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That’s what happens when life gifts you the perfect family. You keep wondering when the other shoe’s going to drop. When they’ll be snatched away, proving that you’re as undeserving of their love as you always suspected you were.
Insecurities.
Paranoia.
But here I am, watching as the devil himself grips the back of Lizzy’s neck.
No.
Wait.
This isn’t right.
Lizzy wasdeadwhen I entered the room all those years ago. Red was done with her. He’d been dealing with Arrow, who’d dragged herself up the stairs after Red had stabbed her in the flank. I’d only caught a glimpse of the man’s face before he rushed me, shoved me out of the way, and fled.
I let him get away, too distraught by the bodies in the room. My family, naked, used and discarded on Lizzy’s blood-soaked bed.
…Or is that just the reality I fabricated because I couldn’t handle the truth of what Ididsee?
Red shakes my little daughter, causing a lock of blond, blood-soaked hair to fall in her slack face. Her big eyes are open, but they’ve lost their luster, that mischievous glimmer. Because it’s not my daughter, but a life-sized doll that looks just like her. Porcelain skin splattered with red paint, not blood. So much of it, all over her little body.
And the nude shape on the bed, legs twisted open, broken looking…that’s not Emily, either. A mannequin. A lifeless, life-sized doll.
“You’re early, Daddy,” Red says, giving dolly-Lizzy another shake. “I was still busy with your girls.” Light flashes off a metallic surface. I regard the knife, and I can’t understand why the blade is so clean when it’s obvious he used it to flay Emily’s creamy skin from her buttocks, to hack off her hair so it’s shoulder length.
My stomach churns as I realize what Lizzy must have witnessed.
Red lifts the blade and gives it a long, lurid lick with his tongue. Is that why it’s clean? Because he keeps licking it?
His hooded eyes flare, and I catch a glimpse of some frenetic light I can’t understand. Then he ducks his head and slathers his tongue up the side of Lizzy’s face, cleaning the blood, the tears. His eyes close for a second, the hedonistic curl of his lips setting my mind on fire.
Lizzy’s face crumples as she lets out a hard sob, her hands reaching for me like she did when she was a baby and wanted me to pick her up. “Dada,” she mumbles woodenly, her eyes still glazed with shock. I don’t know how I manage to hear her over Arrow’s barking.
“Dada!”
The young Labrador lunges at Red, and I squeeze my eyes closed.
When they open again, I’m inside the stinking urinals at the pub, draining my bladder. I stagger back to the bar, argue with Michael about the cheerleader. Call a cab. Find the business card. Drag myself up blood-soaked stairs.
“Dada!”
This is not what happened.
It can’t be.
I’d never have survived if I’d witnessed this.
A violent shiver courses through me. Pinpricks of pain flood my body, the first thing I’ve felt in eons. I yell hoarsely as the flashback mercifully dissolves, as I open my eyes to a blinding, icy light.
Arrow is barking, barking, barking, my ears ringing at the sound. I turn to my side and puke up bile until my stomach cramps in pain.
The events of the past few hours rush back into my mind, and now it’s not the icy ground I was lying on that makes me shudder.
Charlotte.
Red took my girl away from me. Again.
Is it already too late?
