Page 25 of Queen of Vengeance

What’s going on? Everyone seems so somber.

I wasn’t going to let it ruin my day, though. I continued on home.

Strange, I can usually smell what Mama is cooking for supper.

The closer I got to my house, the more the puddle right in front stopped looking like rain and started looking like blood.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

Was I even able to believe my own eyes?

My pace slowed immensely as I started to worry about what I would see on the other side of that front door.

Standing over the puddle, its contents a stark, coagulated red against the soft tan of the dirt, I felt a chill grip me. My reflection trembled in the murky mirror at my feet, a harbinger of turmoil. My hands, betraying my attempt at composure, quivered uncontrollably. A lump, thick and suffocating, lodged itself in my throat while my legs threatened to buckle, as fragile as paper in the wind.

With a breath that seemed to catch in the air, I nudged the front door open, inch by inch. What I saw was so horrifying that it became an indelible memory, one that would stay with me until my last breath.

The scene was one of unspeakable horror, a chaos of form and color that defied understanding. No words, no matter how painstakingly chosen, could encapsulate the sheer terror that unfolded before my eyes. At the heart of this nightmare lay two figures so grotesquely disfigured that their humanity was obscured.

The horror done to them erased their identities except for the haunting familiarity of their attire. Only by these remnants, these threads of a past life, could I discern the unthinkable truth of who they had been.

In that small moment, my world irrevocably altered.

I shut my eyes quickly as if that would stop me from seeing the image before me, but they appeared in my mind.

They wore the same clothes—my parents wore the same when they sent me to school this morning.

What… happened?

I wasn’t sure how I ended up on the floor.

But I did.

I buried my burning face in my hands as tears blinded me.

Mema…

Her face flashed into my mind, and I struggled to get to my feet.

I had to clutch the frame of the door just to stand upright.

Splinters from the old wood bit into my flesh as I struggled to stay upright.

My head was foggy.

I was about to pass out, but I needed to know… If I was all alone in this world now.

I moved to the back, slipping on my parents’ blood as I did so.

My vision was so blurry from the hot tears pouring out of them.

Mema’s bedroom door was slightly open, and I could see through the crack that a body was on the bed.

“Please, Lunaira… Have mercy on me.” My pale and shaking hand pushed the door open more, and I could see that her eyes were wide open in fear.

I observed, waiting for some kind of movement.

She was almost perfectly still… Almost.

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