5. REMINDERS

5

REMINDERS

YARA

T he venom in his voice sent shivers down my spine. But this wasn’t the time for such weakness, was it?

“Stop? Am I an idiot?” I shook my head, using my other voice. He took in a sharp breath, cursing as he did.

When I was young, my father forced me to take vocal and singing lessons. I had to do it for years under the guidance of a special vocal coach—he paid her an obnoxious amount for that. It wasn’t really about singing. It was about maintaining the facade of a good father. Oh, and also because he was fucking her.

“FUCK. It’s you. From the pub. What the fuck are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Mr. Sinclair.”

I wiped the knife against my dress, ensuring every trace of my fingerprints was gone. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I had been perfecting this routine for too long, perhaps even longer than him, to make such a rookie mistake.

“Yes, I was quite surprised to find you here,” I said before sending the knife back toward him. He sidestepped at the very last moment, and the knife fell to the road with a harmless clink. “Don’t leave your DNA behind. That’ll be bad,” I said, quickly getting into my car and driving away.

I could see him in the rear-view mirror as he stared at me, eyes flashing with thunder. In the black Tyvek and against the gray skies, he looked like the grim reaper waiting to collect souls.

“So fucking tempting.”

I knew he wouldn’t follow me, not when he had things to wrap up and finish here. He couldn’t afford to leave Phil hanging. Ryden Sinclair hadn’t stayed out of prison by being irresponsible. Even though his kill today was a bit reckless, it was still meticulous.

“The first rule of killing is… never getting caught. You got caught.”

A satisfied smile tugged at my lips when I finally reached home. Whistling, I parked my sedan in the old garage—this car had belonged to my grandfather, and I only used it for hunting—locking it before I walked toward my house.

Pulling open the heavy wooden door, I entered the expansive hallway decorated with paintings and portraits. Katelyn had drawn some of these paintings. The remaining pieces were ones we had scrounged from various art exhibits. Kat made the once cold, lifeless house into a warm home. She made everything better in my life.

I inherited this mansion from my father. After I killed him, everything that belonged to him became mine, making me rich at the age of eighteen.

It was blood money, corrupted by his evil. It was shameless to live in his remains, his sins, after everything that had happened, but I had made this mine by ending him.

I had stopped him and saved myself, and I deserved this. I deserved everything because he was the reason I had become this shattered, perverted version of my naive, younger self.

My father broke me, and then I had to put myself back together, all by myself, with my young fingers. The pieces never fit properly—it changed me in ways I hadn’t imagined. It was his demise that breathed life into the demons in me. It was his depravity that freed them from their hell. For that, he deserved to die a million times.

The sound of the phone interrupted my thoughts. Grumbling, I reached for it, and the frown soon became a smile as I caught sight of the familiar name flashing on the screen.

“Irene? Why are you still awake? Don’t you have school tomorrow?” I asked as I threw my scarf on the couch. Slipping my shoes off, I walked toward my kitchen when my stomach growled. The whiskey was the last thing I drank. I was too distracted by Ryden and everything else to even think about food.

“Why are you still awake? Where were you? You weren’t home,” she said in a shaky voice, and I sighed as I stared at the outdated phone blinking with a message. Sometimes she called on the landline to check if I was home. I only kept it for her.

She was worried that I’d die just like her sister, just like Kat, and leave her all alone.

“I was out, Re-Re.”

Re-Re had been Katelyn’s nickname for Irene when they were younger. And then it had become mine, too, when Katelyn and Irene became a part of my family. Kat pulled me into something rare and new, and she showed me love like no one else ever had—something that came without any judgment or expectations.

My nails dug into my palms, a futile attempt to contain the storm raging within. Thinking of Kat and what happened to her sent a surge of anguish and fury through me.

“Were you… working?”

“No. I was at a pub. Drinking. I met someone and… I followed him. I’ll fill you in on the details later. Go back to sleep now, okay, and eat your vegetables.”

“Vegetables? What are you, my fucking mother?” Irene huffed, and I could almost imagine her rolling her eyes. “And why would you follow some stranger? Are you nuts?”

“You’re the one who acts like my mother, Re-Re,” I said, laughing, and Irene scoffed. “I can handle things on my own, alright? You don’t need to keep checking up on me. You’re already juggling two majors, you geek,” I said with a fond smile —Irene Ricci was an overachiever, pursuing a BA in Psychology and a BS in Criminal Justice.

The sound of her laughter was warm and soft, full of colors other than crimson or black. She was yellow and green and purple, the colors I had lost.

“I-I can’t help it. I’m afraid that someone will find out what you do or that one of the men you’re going to… you know, kill…” She made a choking noise and a gurgling sound before mimicking the sound of a blade cutting against the skin. “What if they kill you before you do? I have fucking nightmares, Yara. You don’t understand.”

“I understand, but I’m not easy to kill, Irene.”

“Yeah? Are you going to tell me you’re an immortal fae who has come to the mortal world through a hidden portal?”

“No, I’m not a fae. I’m a vampire,” I said, and she groaned. “Hey, it’s my job to worry about you. Not the other way around.”

She grunted. “Alright, alright, and remember the first rule. Do NOT ever fucking get caught.”

“I’m not an amateur. I don’t have any intention to live my life in a fucking prison.”

“Good. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Re-Re.”

After eating and getting dressed for the night in an old T-shirt, I spent a few hours on my laptop, stalking Mr. Sinclair. He looked harmless in the pictures, but I knew his secrets and I saw his demons.

“I want you, Sinclair, and… I don’t know whether it’s good or bad.”

I quickly printed a picture of him, staring at the scar on his lower lip. The desire to sink my teeth into it was so strong it almost made me gasp.

“You’ve always looked so prim and proper before. In your ties and suits and that smile… But now…” Shaking my head with a smile, I blew him a kiss. “Wait for me, Mr. Sinclair. I’ll be that thing you never knew you needed.”

Stretching, I stood up and walked to my bedroom, still clinging to Ryden’s picture. I loved looking at him. He had the kind of face that made you want to commit sins even if you were religious and moral.

You are neither.

You’re getting snarky, Kat, for a dead best friend, I said with a sigh.

I walked to the black four-poster bed that occupied half of my room. Sliding under the thick quilt, I closed my eyes. I could never sleep without the quilt, even when it was sweltering. The fear that someone might walk in and see me at my most vulnerable never left me, even after I killed my father.

The fear… the fear I felt that time, it was like another skin, buried under the one I was wearing now.

Always there.

Always ready to come apart with just a scratch.

So, I never scratched. I never touched the scars.

The very first time I killed, it wasn’t something born out of desire. It was born out of a stark necessity. Surviving. I was only surviving.

It was the night of my thirteenth birthday party. I knew his intentions the moment he walked into my room, drunk. He grabbed me by my hair, and I felt the sting of his nails on my skin. I had to stop him, or I would never escape him.

My anger came in flashes. Pulsing red and orange and a writhing black. It came like a storm, and I pushed him away from me with all my strength. He staggered back, shouting as he did.

I pulled the knife out of the folds of my dress. I had no idea what pushed me to grab it and bring it to my room, but I knew it’d save me.

The pink and blue frosting on the shining knife felt like an irony. It was the knife I used to cut the cake—he liked to pretend he was not an evil man during the daylight, that we were normal.

WHY? I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. All my words died at the tip of my tongue, bleeding back into my soul, corrupting, staining. Until my bones and skin were aching.

“You’re a monster,” I whispered.

He drunkenly slurred, “Come to your father.”

“You’re not my father.”

My ears rang. A crimson haze clouded my vision. It was as if the world itself had turned a shade of furious red. It was too much and too little all at once.

The words I was forced to keep inside, came out in a startling scream. The sound was both liberating and terrifying. I screamed. Louder. Louder.

The festering, boiling feelings finally found a way out. It was cathartic.

My father, startled by the force of my scream, took a quick step back from me and stumbled against my dollhouse. He fell, and the dollhouse crumpled underneath his weight. The beautiful, tiny, detailed furniture broke.

As the echoes of my scream mixed with air, I stood there, gasping for breath, surrounded by the broken parts of my life —a life that would never be the same again. I didn’t want it to be the same. I looked down at him, and for the first time, I saw fear in his eyes. I had never felt powerful in my life. It was intoxicating to stand over a massive man, to know that he was afraid.

For as long as I could remember, I had been the invisible ghost, drifting through people made of colors. I was black and white. No one saw me. No one heard me. He finally saw me, and he was afraid of what he saw. Something trembled awake inside me.

“What are you doing, Yara? Put the fucking knife down, you insane girl. You’re just like your mother, you little bitch.”

Before he could act, I thrust the knife into his side.

“You made my mother mad. You—you destroyed her. Now you want to destroy me? I won’t let you. I WON’T LET YOU.”

He tried to get up, but I didn’t give him the chance. I plunged the knife into his chest. Once. Twice. Thrice. Blood gurgled out in a steady stream. I couldn’t stop.

A part of me had been ripped off, and the other part of my soul was now filled with darkness. The door was opened, and the demons had come in, ready to feast, thirsty for blood, hungry for pain.

I couldn’t close the door—my father had broken the hinges and locks and taken them along with him to hell.

“I hate you.” I kept going. With each stab, I felt like I could finally stop being voiceless. “You don’t get to make me feel weak. You don’t get to hurt me. You don’t. You don’t.”

One more. Another. Another. I smiled with tears streaming down my cheeks. “I hate you. I hate you for what you did to Mom.”

“St-stop.” Blood frothed down his lips.

“Die. You have to die. I have to live.”

“Ya-Yara… please, sto—”

“I hate you.”

As I stood there, absorbing the weight of this newfound power, the world around me shifted. I was no longer a spectator.

“You’ll rot in hell.”

The doorbell rang, cutting the silence that stretched from one wall to the next.

“Yara? Yara.” It was my grandfather. He told me he’d come by later to give me my present.

I opened the door. His eyes widened when he saw my bloodstained dress. My beautiful blue dress, with glittering tulle, was now red.

A gasp left him as he quickly closed the door behind him and locked it. Twice. Entered the security codes, then pulled the drapes down until my house was shrouded in darkness, cloaking my sin within.

Only then, he turned to me.

“What have you done, Yara?” But he was not angry. Together, we went back to my room. He asked me to go to the bathroom and wash myself.

“What are you going to do, Grandpa?”

I washed myself until the smell of death and father’s blood was gone. When I walked out, wearing my pajamas, he was burning my dress in our backyard.

Everything felt strange and distorted. As if I was looking from behind a screen. I feared if I blinked, this would all disappear, and my father would come back to my room the next night and the next.

“I killed your father,” my grandfather said when we finally walked back to the room. “I killed him because he’s a monster. I should have.” The pink clock was ticking away, without a care in the world. “I won’t let you pay the price for my ineptitude.”

My father’s eyes, wide with fear, remained frozen at that moment, forever immortalized. I knew, at that moment, that I’d never forget this, this look of pure fear in his eyes.

The sight of red was strangely serene. An odd kind of Zen settled over me, and I almost felt compelled to sit down and offer a prayer over his dead body.

“Why?”

I sighed as I leaned against my bed. “So that I can kill him all over again.”