Page 22 of Glass Rose
Gavin doesn’t answer.
My parents have to be okay. They have to be. The alternative isn’t something my brain can process right now.
“They might need help.” I’m out before he can stop me, my feet hitting the pavement.
Mom always hid the spare key under the stupid ceramic frog by the back steps that Dad hates, but she refuses to get rid of.
How many times have I used this key? After school, when I forgot mine, came home drunk from parties, visited during holidays after I moved out. Normal life moments. Before the world went to shit.
“Sofia, wait—” Gavin’s beside me in an instant. “Let me go first.”
I shake my head, kneeling by the frog and retrieving the key.
“If they’re infected?—”
“Don’t say that.” I jam the key into the lock with trembling fingers. It turns with a familiar click, and I open the dooron silent hinges—always well-oiled because my father can’t stand squeaky doors.
The familiar smell of cinnamon, coffee, and the faint chemical tang of my mother’s cleaning products hit me. Then, something else beneath it. Metallic. Wrong.
Blood.
“Stay behind me,” Gavin orders.
This time, I listen, letting him step through the doorway first. The living room is untouched. Family photos lined up on the mantel, my mother’s knitting basket beside her favorite chair, and the remote control precisely centered on the coffee table. But the smell grows stronger as we move deeper into the house.
“Mom?” I call out, my voice thin and reedy. “Dad?”
A wet, ripping sound answers me. Like meat being torn from bone.
Droplets of something dark lead from the couch toward the kitchen. We follow them like a trail of breadcrumbs in some fucked-up fairy tale. They grow larger, forming streaks along the hardwood floor. My mother’s pride and joy, she had saved three whole years to afford it.
The chewing sound grows louder.
Gavin’s arm shoots out like a barrier. “Don’t?—”
I duck under.
One step forward and the kitchen doorway frames a scene my mind refuses to process.
Blood. So much fucking blood splashed across the yellow sunflower wallpaper my mother insisted on when they remodeled five years ago.
And there, hunched over by the refrigerator, is my father. Or what used to be my father. So engrossed, he didn’t, still doesn’t, notice us. His back is to us, shoulders working rhythmically as he feeds on something, someone, sprawled before him.
Mom’s fuzzy pink slipper peeks out?—
A scream tears up my throat, but before it can break free, Gavin’s hand covers my mouth, trapping the sound against his palm. His other arm wraps around my waist, hauling me back against his chest.
My father doesn’t turn. Doesn’t notice us. Just keeps feeding.
His fingers dig into her stomach, clawing out ropes of intestine that glisten in the half-light.
I choke against Gavin’s palm, swallowing the broken glass of my scream. The room pitches sideways. My childhood home transformed into a slaughterhouse. He drags me backward into the hallway, one agonizing step at a time, while my father, the thing wearing my father’s skin, continues feasting.
The thud of my pulse drowns everything else, a roaring in my ears like standing too close to a waterfall.
Gavin releases my mouth but keeps his arm around my waist like an iron band, his chest rising and falling against my back in measured breaths while mine come in shallow gasps.
His lips brush my ear. “We need to go.”
