Chapter 1
The smell of the carcass made me heave, and for a small moment I wondered just why I had done what I’d done. But the pure elation that ran through me despite the nausea was my answer. This. Release.
Release from everything that had threatened to make me truly insane, a mad woman inside my own head. Yes, if I had not killed her, I reasoned with myself just then, I probably would have been committed.
But, I thought as I turned from the sight of her freshly scarred body, I already was.
Committed to a new life. A life of me in control. A life where I didn’t answer to anyone, and no one asked me why I was the way I was. Yes, I had it all now. And with that first kill, that first…rush, I was committed to living my life for Me and never anyone else ever again.
I placed a bloody boot atop the broken glass on the windowsill and pushed myself up, lingered there, and then I dropped to the hard ground. Glass scattered the cement behind me but I was already running, pushing myself forward, for now, unaware that what I had done would be considered “wrong” in the eyes of the Law, but just…content for the first time…the first time since I’d been born.
I was Free.
Until I got home.
She’d been sitting up, waiting for me, it seemed, and despite my ability to know what went on in a house when the doors were closed, I had not sensed her: Still too drunk off my first time.
When I entered the living room where she had been sitting, she rose immediately, her eyes wide with alarm. “What – What happened to you?” she cried, her hands shaking as she moved toward me.
And for the first time that night, I realized just how my appearance might alarm another who had not danced with Death as I had done. I looked down, the blood all over my shirt, my jeans, my dark skin. And it was with a subconscious brush of hair from my eyes that I realized blood lingered in my hair, my hands.
Blood everywhere.
And now fresh hands, clean hands, were pressing against my face, my eyes, trembling horribly as tears splashed against clean arms.
I said nothing, for what could I say? “Mom, your troubled daughter has finally found an outlet – killing innocent people for the mere fun of it?” No, I couldn’t tell her that, so I remained silent. Deathly silent. And I waited for her to pull away from me.
And when she did, in her hand was a phone, brandished out of thin air. I like to think, when I can be bothered with it, that parents, mothers, alone, perhaps, had access to things we teenagers could only dream about having access to – magical phones for emergencies, for instance.
She was already punching 9-1-1 when I grabbed her wrist to stop her.
The force of my grasp surprised her, perhaps, for she dropped the phone where it clanked loudly against the floor. And she stared into my eyes, my glazed, power-filled brown eyes, the same as hers…but yet, not, and she whispered, “What’s wrong?”
And for the first time that night, besides letting out a scream when that bitch went down at last, I spoke, calm, terse words, “Nothing. Nothing at all.” My voice was hoarse, and lower than I thought it would be. Filtered. As though showcasing what had been hidden within me this whole time. And I figured it must have sounded strange to her, for her brow furrowed and her expression turned bleak.
I cleared my throat, regaining any sort of normalcy so I could manage to say, “I…I need to shower, mother. I’ll be…I’ll be in bed. Don’t call the cops. Trust me, I’m fine.”
And I removed my hand – the hand that held the knife in my pocket that killed the bitch – and I stepped away from her, trailing a bloody path up the stairs and into the bathroom.
Before the door closed behind me, I heard her whisper, whisper, yes, for my senses are strangely finely tuned than most others’, “What’s happened to my baby?”
Baby. Yes. Now she would bring out the baby card. Her eighteen year old daughter returns home at near one in the morning, a bloodied mess, and she would begin to care now. Yes, that’s the type of sad, sorry, individual she was.
If she wasn’t the breadwinner of the house, I would have killed her long ago.
I like to think I know my limits.
I did not stop at the mirror, no, I would want to savior this moment – my first time – in my mind, in my heart for as long as I could. Perhaps next time I would look at myself in the mirror to see the blood splattered across it, the strange glare in my eyes, the chill of power that would course through me….
Look at me, only just freed and already thinking of ways to abuse this new power.
I turned the shower on, the hot water alone, for cold was not what I needed to feel right now. I needed to maintain this surge of power, this coasting of chaos for as long as possible, for I knew when it died…when it went away…I’d need to kill again.
My clothes stuck to me, drenched in blood, which did not smell so kind once it’d been dried and stuck to your clothes for several minutes. I peeled them off; they would be dumped into the garbage tomorrow, no amount of detergent would get those stains out. Take that, Tide.
The unbeatable stains now lay on the cold floor and my bare feet screamed in protest, the boots now sitting near the tub, the socks joining the clump of bloodied clothes in the center of the room.
Cold. Non-being. No…it was slipping in, already. I thought I would have more time.
I moved swiftly like a scalded animal and placed myself directly into the line of angry drops of water, piercing my skin relentlessly, doing everything, everything and nothing it seemed to keep me alive.
It had happened. Already. Not more than forty-five minutes had passed since I had felt the life go out of that woman and now…now the elation, the power…it was gone.
Tell me what you think and thanks for reading. :)
Sheron Parris
No comments:
Post a Comment