Page 1 of Darkest Descent

Prologue

A perfect fucking family.

Twins with matching smiles and dead eyes. A father with many a dark secret kept well hidden from the world, and a wife who didn’t give a fuck as long as she had her manicure and a martini. The perfect family made me sick.

They were my obsession, my desire. I’d been watching them for months now, lurking in their shadows, in the corners of their lives, stalking through the dark while I waited for my perfect moment. And fuck, it was getting closer.

Because the bastard needed to suffer. The man, avoiding his wheelchair in the corner of the room, wobbling on unsteady legs as he stroked a hand down the back of his wife’s hair, needed more than death, more than despair. And I’d been planning it for a long fucking time.

The twins were going to be mine. They were going to suffer just for being his, for living a good fucking life under his wealth and their ignorance. They were my path to redemption and freedom from him. He would endure their torment, dreading each agonizing moment as if it were their last. The girl, with dark hair flowing down her back and an unmatched stupidity to what her family really was. The boy, who walked like he was bruised, but hid it well. I wondered if he suffered like I did.

My cock thickened in my pants as I observed another of their Sunday night dinners before the twins left for another week of college. Another week of freedom away from their parents.

The girl bit her lip, furrowed her brow, as she watched her brother sink into his chair gingerly. She whispered something to him and he shook his head. I’d never managed to get sound in the house, so I had to just guess she was asking if he was okay. His lying nod made me yank my cock free and squeeze it.

They were just as fucked up as their parents; they had to be. I’d witnessed their sadness when they thought no one could see. And imagining all the fucked up things coming their way had me desperate to cum, to paint the outside of their garish mansion with even more of my DNA. Fuck, it was going to be beautiful.

I jerked myself, running my fist up and down my shaft at the sight of their quiet pain. The awkwardness of their dinner, the way the staff moved around them without interacting, the food, made by a faceless chef almost all untouched on their plates. They were filthy. Disgusting.

And the two youngest were destined to be mine.

I came hard to the image of both of them dead, their bodies destroyed by my hand as their father sobbed. Vacant eyes, gray skin, cum-splattered.

I couldn’t fucking wait.

1

Alice

I sucked in a lungful of chilly air, spilling from my parent’s house with my brother at my side. He was quiet beside me, stiffer than usual, like something was wrong. But when I bugged him to make him tell me, he wouldn’t. Every time I asked, he looked uncomfortable and ignored me.

We’d always been close. Liked each other, shared the same friends and never argued beyond petty bickering. But lately, he’d been closing off from me. When I nudged him and he only gave me a weak smile, I sighed.

“That was more awkward than usual,” I commented as I slammed the front door closed a little too hard and we continued down the driveway to the car. Mother insisted we park outside the gate, because Asher’s vehicle was a piece of junk he’d bought for himself after working evenings in a cafe. He hated using our parents’ money for anything. More so the older he got. It took a lot of persuading by me for him to let them pay for his college education.

“Agreed,” Asher huffed, his voice gruff.

Neither of our parents had walked us to the door. They considered their parental obligation complete once the chef-prepared food was placed in front of us once a week. We had to stay with them on Saturdays, eat with them through Sunday night, then we could fuck off back to our lives. Neither of them appeared to enjoy our company, but they paid our bills - despite how much it annoyed Asher, we were at college because they paid for it. They hung their wealth over our heads like a noose, always a threat to use it for our benefit or detriment. And it was beginning to seem more of a detriment, based on how low Asher always was afterwards. It took him days to recover, then the dread of the next incoming weekend began to weigh on him.

Asher and I huddled together, him tucking me under his arm when I shivered at the sounds of animals rustling in the bushes. Or wind. It must just be the wind. But I imagined little creatures with glowing eyes staring at us and it creeped me out.

I loved our parents, I did, but they were cold, distant. Always had been. It was a big relief come Sunday night when we could walk away for another week.

The gate opened, and we walked through, waving at the camera to say goodbye to the staff who were manning it. Asher held the car door open for me, looking all over while I settled into the passenger seat. He was on edge tonight. I watched him hurry around the car, noting the way he winced when he thought I couldn’t see. He was in pain somewhere. When we were eating, he kept glancing out the window with a furrowed brow and twitched whenever someone touched him. He recoiled from Dad when he patted him on the back, then scrunched his face up in what looked like fear or some sort of anguish. It bothered me so much that I didn’t know. Something was wrong, and I hated that he wouldn’t tell me.

“Are you going to talk to me?” I asked Asher when he started the car and pulled away. Thick, heavy trees lined the street, making that eerie sensation sink even deeper. We had a thirty-minute drive in silence if he didn’t fucking say something.

He shook his head and looked back through the rearview mirror.

There was a single car driving behind us, the headlights shining too bright, the glare reflecting on the mirrors. But it was keeping its distance, following at a safe gap. Still, Asher remained on edge, his eyes drifting to the mirrors every other second, shifting his weight in his seat.

“Fine,” I huffed when he still said nothing, turning the radio on, settling back to the sounds of a late night DJ – some crappy soft-rock I started singing along to. The kind of music everyone knows the words to, but no one remembers how or why.

Asher turned it off. “Don’t,” he said.

I rolled my head on my seat to look at him with my biggest puppy dog eyes. “You either need to tell me what’s wrong, or you gotta listen to me sing. I know what I’d choose.” I sang the last few words like shit on purpose, making my voice crack and break.

Asher’s face broke into a reluctant smile, and he flashed me his warm eyes before returning them to the road. We shared those eyes, big and expressive, but they looked so much better on him. I always felt bug-eyed, but on him, it was handsome.

---