Page 47 of Spiteful Heart

“Lola,” a girl’s voice called out for me, pulling me away from the mirror and my reflection. “They’re waiting for you downstairs.” In the mirror, I saw her face, and my gut reminded me of her name: Tina.

When I finished turning, I saw it wasn’t a girl anymore. Instead, a man stood there, smiling at me, his green eyes sparkling with a mischievous energy. He wore a tight, black button-down shirt, its sleeves rolled down all the way to his wrists, where two hands sat, loose. His brown hair was a bit messy.

“Come on,” he said, extending his hand to me, as if he was meant to escort me downstairs, as if I didn’t know how to navigate my parents’ house. But I didn’t move to take that hand, staring at it like I didn’t trust it, or him. “What?” he asked, smirking. “Never seen a dead man walking before?”

Dead man.

I blinked, and suddenly his face was splattered in blood, a hole of maroon on his forehead, right between his eyes. A bullet hole. From that hole oozed fresh blood, traveling down his nose and along his mouth, all the way to his chin, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“I don’t want to go,” I said, staying put.

“You have to,” Tony told me, still smirking as he cocked his head at me, his hand still extended. “You’re the guest of honor. We’d be nothing without you.”

An invisible force touched me, forced me to go to him. Even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I slipped my hand into his. He must’ve been bleeding somewhere else, because every inch of his hand and fingers were coated in blood. He pulled me along, out of my bedroom and down the hall.

I turned my head to look at the pictures on the wall, the ones we walked by. Pictures of young, pretty girls smiling stared back at me. I didn’t know their names, but they looked so happy. So free. I didn’t remember the pictures in the hall being like this before, but then again, I couldn’t remember much.

We made it to the top of the grand staircase, and I stopped, pausing to throw a look over my shoulder at the hall. When I did, each picture on the wall changed, morphing into ones of horror. Every girl had her throat cut. Every picture had become one of pure terror.

Again, Tony urged me along, pulling me down the stairs. “They’re all waiting for you,” he reminded me. “We can’t start without you.”

Start what? I wanted to ask, but a lump had formed in my throat. I couldn’t speak. The only thing I could do was let Tony bring me downstairs, as if he knew the way better than me.

Tony released my hand after bringing me into the room my mother liked to use as a sitting room. A parlor where she and her rich friends could have tea and gossip, no men allowed. Except, here and now, the room had many men, Tony being the newest.

My mother and father stood behind a couch whose flowered fabric was a pattern or two away from gaudy. My father wore a suit, but his chest was thick with blood, all wet from its freshness. My mother’s blond hair was much like mine, except it was in an updo, all curls. Her throat was cut deeply, from ear to ear, blood oozing out of the wound at a steady pace, yet she still smiled at me.

Another woman sat on the couch near them, grinning at me. Must’ve been hard, because she had no skin on her throat. A good portion of it was gone, the tendons and musculature revealed to the world as she sat there. Her name flashed in my head: Bianca.

Tony went to sit next to her, and just like that, his hands were no more. They were nothing but bloody stumps, bleeding all over the place.

I couldn’t move. All of their eyes were on me, and I couldn’t move a muscle. A normal person would feel bad, guilty or regretful towards the people staring at me. The wounds they carried were of my design, and yet…

Someone’s hot breath crept along the back of my neck. A gut feeling told me that breath belonged to the one person that was missing from the bloody scene before me. “Don’t you look stunning,” a deep voice spoke behind me, the owner of the breath. It sounded like he was right there, inches away from me but not yet touching me.

I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. I was frozen where I was, unmovable, feeling so very naked in this ugly white dress.

“So pure in that white, like an angel,” he went on—and then, because he could never resist for long, his hands found my arms, fingertips dancing up along the skin, stopping when they reached my shoulders, which those hands then curled around tightly. “But we both know the truth, don’t we?”

No words came from me. I couldn’t speak, too busy trying to fight the nausea threatening to rise up inside of me at the sound of my brother’s voice.

My brother. Aiden. Because it always came back to that asshole. My parents had a hand in the making of the monster I was today, but Aiden had taken the lead. If Aiden hadn’t been so… handsy with me, I would’ve just been a cliched stereotype, a rich girl with parents who knew what was best for her. Alas, I wasn’t so lucky.

“You’re no angel,” Aiden whispered behind me. “You’re the furthest thing from it, Lola. Everything you are, everything you try to be… you can’t fight it. You can’t fight us. We are you, dear sister.”

I wanted to argue with him, to pull myself away from those hands and that tight grip, and yet the only thing I could do was move my gaze along the crew before me, stare at each of their wounds—all inflicted by yours truly.

Seeing my handiwork like this, all together, made it feel more real. I’d tried to rid the world of their lives, tried to get rid of the stain they’d left in their wake… but it was all for nothing, because some things could never truly heal.

Myself included, because try and try as I might to act normal, to be a better person, to be the girl my lovers wanted me to be… I wasn’t her. I could never be her. I was no hero.

I was the monster in the night the darkness itself feared. I was the leveling of the playing field. I was everything these people had molded me to be, a slave to the dark desires within me that only wanted vengeance.

Finally, I found my voice, and it trembled as I whispered, “I don’t want you to be me.” At that, the hands holding onto my shoulders let go, and Aiden was slow to walk around me, standing a foot in front of me, smiling down at me even though his insides were literally falling out. But I didn’t pay much attention to his guts, too focused on those bright, blue eyes, eyes a mirror of mine.

“I don’t want to be like you,” I whispered out, hating that smirk, wishing I could wipe it off his face. “I don’t want this.” All those times I’d wished I was a normal girl… someone whose innocence hadn’t been forcibly torn from her, all those times I wished life could’ve gone normally. I’d lost track of how many nights I’d spent hating myself.

I thought I was past that point in my life. I thought I’d moved on, now that I had Sylvester, Maddox, and Viper. But, I guess, that’s the point. Sometimes you could never move on. Sometimes life left a giant wound upon your mind; the wound itself would heal, but the scar would not. It would forever remain where it was, a constant reminder of where it came from.

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