♫ Monsters - Ruelle ♫
“Mum, I’m home,” I call out, as I shut the front door behind myself.
I expect to hear her reply from the kitchen—as she usually does around this hour—but nothing follows.
I drag my eyes to the clock on the wall; 6:30 p.m.
She should be definitely home, so should my sister, Siobhan.
The lights are on both upstairs and downstairs, but not a sound resonates. The hairs at the nape of my neck prickle as silence lingers around me.
Something isn’t right.
Dropping my bag in the foyer, I trail through the house quietly, keeping my eyes peeled. For what, I don’t know, but I can’t shake the bad feeling suddenly looming over my shoulders.
In the living room, the telly sits on one of mum’s favorite crime programs. There’s a glass of wine on the coffee table and one of her romance novels laid out with a bookmark lodged in the spine. Clearly, she’s home, and at a glance, nothing seems out of place.
Except for the silence.
It’s so silent I can hear my pulse thundering in my ears as I continue on to the kitchen.
“Mum?” I call out a second time, skidding to a stop upon crossing the threshold.
She’s not here either, but it’s the sight that greets me that runs my blood ice cold.
A puddle of wine and shards of glass cover a portion of the floor.
I try to not panic, try to convince myself it was a simple accident and perhaps she’s upstairs cleaning herself up, but the remainder of the backdrop all but screams there’s been a struggle of sorts.
The oven door is wide open.
The roast she’d clearly been preparing is still inside.
The stove top is on, too, two pots boiling away on the highest setting.
Forget thundering—my heart now slams violently in my chest.
“Mum?!” I bellow a third time, racing through the kitchen to the threshold on the other side.
That’s when I see red.
Blood.
Dark.
Fresh.
I freeze.
They’re the smallest of droplets, but as I step into the dining room, the droplets grow larger, forming puddles of all sizes.
Then I realize they’re no longer contained to the floor.
A long smeared hand print paints the wall beside the china cabinet. My eyes follow it a short ways, noting how it ends abruptly.
My stomach churns.
That bad feeling is now full-on ominous. I feel a cold sweat coming on. I’m trying not to think the worst, but how can I not?
In my search of another clue, I find two hand prints on the floor, prints that were clearly dragged out of the dining room to the…
Stairs.
I stare up it’s height.
Sporadic droplets stain the worn carpet all the way up.
Bracing myself, I follow them to the very top, stopping at the landing to examine both sides of the corridor. There’s nothing on my right, where mine and Sio’s rooms are.
But on the left…all the lights are on.
Swallowing deeply, I inch down it’s length, only then realizing should there be someone in my home who’s not meant to be here, I have nothing to defend myself with other than my fists.
I look around.
All that’s readily available are the family photos on the walls.
Plucking one down, I figure this is better than nothing. I can bash an intruder over the head, then use the glass that breaks free as a shank.
And it’s as that gruesome image plays in mind that I walk in on the most gruesome image of them all.
The image that would strip me of the last bit of my humanity and officially sell my soul to the devil…
The while Lillies sitting on my bed mocked me, as all her little gifts usually did.
It’s because of her any of that even happened in the first place..
That selfish, vindictive little bitch.
My ex was a million times worse than Lux, despite what Vic would say, and she’d fucking found me.
Again.
Swiping the bunch with an aggravated hand, I bent them in half until they snapped and tossed them onto the floor, destroying the petals bit by bit with the soles of my Oxford’s.
If Liza was here, that meant I was going to have to get the fuck out of here soon.
And at that moment, it meant without Lux…
I was not about to let that happen.
If she were mine, I’d say we could leave together, get to know each other better, travel the world…
But she wasn’t, and I was on the verge of a nuclear explosion.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I only let her go last night simply because she’d been drinking. I could smell the fruity concoction on her breath. A lot of her bravado was all liquid courage. There were cops, too, and way too many people stopping to watch, as though we were some street-side act hoping to go viral on Instagram.
But this front of hers wouldn’t last forever.
Hell, she was already showing signs of throwing in the towel and giving in.
I just had to push a little harder… Before it was too late.