Page 2 of Fated
The odor of blood, metallic and pungent, filled the air,overpowering every other smell. My eyes darted around, scrambling to process the carnage.The walls were splattered with splotchy red stains like grotesque art, droplets even falling from the ceiling.
As my eyes shifted to the room’s center, bile rose in my throat and everything inside of me wanted to recoil, to reject the scene before me. This couldn’t be real, it just couldn’t.
But there, on the bed, lay a figure once resembling my mother, a cruel parody of the vibrant woman I had known. Her skin had lost its warmth and color, now an eerie shade of grayish white. Her usually golden curls were matted with blood and plastered to her head like a sinister halo.I couldn’t tear my gaze from her face, lifeless and frozen in an eternal expression of horror.
As my eyes trailed down what was left of her body, my stomach convulsed. There wasn’t an inch of skin left unmarred, no skin that was not a canvas of jagged and raw stab wounds.
Her gown had been reduced to blood-soaked tatters, strands of fabric barely clinging to the mutilated heap of flesh beneath.
The sound of screaming pierced the air, a raw and deafening cacophony, visceral and barely human. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from me. My legs buckled, and my body crashed to the floor, the impact barely registering as my chilled frame curled into a ball, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. My body shook with sobs, and an excruciating pain erupted in my chest. The reality of my mother’s absence from this world wrecked my soul.
The world I thought I knew—the one full of hopes and dreams, of happiness, and joy—had shattered like a delicate glass, revealing something cold, dark, and terrifying.
A world in which the most heinous evil existed, and someone incredibly evil had done this.
With that thought, adrenaline flooded my veins, and some kind of primal survival instinct took control and forced me to move. My muscles screamed in protest as I pushed myself off the floor and my hands trembled, fumbling with the bloody phone still clutched in my right hand.
After a few frantic attempts, I finally heard, “What is your emergency?”
A flat female voice spoke.
The words tripped me as they came out of my mouth. “My—mom—it’s my mom!”
“What is wrong with your mom?”
“My mom, she’s—dead.” At that last word, a dam broke inside, and a ferocious torrent of tears came pouring out. “Oh my God,” I wailed, my voice raw. “My mom is dead! Somebody’s murdered my mom!” The tears morphed into deep, guttural sobs and then into howling screams, sounds so broken, so foreign, they were barely recognizable as my own.
“Honey, what is your name?”
I gasped between sobs. “Areya,”
“Areya.” Her voice remained calm, steady. “Is the killer still in the house?”
My body stilled.
“Areya, I’ve dispatched emergency personnel to your address. Can you find somewhere safe to go and wait?”
Safe.My mom had always been my safe place, and now … now, she was gone.
I hung up the phone and clutched it to my body, stumbling toward my mom’s closet. I slid the door open, my body shuddering as it fell to its knees, then I climbed into the corner behind a wall of dresses, pulling my knees to my chest and squeezing them until both arms grew numb.
The scent of my mother was all around: the aroma of her vanilla body lotion; the soothing scent of lavender from her favorite soap; and the faint coconut fragrance from the cream she loved to use to tame her wild curls.
I pulled on the yellow cotton sundress hanging in front of me until it fell off the hanger, burying my face into it, craving the comfort of her scent. The soft fabric muffled my sobs, but nothing could dull the agony of the relentless waves of grief battering into me.
Peeking toward the closet doors, a whimper escaped as a memory struck, like a knife twisting in my sternum. No more than six years old at that time, Mom’s closet had once been my favorite hiding spot, right here, nestled behind her dresses.
Her honeyed voice echoed just outside the door.
“I wonder where Areya could be hiding?”
A tiny giggle slipped out before my hand flung over my mouth.
“Did my closet just giggle?” Her playful tone sent another round of stifled laughter bubbling up inside of me.
The door slid open, slowly, wide blue eyes meeting mine, sparkling with feigned surprise. Her face lit up, radiant and warm as she reached in, scooping me up in her arms. She nuzzled her cheek against mine, eliciting a delighted squeal from my lips.
“I love you, Areya.”
