Page 104 of Souls We Rip

The smell of sarmale filled the air, turning my stomach upside down.

“ILEANA!”

My mother’s name, shouted in my father’s voice, drew my attention to the next window.

His face appeared behind the broken glass, my mother wincing with her eyes closed. The wooden door opened with a thump; my father’s hand was prepared to slap my mum over her head.

Her scream jolted me to my cruel reality. I had the means to protect them now.

I gripped the scythe harder, my feet climbing the stairs of the porch. Swallowing and then taking shallow breaths, I pushed the door open.

My father’s hand was above my mother’s head, Angelica cowering behind the door, tears falling down her face. Both of my parents were stunned as I walked into the steamy room, my mother’s eyes red-rimmed from crying.

“Who are you?” my father thundered, the smell of țuică infecting the air.

“You do not recognise your eldest daughter, Father?” I bit into the last word, my scythe gleaming in the candlelight.

“You are not of my blood! A daughter of mine would not turn to the devil!” he screamed, stumbling forward.

Instead of helping him, I retreated, letting him fall. His nose broke on contact with the cream tiles. The cracking of his bone should have had some impact on me, but the sound slowed down my racing pulse.

“If you two do not want to see what I am about to do, please, get out!”

My eyes moved from my mum to my sister; their faces covered in bruises.

“Is it really you, Ana?” my mother whispered, and my blood quickened.

I nodded as her eyes filled with tears. My sister grabbed our mother by the shoulders, pushing her out the door. Before closing it, Angelica threw me a look, her brows furrowed.

“You cursed women!” my father yelled, climbing to his knees, spit coming out of his mouth and blood flowing from his nostrils.

Circling him, I noticed the wound that the Goat Man had caused. Uneven edges were left in place of the arm, the pink skin still healing. I pushed my scythe into it, drawing blood.

My father screamed, the sound exhilarating, something to keep in mind whenever I thought of him.

“I believed I saved all of you by offering myself to the Goat Man. I believed you would not turn viler than you already are, Father,” I whispered, my voice travelling over the walls of the kitchen. The clay plates rattled, some of them falling to the ground.

“How did you become this? You slept with him, didn’t you? Whore!”

His words burned my skin and hurt more than any beatings from him.

“And if I did, what care have you?” I said in a low tone, making him wince. “I believed you would be gentler to your own flesh and blood.”

He puffed, then his smug face turned to me. “They do not deserve anything from me.”

“From you?” A hollow laugh escaped me, foreign even to myself. “They don’t, because you have nothing to offer, Father!”

I slammed my scythe into his other hand, cutting it to the bone. The sound coming from him was not human anymore.

More blood than I had seen on any of my recent ripped souls came from his wound, staining his stitched shirt.

“Because of you, Father, I do not have a heart anymore! And you know what?” I shouted over his limp body.

He fell again to the floor, this time hitting his head, a third wound opening in his forehead.

“It is better that I do not have one, otherwise I would not have done that!” A diabolical smile bloomed on my lips, a poison I welcomed with open arms.

My scythe touched my father’s body again, this time taking his legs.