Chapter 26 #2
He stood over her. There was no shred of remorse in his fucking face. He enjoyed this. There was this … this twisted, almost gleeful calm in him. Sicker and more sinister than anyone I’d ever seen.
“You’re fucking crazy, Alice,” he muttered, like he was tired of repeating it. “You always were. A mess. A problem.”
He crouched down to her level, his voice lowering.
“I raise my son the way I want,” he said. “You’re just the thing he came out of.”
She twitched, but he grabbed her by the hair, dragging her eyes up to meet his.
“You want to talk about who owns who?” he spat. “You let your pathetic husband fuck you the same night I did. You laid there and took it like a bitch in heat, and then you cried like it wasn’t your fault.”
“Y-You both raped me,” she whispered. “And yours wasn’t the first time.”
The fingers in her hair tightened.
“Yeah. We did. And you know what the worst part is?” he said, voice almost conversational. “You let it happen.”
“I-I didn’t …”
“That third little fucking insect?” He sneered. “That little shit you hate? You don’t even know who put him there, do you? Me or him.” He chuckled. “Doesn’t fucking matter. Just proves what you are.”
He let go of her, her head dropping back to the floor like garbage.
“You’re not a mother. You’re a hole. And all you’re good for is bleeding and forgetting.”
He stood, fixing his blazer, and stormed toward the door.
Panic crawled up my throat. I bolted to the wall on the right, praying the bastard would go left, the same way Judas walked out.
If Uncle saw me, if he even suspected I’d caught a glimpse of what he did, he’d fucking end me.
He went to the left.
After he was gone, I drifted back toward my mother’s door. I don’t know why I did it. Curiosity, maybe. Or maybe some rotten part of me was hoping it’d be over. That she’d already be dead just so the longing, the fear, the guilt, the sick knot in my gut, would finally shut the fuck up.
But she wasn’t dead. Oh, she was far from it.
She was on her knees, crushed into the ground, arms wrapped tight around herself, rocking hard and fast, over and over, driven by something frantic and uncontrolled. Her body wouldn’t settle. It jerked, convulsed, refused to be still, spiraling deeper into madness by the second.
Her gray eyes were wide and vacant.
My heart was pounding, and my spine was tingling as if something I couldn’t see was creeping up my neck.
“He took what he planted.”
“What?” I breathed it out, barely sound at all, terrified the noise alone would set her off.
“He took what he planted,” she whispered again. Again. And again. Her lips kept moving even when no sound came out, chewing the words, grinding them into nothing.
I still remember her caramel blonde hair.
As a kid, I thought it was soft and smooth.
Something comforting, something warm. But memory’s a liar when you’re young.
The older I got and the more memories kept resurfacing, the more the truth crawled in.
Her hair was a mess. Tangled, matted, filthy.
It clung to her face in greasy strands, sticking to sweat and spit.
It wasn’t soft or warm. It was the kind of hair you’d see on someone locked up and screaming—someone the world forgot.
And that night, it was exactly the same.
“He took what he planted.” She kept repeating it like a sacred mantra.
“Mom?” I choked as tears consumed my eyes and burned my youthful cheeks.
Her head snapped at me, her eyes manic. “You!”
She dragged herself toward me, fingers clawing at the floor.
“No, no—Mom, no …”
I was helpless. Engulfed by terror and shivers.
I knew what I had to do. Knew it in my gut. But that fucking voice in my head still tried to guilt-trip me. She was still my mother.
I yanked the door shut and twisted the key, just as she slammed into it from the other side. Her nails scraped down the wood, over and over, trying to carve her way out with her bare hands.
I backed away, heart jackhammering, watching that damn door, fearing it was going to explode open.
Then I did what any screwed-up kid would do.
I fled to my room, slammed the door, and locked it tight. I sat there in the dark, trying not to listen to the scratching, wondering what the hell I’d just locked in.
I didn’t really understand what I saw that night. Besides, I was just a scared little shit. But as I grew older, and that damn memory kept clawing its way back into my head, again and again, I started to realize just how fucking rotten the roots of this family were.
Born straight into a nest of filth, lies, and lunacy.
No wonder everything went to hell.
I never told a soul. Not Cain, not Judas, not even Grayson. I kept my mouth shut all these years, swallowing the bile every time the image popped back up.
Until today.
What if I told them? What if I stopped playing the quiet little martyr and shoved the truth down their throats? What if I showed them exactly what kind of rabid, deranged bitch their precious mommy and aunt really was?
Would they even believe me? Would they finally shut the fuck up with their moral high ground and understand the wreck I turned into was because of her?