Prompt: "Day 27 —Make up a near-death experience (unless you have a real one)."
When my family and I were living in California we had an... unexpected visitor. It was my Aunt and she had flown in from Hawaii. This was one of the last times I can remember actually seeing her. At the very most I must have been six years old, but it still haunts me to this day.
My Aunt Cindy was very... unstable. A drug addict since she was eighteen, pulled in through her minor modeling career. She came to us all panicked and worried. She just kept repeating that she needed some place to stay until things blew over. At that age, I didn't really understand what she said or what "being addicted" meant. I just knew there was something off.
Before dinner my mom and dad were arguing about her, about what to do with her. My mother kept saying over and over that my aunt, "Needs to leave immediately" and that she "didn't care where the hell she holed up" so long as it was away from here. Being my dad's sister, he was more defensive and told my mother to "shut the hell up and deal with it" and should anything happen he would "take care of it". Dinner was stressful. My aunt was extremely paranoid and the slightest noises set her off. Maybe the wind blew in just the right way up against our little house and she'd freeze like some sort of deer caught up in lights. Or maybe there was a faint scratching on the door. After a while it must have been too much because she started weeping. My dad tried to calm her but nothing seemed to make her smile. I wasn't sure what to do. Eventually my mom told my brother and I to go to bed.
Later that night I heard my parents arguing again. This time my aunt tried to fight back as my dad demanded to know why she was so stupid for coming here and "endangering his family". There was a dreadful pounding on the door after my dad had asked if she had been followed. To be honest, I'm not sure what happened next. I could barely make sense of the words that were exchanged and the sounds of firecrackers, really loud firecrackers around. Suddenly a man came into my room and spent most of the time tearing it up, screaming curse words. Then he saw me in my bed and grabbed me by my hair. "Where the fuck is she?" he yelled. I didn't understand so I was silent. He looked mean and ragged. "I said, 'Where the fuck is she'." He pointed a gun at me. It must have been a gun. I'd never seen one in person before. There was a bang, I remember. I felt like I had been punched by my older brother, right in the gut. Or maybe more like a hundred different versions of my brother. Even though it was already dark, I remember things started going out of focus. Which was odd because I had really good night vision. Things were fuzzy like they were when I had taken off my glasses. And then my body ached. Mostly my stomach. It wouldn't stop and I felt so wet and cold. I didn't know what to do. I didn't understand what had happened but my little body knew one thing: I had been shot and I was going to die.
I didn't hear the sirens when they came or the people shouting. I didn't feel the man who came in with a kit of some sort. He said something to me. Something like, "It's going to be all right. Hold on." I think that's what he said.
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