Her hand slowly reaches out to wrap around my cold fingers. She stares into my eyes and I look back at her, waiting for her to see the death that lurks within them. She does not recognize me. Nothing about the girl in front of her is reminiscent of the girl she lost. I can see the lack of recognition all over her face. I can smell the disappointment, sadness, and confusion seeping from her pores.
“My baby,” she says. She wraps me in a tight hug.
One of my hands drifts up to rest on her shoulder blade. Having her this close to me makes me feel nothing short of uncomfortable. I refuse to put on a show. I refuse to pretend that I missed her, that I feel anything at all. I look past my mother’s wild hair to see my father standing in shock next to Detective Ballard. I force a crooked smile for dad, and lock eyes with Ballard. He can see past my fake smile, past my dead eyes. He knows that there is something amiss; I can see it all over his face.
Ballard frowns after me as my parents lead me out of the police station and into the night. The darkness settles around me as I curl up in the back seat of the car.
I am not here to pretend that I’m alive. I’m here to show them all what they did to me. Tonight, they will know. Tonight, they will pay.
As I enter the door and move around the house that I grew up in, I feel out of place. The pictures on the walls tell the story of Kirana Waterman’s life; my life. Though, looking at them now, that life is unfamiliar, like a story book I must have read once long ago. This girl, her pretty face plastered all over the house, is not anyone I know, and she certainly isn’t me. She was captain of the volleyball team, she was head cheerleader, she was an all-state track and field champion. At least, that’s what everyone saw when they looked at her. And what will they see when they look at me now? An empty shell; a pale, ghostly face; a broken soul torn to pieces by the demons of her past.
My hands shake as my eyes land on a photo from my sixteenth birthday; the last birthday I celebrated, and the last I ever will. I lift it, trembling, from the shelf. In the photo, I’m standing between my mother and father, the three of us smiling widely. We’re in the backyard, and I can see our gazebo, my favorite spot, in the background. I stare down at the picture and remember that day. I remember my parents inviting all of their friends to celebrate my sweet sixteen. I remember my mother telling me I could have a glass of wine if I promised never to tell. I remember seeing her and my father through a crack in the door, pressing needles into the soft skin of their arms. The photo frame crashes to the floor and I stand over the shards of broken glass.
My mother comes into the room and begins picking up the pieces. She’s speaking to me, but I don’t hear the words. She’s asking me if I’m okay, but she already knows the answer to that. I’m not, nor will I ever again be, okay.
I look down at the sound of a gasp. My mother drops the handful of broken glass, a trail of blood dripping from her finger. She curses. My eyes burn and ache as they turn black, my mouth begins to water, and my jaw twitches. Finally, she looks up at me and sees me for what I truly am. The sharp fangs inside my mouth tingle and I feel ravaged by the hunger. I don’t give her a chance to scream.
When my father enters the room, sheer terror written on his face, I drop my mother’s limp body to the floor. Her blood soaks the front of my shirt as it runs from my mouth, down my chin and throat. My father doesn’t know how fast I am. He tries to run, but I stand before him. He doesn’t know how strong I am, either, or how thirsty. I knock him to the floor and sink my needle-sharp teeth into his neck. He slaps at me, tries to push me away, but his arms grow weaker and weaker. I can feel the force of his heartbeat slowing. I sit up, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and stare down at him. His eyes are barely open, but he’s looking at me. I wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze.
Their bodies lay on the floor, white-skinned, drained of blood. I stare out the window into the darkness and I can see it; the place where I took my last breath.
That night, under a bright crescent of moon, I had stumbled out into the trees. Just within the line of woods, my parents had built a small wooden gazebo with a bench swing. Around it, there were flower pots constantly overflowing with vivid colored petals and shrubs that my father always trimmed into perfect squares. Vines climbed up the lattice walls of the structure, with bright purple flowers spattered along them. Feeders and houses for birds and small mammals invited wildlife to mingle here, and there were always curious little piles of discarded acorn shells on the swing.
That night, in a drunken haze, I had made my way out to the gazebo to be alone. I could still hear the music from the house, see the lights in the windows, hear the voices and the cackles of laughter. As always, I could hear my mother’s laugh echoing loudly over the others. Hers I could always decipher from the rest, no matter the distance between us. She had allowed that night to happen. She invited all of those people into our house and let the whole thing get out of control. She had sent my father to come and find me, to tell me to stop pouting and have a good time. It was all her fault.
That night, in the place I’d always adored the most, in the place I could always escape to, I was killed. I was held down by hands much stronger than my own, hands that gripped tightly around my throat as I gasped for breath and flailed to break free. The same hands that had carried me to bed as a sleeping child, taken the training wheels off of my bike, braided my hair clumsily in the mornings before school. My head pounded, my vision blurred, as I stared up at the sliver of moon through the vine-covered lattice ceiling. By the hands that first held me as a newborn baby, in the place I’d always thought of as my fortress, my refuge, my place of safety and solitude, I died.
About the Author
E. M. Otten is a fiction writer, self-published author, and creative writing student. She has a flash story published in the December 2016 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, and the third installment of her short novel series, Shift, is coming out in 2017. When she’s not wrapped up in the lives of fictional characters and chugging coffee, you can find her cooking a ridiculous meal for all of her friends and family for absolutely no reason.
You can purchase more of her work at:
www.lulu.com/spotlight/emotten
Blog: emotten.tumblr.com
E-mail:
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