It’s amazing how things don’t change, no matter how long you wait.

The lake in front of me had been waiting twenty years, and yet the water was still blue. The mountains surrounding the body of water had been waiting, waiting, waiting, but the mountaintops were still covered with the same undistinguishable snow. And me, I’ve been waiting to come back to this place, knowing without a sliver of doubt that things were never going to change, but I had hoped. I had hoped the water would have turned green. I hoped the mountaintops would have melted, sending a gushing river of my liquidy aspirations down into the lake below. I hoped that one day the deer would stop drinking from the water, that maybe the trees would start growing upside-down. I hoped that one day I would have to pay for the things I did. I hoped. And nothing changed.

If only the mountains had memories, if only they could speak, then I wouldn’t have to be the one telling you my story.

I’d brought her here, a long, long time ago. I told her that I wanted her to go fishing with me. Really I just wanted to show her the animals, the water, and the mountains. Everything that makes this place what it is. I made sure I was rowing the boat that day. I wanted her to see the beauty that I experienced every time I came to this magical place. Every time a fish swam by she would giggle and reach her pudgy little hands out in a futile attempt to grab the slippery creature. She asked me about the water, how deep it was, how many fish were in it. These were all questions I couldn’t answer.

She stopped talking after a little while. Maybe it was the frosty wind slicing through the valley, maybe it was the howl of a coyote in the distance. We just sat there for a while, not saying a word, taking in all the majesty nature could offer. She was my sister, and she was perfect.

She asked me if the mountains were where God lived. She asked why he never answered her prayers when dad would hit her. She asked why he hid in the mountains when our parents disappeared. She asked, and I couldn’t answer.

It was right then, that very moment that I realized that my sister would never be truly happy again. I saw her across the boat. What a long distance it was…

I lunged across the boat, wrapping my fingers around her smooth, innocent neck. Her scream made my skin crawl. I told her I was sorry, things were better this way. So I strangled her… I loved her… and I killed her.

I rowed the boat to the shore, my shoulders heavy with what I had just done. I laid her limp, perfect body in the hole I had prepared for her. I stood there for a while, admiring how beautiful she was, even now, even when she wasn’t breathing or talking about Bambi or the mountains. I made sure her cross was the biggest so every animal, every tree, every blade of grass would know who was buried there. Her cross was labeled “Sister;” accompanied by two similar crosses on two identical mounds of dirt, with the same scribbled handwriting reading, “Mom”, “Dad.”

Twenty years later the crosses still stand, the mountains still don’t speak, the animals drink from the lake, and the water hasn’t turned green.

Things don’t change. They don’t change at all.