Dust gathered nickel thick on the floor making small clouds every time my foot moved. Cobwebs were caught up in the façade of the mantle and marred the once vibrate frescos on the walls.  The frescos and plastered ceilings are marred by water stains and there are clean places where large paintings used to hang. This house reeked of money, old money, to think this used to be home, I once lived here. This empty remnant of a building was never really my home. Trips to Europe and a mother who banished me off with nannies and to this day I cannot recall anything about my fathers face except that I have his eyes.

They told me when I was younger I was beautiful and as I grew older they ignored me more and more, lets buy back out children’s love. Children, I had siblings, a twin Lily and my brother, but after that fateful day, they never mentioned them or me again. The never wanted to think back on the dark cloud that trailed behind them in the house. Marked in bloodstains and hatred, if I close my eyes and try I can still picture the imperfection on the carpets, each splatter each drop and every soaked inch of it. But only if I try too and for 10 years I have tried to forget it.

When I was seven my twin sister Lily and I would run amok my black hair trailing behind me like a banner and her dark red tresses would fall in her eyes. We where so utterly different, I was dark secretive and hurting while she seemed so innocent, happy and forgiving. At night, I used to sneak into her room and we would lie in the bed together talking. Her brown eyes would glitter and she would tell me of fairies and princes rescuing maidens. She would always ask me to tell her a story and I would recant back Greek and Roman myths, I told her of the captured Persephone and how Aphrodite came to be.

We grew older and Lily depended on me more and more, she was more jaded now, we where both 16 when it happened. A day just like any other in our house and there was nothing that would make me suspect it. Lily’s recent hurt was something I could not for the life of me weasel out of her and had long since given up a little too late. The day passed and at midnight I sunk warily into the bed, my muscles never stopped hurting since maybe it was her doing. Later in the night when the moon was falling a crossed the plush burgundy carpet in my room she snuck in and I could her whisper I love you. Her voice sounded like a prayer and I could see the tears clinging to her lashes pearlescent and lovely. Freckles sprinkled her cheeks and her brown eyes where blood shot, in all the beauty of the moment that horrid macabre beauty I saw the blood.

She looked up and in that moment her pale face contorted into a sadness that I knew I could never start to comprehend and she told me as she kneeled bleeding what He did to her, how He hurt her. I could feel her shaking and she knew I was livid. Vengeance and sadistic plans of torture and brutality came rushing into my head as bile rose in my mouth. I crawled off my bed and held her begging her to let me go get help.  Tear filled brown eyes stared up and me and in them, I saw the answer:

“If you love me you’ll let me die.”

Gently I dragged her onto my mattress and we slept in the morning I woke covered in blood and found my parents to tell them. There was an investigation as there should have been and I was questioned under bright lights by overly kind officers. However, I never told the cops what her last dying secret was, how he hurt her and how why he was not affected by her suicide but rather pleased by it.  This was my battle now and no one else was going to take my vengeance from me.  A mere sixteen years old and I was already bent on vengeance and consumed with rage. Something so heinous consumed me and my always nerve wrecked muscles tightened into knots that nothing could undo (nothing can undo the pain) and I plotted.  I waited and time passed slowly and everyday I saw his face I tasted bile every time he dared touched me my skin crawled, what type of bastard could have done that.

Two years passed after Lily died, the carpet was changed the room was locked up and dust was always thick on the bed and floor when I would pick the lock on her door.  My plan was slowly forming and it would be quick bloody and deserving on his crime. He deserved no pity no chance to explain and nothing could redeem him. On the eve of my (our) eighteenth birthday  I walked into my brothers room at 11:30 pm and stabbed him fifty times in the heart, covered in blood for the second time in my life I left. I went to Europe with a new name and different hair and traveled; after time I came back there where things I had to get. I had read off the internet that our house had burned down and my parents had died in the blaze and all I could hope was that nothing I wanted had burned to dust.  


Slowly I walked up the precarious stairs down the hall and to the right, there was a door still standing, I pushed it open; the lock was long since defunct. Her room lay before me, water damaged and soot stained but it still had her soul in it. The sun light filtered through broken panes of glass and motes of dust swirled in the air with each step. Mold was starting to overcome the corners of the carpets, silver frames contained pictures of two little girls smiling one with red hair and one with black. Her brown eyes smiling and mine bright green and shining with a hidden anger, I was 16 so long ago, and she was still alive so long ago.  Deftly I put the frame picture and all into my bag, turned and left. I walked out of that house out of my old self and took Lily the only thing I ever wanted back from that life with me.