Page 49 of Temptation
At least that’s what my father used to tell me every time he would find me sitting at the bottom of the stairs, holding the knife in my hand, willing myself to just press it to my skin—just the tip of the blade over the pale green vein on my inner forearm.
Just a little bit of blood on the white carpet rolled out in the hallway—it wouldn’t hurt anybody, right?
But even through my tear-stained eyes I could see who, or rather, what, he really was. A monster. An accomplice. He was the man that held all the cards in his hands, and even though his touch on my skin didn’t feel like razor blades, it still felt like poison spreading all over my body.
Hope was for fools, and I was the biggest one of them.
I gripped the steering wheel when the light went on in the room that used to be mine. The rest of the house was shrouded in darkness, looking more ominous than ever as the rain pelted over the car, blurring the vision in front of me.
I could see her moving around, her shadow going from one side of the room to the other, until she stopped moving altogether, and the light went off. My knuckles turned white from the force of my grip and the leather beneath squeaked, protesting against me.
Here in the darkness of the richest street of Winworth, I lost who I was supposed to be. I lost my dignity, my soul, and my childhood.
And it was all their fault.
But I wasn’t going to allow them to do the same thing to Skylar. They weren’t supposed to touch her. They weren’t supposed to harm her—yet they did.
At leastshedid.
My mother was many things, but she never was a real mother. My memories were blurred by the vicious things she used to do. The vile things a child should never go through, and even if there were happy moments, I couldn’t remember them.
I couldn’t because all those bad moments replaced them. All those bad memories ate the good and the bright ones, and the only ones that still stayed alive were the ones with Skylar.
The light on the porch went on and the front door slowly opened, revealing her—platinum blond hair that wasn’t natural but came straight from the bottle, even though she never wanted to admit it, and the frail figure she was so proud of.
Like worms unfurling from the can, something spread from the core of my being all over my body, and I couldn’t sit still anymore.
I grabbed the door handle and opened it, letting the cold air seep in and the first drops of rain to hit my face. The moon was hiding behind the clouds and the night felt darker than it usually was, but that wasn’t the scary part of today.
I was no longer afraid if there was a monster hiding in the woods behind our house. No, the biggest monster stood on that porch, waiting for me.
The hoodie I wore slowly got soaked as I walked toward her, toward the house I dreaded, toward the woman that was supposed to love me and take care of me.
The light of her cigarette shone and as I looked into her face, my blood ran cold. Her eyes were as cold as ice and that smile she wore held nothing but pain for me. I knew that face—I saw it every single night when she crept into my room.
She wore it every time before she screamed, before she wanted to tear Skylar apart just for being alive. And now she wore it because she was going to tear my world apart.
“Baby.” Her voice grated on my nerves, and as she took the first steps down the stairs and toward me, I took a step back, unable to help myself. That smile evaporated into thin air and the mother I knew finally appeared in front of me. “Aren’t you going to hug me, baby?”
“Hugging you would mean that I missed you, and I would be lying, wouldn’t I, Mother?” I fumed.
“That’s not the way to talk to me, Dylan.” She huffed. “I didn’t rai–”
“You didn’t raise me to talk like this?” I laughed. “No, you raised me to be a freak, Joanna. You raised me to be a cold-blooded killer, so don’t stand there looking hurt because we both know that you don’t have enough of a soul for you to feel anything.”
A minute passed, a couple of seconds more then her face contorted into the monster that still haunted my mind. She was good at faking, good at pretending that she was something she wasn’t. She was a master at this game, and if you looked at the pictures of her and my father, even our family, she looked like a loving mother. She looked like a perfect wife, but she was a wolf hiding in the sheep’s skin.
“Why are you here then?” she asked and put the cigarette between her lips. “Aren’t you going to kiss your mother like you used to?”
Nausea rolled in my stomach and I swallowed it down, fighting to keep my cool, because this was what she wanted. She wanted to see me crumble. She wanted me to be that boy from years ago when she could do whatever she wanted to me.
“We should step inside,” I ground out and wiped the rain from my eyes.
She threw the cigarette on the floor and crossed her arms over her chest, staring at me with vile eyes. “Fine.” She turned around and started walking toward the door. “But you’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you.” She smiled as if the mere thought of me hurting amused her. “You’re not going to like it at all.”
“I’m aware.”
She opened her mouth to say something then closed it shut and smiled over her shoulder before entering inside.
