I slowly turn to see the creepy bitch standing on the other side of the kitchen table with my mother beside her. It’s the latter who answers for me as she tilts her nose in the air. “She’ll be fine without.”
Helene tenses, turning her head. “Did you mishear what Kane told you? Delilah is now part of my family, not yours. She must shed the horrible habits you instilled in her.”
My mother lowers her proud chin. “I overstepped, Mother.”
Why the fuck is she calling this old cunt her mother?
“Delilah is a Kobalt. Leave me with my kin.” Helene flicks her hand in the air, swatting my mother away.
I always thought cults were formed by distorting religions, manipulating people who were lost, in search of guidance. Helene has formed her own version of religion where she’s at the helm and they’re all fearful of her. Their worship involves depravity rather than a deity. Religion and business have always intersected so it’s not a farfetched idea, in theory. Watching her feels different though. She’s not as charismatic as I thought cult leaders would be.
Maybe I’ve given myself too much credit for thinking I’d be able to recognize manipulation. After all, that’s all I’ve ever been around, and I allowed it to happen. Or maybe it’s worse, because all I have ever known is manipulation, yet I’m still fucking dumb, unable to spot the signs.
Who knows? Who cares, when I’m starving?
Helene waits until my mother has left to walk past me to a small wooden door painted the same drab color as the walls. I’m not really sure what cannibals keep in their pantries, but I’m shocked at all the normal foods revealed as she opens the door.
I thought everyone would know how to spot them because heinous actions have to change a person. Everyone likes to think they’d be able to differentiate between good and evil—the monsters are removed from humanity, so we can save ourselves. It’s a defense mechanism, a common lie society tells themselves when the reality is the monsters are normal people. Like my parents. They have children, they get married, they have friends and colleagues who respect them. When those people find out their neighbor, colleague, friend, loved one has committed a crime, they always lie. Say they knew something wasoffabout them. We’re all liars—the monsters and the normal people—because we’re all continuously ignoring reality.
Helene doesn’t. She revels in her monster status, keeping herself secluded on this island.
Who’s the real monster?
Those who infect everything around them? Or the one who contains their evil away from civilization?
“Your appetite is unlike mine,” Helene says, dragging me away from my mental examination. “You may use anything other than the third shelf in the refrigerator.”
“What’s on the third shelf?”
“An acquired taste you wouldn’t appreciate.” Her smile holds humor as she gently tilts her head to the side a fraction.
People.
Human fucking flesh beside the eggs and butter.
She steps into the pantry while I stare at her in intrigue. It’s like I’m in a documentary about the nutcase who had a normal life as she carries out a box of pasta shells and a sealed carton of chicken broth. She’s so normal in this moment, it’s more terrifying than the times she’s shown her crazy. Stopping beside me, she sets the items on the kitchen table and opens the fridge to remove a container of white meat. I don’t know if humans have white meat, so I look down at my arm like that would help me. The person who wasservedduring the cult wedding ceremony had dark meat. This looks like a chicken breast.
“Sit. Rest,” she says as she continues moving around me, grabbing a chopping block. I don’t move until she opens a drawer, taking out a large butcher’s knife. The rectangle blade is huge and thick, but she sets it on the table on her way back to the pantry. Gripping the edge of the counter, I walk backwards, so she doesn’t kill me or eat me.
I hope I taste like shit if she ever does.
As I sit at the end of the table—the furthest away from her—she comes back out with a large white onion in her hand. Weird as fuck. Another thing I wouldn’t have thought about cannibals is they season their food. If someone asked me before all of this, I would have thought they kill and eat like wild animals. It’s another layer of mindfuckery, making the monstrous actions normal.
They’re not eating people while their hands are covered in blood. No, the imagery is normal. A lovingly prepared meal like any other, as the person who ordered my father to rape me is now making me food.
She places the onion in the center of the chopping block, then raises the heavy butcher’s knife before slamming it down, cutting it in half. The strangest thing is when she peels back thelayers of onion skin. She sniffles as she says, “The bigger ones always irritate my eyes.”
This woman who fucks her son, made rape a business, carts her dead, stuffed husband around her house is sniffling because of anonion.
All of her behavior is normal. Too normal. It makes me question how she’s done the things she has. Surely, the woman tilting her head back with watery eyes isn’t the same one who whipped Kane without any emotion. But she is. It’s the same person, finely dicing the vegetable before she heats a skillet then adds a pot of water to the stove to boil.
I drop my hands under the table, pinching the inside of my thigh to make sure I’m not dreaming. The oil sizzling and water boiling are the only sounds in the room until she places the chicken breast on the chopping board, cutting it in thin strips.
“Lizbeth was never a good cook,” she says, turning to check on the stove. “It’s a shame she didn’t teach you how to be self-sufficient.”
I idiotically engage her. “She liked the staff to do everything.”
“An insecure woman.” She shakes her head, softly smiling at me. “You may place the pasta in the water.”
