The shock from this is enough to get him off of Esme, judging by how his hands are already loosening from her throat. I could stop, and I’m sure he’d stumble out of here with his tail between his legs.
But the scissors sink into his neck again, just above his sternum. This time he gasps a little wheezing sound, and when I rip them free, blood arcs, and his body gives a small jerk.
I could stop.
Again and again I stab downward, ripping through clothes and skin and muscle until I can uncover what lies beneath. As if I can purge his rot and bad attitude, I keep going.
His knees give out just as blood bubbles to his lips, and I watch him with a slight tilt to my head as his knees thump against the hardwood floor. Esme’s soft sounds of horror reach my ears, but they don’t draw my attention away from Alan and the way he shudders. From the way he chokes on his own blood.
His hand reaches up, fingers twisting toward me, and the plea in his eyes is all fear and loathing. I smile in response, and with the tip of the scissors I coldly push his hand away from me. “Don’t look at me like that, Alan,” I sigh, barely registering Esme’s terror, or the way she’s clearly starting to panic. “I asked you to leave, and so did she.”
With wide eyes, he falls to his side on the floor with athumpas his breaths come in stuttering gasps. Again he grabs for me, reaching for my shoe, but I simply step out of reach. “No.” The word is careless. Bored. “No, you don’t get that either.”
The coldness doesn’t fade. It spreads more, filling me, as I kneel to watch his blood stain the hardwood and to meet his gaze as his life slowly fades. “Goodbye, Alan.” I smile sweetly. “It wasn’t a pleasure, and I don’t think anyone is going to miss you.”
He gurgles, his ruined throat trying to form words. I swear I see one last flicker ofhatein his eyes before he lets out a shaking, rattling breath.
Then, he simply doesn’t draw another.
Chapter
Four
She’s dead.
My mother’s face, bloodied and broken, flashes in front of my eyes. She stopped breathing long before I stopped hitting her, but the cold rage that made this coolness in my veins look like a summer breeze had demanded I keep going. Some sick part of me wanted to see if maybe she was the monster, and what was hiding under all that pale skin and those pretty blue eyes that I inherited.
He’s dead.
The bathroom smelled of cooking meat and burned hair. The lights buzzed and surged, flickering and turning the scene into something even worse than it had been before. That’s when the cold receded, at least momentarily, and I could only stare at my dad in the bathtub, taking in every single detail that would imprint on my mind forever. I’d thought he still loved me. I didn’t know he made his choice long before my first blow with the flashlight.
He’s dead.
Esme whimpers, like she’s trying to scream, but it’s too breathy and soft to be anything close. Alan is still bleeding onthe hardwood floor under us, as the crimson pool is growing and heading for my shoes. I don’t step back, though. I doubt it’ll make it far enough to stain, and they’re black, anyway. His eyes stare up at me, the light having faded sometime in the last few minutes while my mind is blurring from here to years ago, then back to here again.
It’s Esme’s cries that finally snap me back to the present. My bloody fingers curl around the scissors in my hand, and I let out a long breath. I’m still so comfortingly cold, and when I look at Esme, it strikes me as strange that she’s so hysterical.
“Calm down, Es,” I find myself saying, though that only has her whirling on me with wide eyes and shaking hands.
“Calm down?” she hisses.“Calm down?You killed him, Tova! You murdered him!”
I turn the scissors in my hand, gazing down at the now dull metal covered in his blood. My first order of business will be washing my hands, and I doubt I’ll be keeping these clothes after tonight is said and done. This time, I doubt I’ll just be shipped off to an asylum in Ohio if they find out I killed someone. In fact, I doubt I’ll get to see the light of day ever again.
That’s a more unsettling thought than having killed Alan, though I sigh down at him with a look of frustration. He’s really ruined my night. My headache continues to throb at my temples, though weaker now, as if the cold feeling is somehow dulling the pain and allowing everything to snap into focus around me.
“He would’ve killed you.”
“He’sdead!”she wails, her voice a little too loud for my comfort. “He’s fucking dead, and—fuck!” She stumbles back until she’s against the counter again. “W-we have to call the cops. We have to?—”
I cross in front of her and pick up her phone with my clean hand, offering her a flat look as I do. “No, thank you,” I reply as she watches me carefully open a drawer to pull out a plastic bag.“I’d like to stay out of jail, or another asylum. Honestly? Not that enjoyable.”
“What are you doing?” she asks after a few moments of watching me start the cleanup process. “How do you…knowwhat you’re doing?”
“So, the fun side effect of being in an asylum for the criminally insane is that I made friends,” I explain easily as I work. It gives me something to do while going through the mental checklist I’ve never actually had to use. “I had a friend who, uh, killed his sister. After we were let out, he and I made other friends. They did more than kill their sister. I learned things.” I shrug my shoulders at her when she shoots me a horrified look. “It’s good to know what to do in emergencies, you know?”
Esme’s mouth opens, then closes. She looks down at Alan’s body again, and I see something almost like regret on her face, before another expression that I can tell is relief. But she pushes it away in a moment, her eyes darting up to mine guiltily to see if I’ve noticed.
I have, but I don’t plan on judging. Instead, I hold her gaze, studying her, as she does the same to me. Her lips part as if she wants to ask something, or protest, but then Es squares her shoulders and straightens. “What can I do to help?” she asks. “Though I need to tell you in advance, I don’t think he’s going to go in the food processor, no matter how small we chop him up. And, uh, I willnotbe the one chopping him up.”
