“Okay.” Poppy nodded. “Well, it will be fine. We’ll look after her. She will heal with our help.” She would heal, but how long would she be in intense pain until then? I looked away to Violet’s fragile, broken body. She would have been better off if she died. Living here, in her situation, was much worse than death. I’m so sorry.
We sat in the bedroom for hours. A loud bang followed by several thudding noises came from the main room. I gasped in surprise and my heart started racing. “What’s that?” I asked, moving in between the door and Violet’s bed. A shrill woman’s scream answered my question. “No.” He was doing this now?
Rose looked at the closed door with her mouth hanging open wide. There was something about only hearing what he was doing that made it so much scarier. In my head I imagined more blood, more gore, more violence.
“No, no, please?” the woman shouted.
Tears filled my eyes. “Rose, what do we do?”
She gulped. “You do nothing. I’ll stand just inside the door and wait until it’s over. He’ll want to see at least one of us.” Poppy walked with her, and they creaked the door open and stood at the threshold. My heart was in my mouth as I listened to the awful sounds of her crying and begging for her life. How could he not care that he was killing a person?!
“What’s going on?” Violet rasped from behind me. Another guttural scream echoed through the room and I froze. “What’s that?”
“Shh,” I whispered, letting my tears drip to the floor. “That’s the reason we do what we’re told.”
21
CLOVER
Friday, January 21st (Present)
I locked the girls’ door with trembling hands and shoved the bookcase back to its place. Dirty—I was dirty and disgusting. I needed to be clean. I needed to regain control. My hands shook and my heart raced. The blood was smeared over my hands and splatters covered my clothes.
The bathroom was on the first floor, and I made it in a daze. Switching the shower on, I pulled my clothes off in a rush and shoved them in the sink. They were going to have to be burned. No amount of washing would get them clean, but it wouldn’t matter; I had duplicates. I stepped into the shower, and the familiar sting of boiling hot water relaxed me. I could feel the germs being washed away. The anxiety and fear slowly subsided.
I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my body. It had hardened itself to the hot water. I used to feel tender after but not anymore. Clean now. I’m clean now. I can do this. I will not fail. I can do this. Mother was wrong. I didn’t need her to survive. I was doing fine. I’m not failing.
Mother wouldn’t like the girls, of course. She wouldn’t like that they helped me, and she wouldn’t like that they had my heart. She wasn’t here, and she couldn’t tell me what to do. I could do whatever I wanted now. I was in control of my life, not her. Not you.
The girls would be finished soon, so I dressed in clean clothes and bagged my dirty ones. The fire in the living room was already filled with coal and wood; I lit it and threw the bag straight in. I watched the flames grow and lick at the bag, turning it black in a matter of seconds. The clothes disintegrated into ash in front of my eyes, and my posture automatically relaxed. There was just one more thing to do before I could relax—get that filthy whore out of my house and away from my girls.
When I returned to their room, they were sitting on the sofa, reading. The whore was by the stairs, ready to go. Lily looked on over her book, staring at nothing. I understood this life was much different to the second-rate one she had with her former family. She had settled in just fine.
Rose smiled, tilting her head to the side and her long, dark hair fell half in front of her face. She was a very beautiful person, and very womanly and loving. To this day, I regretted how things had turned out. My life should have been different. Rose—Shannen—and I should be together. She should have been the one picking up the wool and clothes for the girls. She should have been the one I woke up to, rather than the cold, empty space in my bed.
Without saying a word, I picked up the body and carried it upstairs. Dead weight was heavy, but not as heavy as the price whores like her were costing society. There was one less of them in the world now. I knew there would be more; it was a never-ending cycle. Unlike the government and the police, though, I wouldn’t just sit back and allow it to happen.
I carried the body out to the car and placed it in the trunk. It was dark—that was good.
The drive to the canal didn’t take long. I had driven the journey so many times I didn’t have to think about where to go anymore; it was natural. I could do it with my eyes closed. The murky water was the graveyard for the disgraceful.
Opening the trunk, I swept the body up in my arms and placed it on the ground. There was a pile of broken bricks, chalk, rubble, and concrete blocks nearby from the derelict buildings. This area was supposed to be developed in a years’ time, but it had been rescheduled twice already. They should just leave it to fester.
I filled the body bag, weighing it down with as much as I could fit in, and dropped it into the water. The bag sank down and I sighed, content. One more down…