She didn’t look sorry.
She lookedrelieved.
“Cass…” I croaked, and she seemed to snap out of the trance she had been caught in. She dropped the knife and rushed to me, concern flooding every line of her face.
“Cal… are you okay?” she asked, and I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure if that was true. My ears were ringing, and everything felt like it was moving in slow motion.
I wassoakedin our mother’s blood when Cass barely had a drop on her. She must have attacked our mother from behind when she had been strangling me.
“Naomi,” I rasped, my voice still not working properly. Cassandra’s eyes fell to my neck, which was already so sore that I was afraid to touch it.
“I’ll go get her. You stay here, I’ll only be a minute.” She breathed, and I nodded again. Cass ran back to our mother’s corpse and ripped the black cord from her neck. Sure enough, there was a key on it.
Cass grinned at it triumphantly and fled back to the basement to free our baby sister.
While she was gone, I forced myself to get gingerly to my feet. Creeping forward, I looked down at the gruesome sight of my dead mother. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, and her mouth was hanging open. It was full of blood, and bile rose up the back of my throat at the sight of it.
I forced myself to look away, more because the thought of puking with my neck so bruised was not appealing at all. My gaze snagged on the knife Cass had used to kill our mother, and I picked it up, examining it curiously.
The sticky red substance was already congealing on the unforgiving steel of the blade, and I caught sight of my reflection in the parts of the knife that weren’t coated in my mother’s blood.
I didn’t feel bad that my mom was dead.
I didn’tfeelanything.
I was numb.
I found myself wondering what my sister had felt when she had dragged the blade across my mother’s throat.
Had it felt good?
Did she like it?
My fingers quivered on the handle, and my mouth watered.
I imagined it would have felt good.
Suddenly, I heard muffled voices coming from outside the front door. My head jerked up at the sound. I strained my ears, trying to hear the words.
“Thank goodness you’re here, officers. I’ve called in what feels like a hundred times. There’s always screaming coming from this house. I swear there are kids in there. No one ever does more than knock!”
Still clutching the knife, I stepped to the side enough that I could peer down the hallway to the front door.
There were silhouettes of people behind the window that my mother had covered with contact paper.
There was a loud knock on the door, followed by a gruff,“Please relax, ma’am, and let us do our job!”
“Hey!” I called out, though my voice was still damaged from the trauma my mother had inflicted mere moments before. “Help!” I coughed, taking a step forward. I wasn’t sure they would see or hear me. Outside of the contact paper, there were so many wardrobes and armchairs between me and the door.
“Didn’t you hear that! Someone called for help in there!”The woman sounded panicked, and suddenly, the banging on the door got louder.
“Open the door, or we’re coming in!”one of the officers yelled.
“Help!” I tried crying out again as I struggled to push one of the half-painted dressers out of the way.
The door rattled now with the force of the blows the man on the other side was inflicting.
“Cal? What’s happening?” I whipped around to see Cassandra stepping out onto the main floor, a tiny, whimpering Naomi cradled against her shoulder.
