  “Well hold on, missy '' Evelyn interjected “Don’t turn this around on me. I asked if you could go and film the game because there was a good chance I’d be working late tonight, and you agreed.”

  “Yeah but that’s when I thought Anna would come with. If I had known she'd bail I wouldn’t have…”

  “No excuses, what have I said?” Evelyn cut Liah off, in a stern tone.

  “Take responsibility for your actions.” Liah bowed her head, then went back to leaning against the window.

  “Exactly. By the way did you actually film any of it?” Evelyn asked.

  “Uhhhhh……” Liah pulled out a digital video camera out of her fanny pack and struggled to playback the files.

  Chris, being impatient, leaned over, grabbed the camera out of her hands and looked through it. “There's only two clips in here.” he said, “One of her brushing her teeth, the other is only 4 seconds long and shows hardly anything.”

  Evelyn loved Liah, truly she did, but even she could get annoyed with her absent mindedness at times, and this was one of those times. Taking a few seconds to compose herself, she thought of how she wanted to handle this. She didn’t want to yell at her, it would solve nothing, and she knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of someone's temper over a minor mistake, and she refused to treat anyone like that.   After a deep breath in and a few seconds to feel the air in her lungs, she exhaled in an exacerbated sigh. “You two need to get better at settling your differences, this can’t always fall on me.”

  "But!" Both teens exclaimed at the same time.

  "But nothing, your two are brother and sister, act like it" 

  "isn't it normal for siblings to fight though?" asked Liah.

  "Not to this degree it isn't." Evelyn calmly replied. “Liah, be more careful with your key-chain, and next time you agree to something, commit to it." She gave Liah a second to apologize before continuing "Chris, try to be more patient with her.”

  “Yeah... sure whatever.” replied Chris

  "No, not yeah, whatever. It's either yes or no." said Evelyn, aggravated. Chris did not answer her. "Fine, we'll talk about this later then."

  Again, silence. The three of them sat in the car paying little to no mind to each other. Evelyn started dialing through radio channels looking for something to listen to, wanting to fill the silence. She flipped through one station after another, not able to land on anything she liked; in the time span of a minute, she dialed through stations playing rock, hard rock, hip hop, dance, electro, pop balladry, and a few talk shows, but none of it kept her interest, even the 80s station she’d typically default to was playing nothing good.

  Then, to Evelyn's dismay, she couldn’t find anything but static and even the channels that worked moments ago were now just white noise. Was it the storm? The static got louder and louder, piercing their ears with mind numbing intensity, creating a fuzziness they felt in the back of their head and, oddly enough, the tips of their tongues. It was painful, Chris and Liah covered their ears while she could only cover one, as she was still driving. Behind the wall of static, she swore she could hear the faint sound of tortured screaming, cries of agony, pleads for mercy; the more she listened the more she was sure that’s what she was hearing, and it made her heart sink into her stomach, so she turned off the radio altogether.

  Static rang in Evelyn’s ears and judging by the way Chris and Liah were fiddling with their ears, the same went for them. Her head was aching, eyes throbbing, and she was no longer paying full attention to the road. The radio turned back on, all by itself; the static was somehow more intense this time. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t shut it off.

  Then a sudden frantic shout from Chris caught her off guard. “MOM WATCH OUT!”  She barely got a good look at the thing that was now on the road in front of her. The most she saw was a grey blur, before she flung the steering wheel left, swerved into a ditch, and collided with a large rock that knocked the three of them unconscious.